The enforcement ramp was already steep
Before Parliament even opened debate on the Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill, the government had already transformed the compliance landscape for employers of migrant workers.
The immigration infringement scheme launched in April 2024 allows MBIE to issue fines for offences including employing people not entitled to work and failing to produce documents within 10 working days. The numbers from its first two years are striking: 15 infringement notices and $63,000 in penalties in 2023/24 jumped to 121 notices and $395,000 in 2024/25. That is an eightfold increase in enforcement actions in a single year.
The $3,000-per-notice fine is not what should keep employers awake. It is the stand-down. An employer who receives an infringement notice loses the ability to support migrant worker visas for six months. Multiple simultaneous notices extend that to 12 months. Lose your accredited employer status entirely and your pipeline of migrant labour dries up overnight.
Since January 2024, Section 275A of the Immigration Act has also given immigration officers power to demand wages records, time records, leave records, and employment agreements from any employer of a visa holder, with no right to refuse on grounds of self-incrimination.
What the new bill stacks on top
The bill introduced on 18 March 2026 adds several layers of risk for employers.
First, immigration officers would gain power to request identifying information from anyone they have “good cause to suspect” is unlawfully present or breaching visa conditions, including at workplaces. Immigration Minister Erica Stanford has framed this as closing a narrow gap where officers arrive at a site targeting one person and encounter others “fleeing or acting suspiciously” but cannot currently act. That framing is reasonable. The practical consequence is less comfortable: any employer with migrant workers on site faces the prospect of a targeted visit expanding into a broader sweep.
The Law Society warned the bill should not proceed in its current form. A collective statement from forced migration sector organisations argued the identification powers use terms like “may be” and “may have” alongside suspected breaches, creating “overly broad discretion, increasing the risk of inconsistent and unmeritorious inspections.”
Second, humanitarian appeal rights to the Immigration and Protection Tribunal would be removed entirely for temporary migrants who commit offences. Between 2018 and 2024, roughly 31.2% of IPT appeals were allowed. For employers, this means a worker on a visa who commits a relatively minor offence could face deportation with no mechanism to argue exceptional circumstances. A chef, a truck driver, a construction worker, gone mid-project with no avenue for review.
Third, deportation liability extends from 10 to 20 years after gaining residence. MBIE’s own regulatory impact statement projects this would increase the number of people liable for deportation from approximately 182 to 237 per year, a 30% jump.
The workforce sectors most exposed
Government Cabinet papers acknowledged that expanded identification powers could disproportionately affect Pacific Island nationals, given their overrepresentation in overstaying statistics. For businesses in construction, hospitality, aged care, and food processing, sectors with significant Pacific and migrant workforces, this is not an equity abstraction. It is a labour supply risk.
A 2023 review by Michael Heron KC into out-of-hours compliance activity found that of 11,715 deportations between July 2015 and May 2023, just 101 resulted from out-of-hours visits. Cabinet accepted his recommendation that judicial warrants be required for after-hours activity. The new bill does not replicate that safeguard for daytime workplace visits.
In 2024, the Employers and Manufacturers Association’s then-Head of Advocacy Alan McDonald warned that “continual tinkering with the current settings is off-putting for potential skilled migrants considering New Zealand and confusing for employers who are trying to do the right thing but struggling to keep up with the rules.” That observation, made about earlier changes, applies with even more force now.
The accumulation is the problem
No single provision in this bill is indefensible. Closing enforcement gaps, deporting serious offenders, and verifying immigration status are legitimate government functions. The problem is the cumulative weight. Since 2023, employers have gained compulsory document disclosure obligations, an infringement scheme with stand-down powers that has already escalated eightfold, and now face a bill that would expand officer discretion at their workplaces while stripping the appeal mechanisms that currently provide some predictability.
For any business that relies on migrant labour, the risk calculation has shifted. It is no longer just about whether your paperwork is in order. It is about whether a visit targeting someone else expands to your entire workforce, whether a valued employee disappears from your roster because an appeal right no longer exists, and whether the system’s increasing unpredictability makes New Zealand a harder sell to the skilled migrants you actually need.
Sources
- Immigration Employment Infringement Scheme (2025-08-26)
- Immigration NZ could ‘demand identification papers from everyone’ says civil liberties group
- Collective Statement: Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill
- Proposed deportation changes could disproportionately affect Pacific Island nationals
- EMA says immigration changes might have unintended consequences (2024-04-10)