NZ checks visas of SL students who used fraudulent company

New Zealand Immigration staff are manually checking nearly 900 applications from Sri Lankan students who allegedly used a finance company which is at the centre of a student visa scam, NZ Herald reported quoting Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway.

Immigration New Zealand (INZ) is investigating the fraud involving Sri Lankan student applications.

INZ officials advised Lees-Galloway in March that fraudulent behaviour had been found in 88 pending applications, and 83 were declined, with a finance company at the centre of the fraud.

"Immigration NZ are going to manually review the 895 applications that came from Sri Lankan students through the Mumbai office in 2017. They're going to see which of those involved this particular finance company," Lees-Galloway said in late July.

Those that had used the controversial company would be flagged and if the visa-holder sought to have their visa extended, their case would be more closely scrutinised.

INZ had looked back at earlier applications but Lees-Galloway said the information confirming they had sufficient finances to support their application came from the finance company, which meant going back to the fraudulent finance company for the information.

Lees-Galloway said he would have a better idea of how widespread the problem was when INZ had completed its review.

"This is something that has appeared before, that there have been issues with this type of behaviour before. It is something INZ is very aware of."

He said people who were not able to support themselves financially in New Zealand ended up being exploited, by employers or others.