At least 24 Indian tradies are reportedly stuck in immigration logjam after a convicted fraudster promised them jobs at a labour hire firm in New Zealand.
The hopeful migrants are said to have paid up to $3,280 to land a job with R-Lits, whose status as an accredited employer was revoked by Immigration New Zealand in November 2023, news website Stuff has reported.
At the time the accreditation was revoked, at least 24 Indian tradies already had their visa application in progress and they are now in limbo, without a visa and having already paid money, some of which they raised through loans.
According to the Stuff report, Bishop claims he only has records of 14 of the 24 men in question, and all their visa applications have been submitted.
A Dubai-based HR company which sourced the workers has issued a lawyer’s letter to Roy Bishop, who owns World HR Connect, seeking $US44,000 in visa fees and $13,363 in unpaid commissions, according to the Stuff report.
Bishop, the report states, is a twice-convicted fraudster who opened World HR Connect in Dubai as a front to hire workers for R-Lits. Bishop and his brother Spencer have a trail of failed companies behind them, according to the report.
SRV Suryshiv, the Dubai-based company that reportedly sourced the workers for Bishop’s firm, says they had an agreement that World HR Connect would pay them $US500 for each successful candidate they found.
Stuff quotes Shiv Kumar as saying Bishop only ever paid him for one candidate, despite providing 50, and gave multiple excuses before stopped responding in December.
He then reportedly contracted a lawyer, Musab Al-Naqvi, who wrote to Bishop claiming he’d “been deceiving our client on one or another pretext, stating the delay is from the New Zealand authorities”.
The tradies reportedly paid fees of up to $3,280 into an R-Lits account in New Zealand to cover visa application fees. INZ said R-Lits had 232 permits to hire overseas workers last year, and had used 184 while 46 applications in progress.
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