Offshore cash for visa jobs is now the employer’s problem

For years the pay-to-work racket had a tidy legal fig leaf. If a migrant handed over tens of thousands of dollars in Delhi or Manila, to a relative of the boss rather than the boss, the money arguably never touched New Zealand law. That argument died on 8 October, when the Full Court of the Employment Court ruled that section 12A of the Wages Protection Act applies to premiums paid overseas.

Section 12A bans an employer, or anyone acting on their behalf, from seeking or receiving a premium in connection with someone’s employment. The court has now confirmed that where the cash changes hands is irrelevant. What matters is the link between the payment and the New Zealand job.

For honest employers, this is good news. For anyone who has been relaxed about what their offshore recruiters charge, it is a live liability.

A market that sold visas by the job

The sums are not small. Stuff reported that workers were paying between $10,000 and $60,000 before leaving home, in exchange for promises of work and residency. Payments were made in cash or bank deposits, often in instalments, to intermediaries rather than employers. Receipts were rare and deals were struck over WhatsApp.

The evidence before the court painted an “alarming” picture. Workers borrowed from family, took high-interest loans or mortgaged property. They then arrived on visas tied to a single employer, carrying debt that made complaining about unlawful conditions close to unthinkable. One deponent told the court the offshore location was “a calculated feature of the exploitation model, designed to evade domestic regulation”. Regulators reported such complaints were growing in both number and size.

Why a 2003 precedent no longer protects anyone

The case consolidated two proceedings: a Labour Inspector’s claim against Top Produce Limited, and a claim by four workers against separate employers. The Council of Trade Unions, Workers First Union and Community Law Centres Aotearoa all intervened, a sign of how much rode on the outcome.

The obstacle was Mehta, a 2003 decision long read as confining section 12A to domestic payments. The court called it “a creature of its time”, noting that international recruitment pipelines and debt bondage were far less common two decades ago. It took an “ambulatory” approach, reading the statute for the labour market that actually exists in 2026.

That is sound reasoning. A law against selling jobs that can be dodged with a plane ticket and a cousin is not much of a law.

The scale employers are dealing with

This is not a niche problem. As at 30 September, Immigration New Zealand had approved more than 211,000 Accredited Employer Work Visa applications across more than 30,000 accredited employers. MBIE has received 9,594 complaints against accredited employers since 2022, and INZ has run 9,611 post-accreditation checks on 6,592 employers, more than one in five of the total. Some 1,728 employers have lost accreditation and 1,087 have been suspended.

The enforcement machinery already exists and is clearly being used. What it lacked was jurisdiction over the offshore leg of the transaction. It now has it.

Business groups wanted this

It would be wrong to frame this as regulators beating up on employers. In 2025, BusinessNZ backed a new offence or fine of up to $100,000 for migrant exploitation, and pushed for liability to extend to recruitment agents and intermediaries. That compares with the regime proposed in the 2022 worker protection bill, where infringement fees were set at $1,000 per affected employee, capped at $20,000 per employer in any three-month period.

BusinessNZ’s logic is straightforward. Every employer extracting $30,000 from a worker before day one is undercutting competitors who pay recruitment costs honestly. Exploitation is a competition problem as much as a moral one.

What sponsoring employers should do now

Horticulture, hospitality, construction and aged care lean hardest on the AEWV, and they carry the most exposure. The practical checklist is short:

• Know who your offshore recruiters are and what they charge candidates, in writing.
• Contractually prohibit any fee to workers for the job itself, and audit it.
• Ask new arrivals directly, and privately, whether they paid anyone to get the role.
• Watch for relatives, managers or community contacts acting as informal gatekeepers.

The “I never saw the money” defence is weaker than it was a week ago, because the law catches anyone acting on the employer’s behalf.

The case now goes back to the facts

This was a preliminary ruling on jurisdiction, so the substantive claims against Top Produce and the other employers still have to be proven. But the door is open, and coverage of the decision makes clear labour inspectors and worker advocates intend to walk through it. Expect more claims, larger recovery bids, and pressure on Parliament to put BusinessNZ’s third-party liability into statute. Employers who run clean recruitment have nothing to fear and a fairer market to gain. Those who looked away offshore should start looking now.

Sources

• Leighton Associates: Unlawful premium paid overseas is within NZ’s employment jurisdiction (2026-10-13)
• Stuff: Up to $60,000 for a New Zealand job – Court says overseas fees are still illegal (2026-10-13)
• HCAmag: NZ court closes loophole on offshore pay-to-work schemes (2026-10-13)
• Anderson Law: Can New Zealand law recover employment premiums paid overseas? Top Produce and Bhatia go to a Full Court (2026-10-13)
• Immigration New Zealand: Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) key information and statistics (2026-10-13)
• BusinessNZ: Immigration Fiscal Sustainability System Integrity Amendment Bill submission (2025-07-29)
• Newsroom: Employment Court closes loophole on offshore migrant exploitation premiums (2026-10-14)