An Indian woman is facing deportation from New Zealand after she revealed to immigration authorities that she paid tens of thousands of dollars for an IT job and later found out it didn’t exist.
Damanpreet Kaur told that she paid three men $33,000 (NZD) for a work visa that would allow her to remain in New Zealand in the hope that it would eventually get her permanent residency in the country.
Ms Kaur completed an IT course and was on a one-year open work visa that allows international students to find work following the completion of their course. After her visa expired in March 2017, she was struggling to find a way to stay in NZ.
She said it was then that two men approached her and offered an IT job at an internet café in Tauranga city in exchange for $50,000.
She said she paid the men $18,000 last year, only to discover that the business had no working computers and her job actually did not exist. Due to her visa conditions, she couldn’t work anywhere else but at the sponsoring business. She claims one of the two men said she needed to pay them for the taxes they are paying in order to maintain the pretence of her job.
Ms Kaur said she then met another man who offered her a $21 an hour job in Hamilton if she agreed to pay him $16,000.
Radio NZ reports that like the first job, this one didn’t exist either. The Tauranga men denied the allegations to Radio NZ and the Hamilton man did not return the calls.
The woman spoke to the media organisation in February this year but didn’t want to go public. She has now informed the immigration authorities with the hope that action will be taken against the men who have allegedly duped her.
She has been told that the authorities may serve her a deportation notice for not working for her sponsor company.
“It’s my mistake, I apologise, but I need one last chance from immigration,” she said while admitting she broke the law. Her legal representative has also appealed to let her stay until the investigation, in this case, is over.
