Arrivals win 3 more months to find job
5:00AM Wednesday April 11, 2007
By Simon Collins
Skilled immigrants have won a three-month extension to a controversial policy which gave them only six months to find a job in their field.
Migrants granted work-to-residence visas from yesterday will be given nine months to find a job, plus three months to get to New Zealand if they are applying from overseas and need to give notice to their present employers.
But immigration agents, who asked the Government to give the migrants a year to find a job, said nine months "does not go far enough".
And migrants who are already here on six-month visas and have been unable to get jobs in their fields said an extra three months would still not give employers the confidence they needed to offer them skilled jobs.
"Employers say we have been through this before and we lost our employees because Immigration denied them the right to stay," said a Filipino human resource manager who has come here with his wife and 1-year-old baby.
More
here .
Work to Residency policy changes