By Ric Stevens, Open Justice reporter of 
A group of Chinese workers were scammed and lured to New Zealand for cyclone clean-up jobs that didn't exist. Photo: RNZ / Niva Chittock
- Eight Chinese men paid over $16,000 each for non-existent jobs in NZ in a visa scam.
- Immigration adviser Jiaxian Liu was fined for breaching conduct by 'rubber-stamping' applications without meeting clients.
- The tribunal found no evidence Liu knew of the fraud but said he put workers in a 'vulnerable position'.
A group of Chinese men each paid more than $16,000 for a work visa and a job in New Zealand helping to clean up after Cyclone Gabrielle - but it was a scam.
The eight men arrived in Auckland in March and April 2023 to find the jobs did not exist.
Now, the licensed immigration adviser in Auckland who unwittingly helped the scammers by applying for the men's visas without meeting them is facing censure and fines from a disciplinary body.
Jiaxian (Jason) Liu has been found to have breached the immigration advisers' code of conduct in eight cases brought before the Immigration Advisers Complaints and Disciplinary Tribunal.
Two of those cases have so far resulted in censure and fines, according to the recently published tribunal decisions.
Liu, the director of Shuncheng Immigration Ltd, was fined $4000 in respect of one of the workers, and $5000 for another.
The names of all the workers who came to New Zealand expecting to help in flood recovery work have been suppressed.
The tribunal says there is no evidence that Liu knew of the immigration fraud being committed.
However, by not dealing with the men directly and by "rubber-stamping" applications submitted by an unlicensed middleman, he put the workers in a "vulnerable position", the tribunal says.
Auckland suffered extensive flooding and Cyclone Gabrielle ravaged the north and east of the North Island in separate weather events in January and February 2023.
On 3 March 2023, Liu was approached on the China-based WeChat social media app by a person who claimed to represent employers needing workers to help with the clean-up and who wanted to bring in people from overseas.
Liu replied, quoting a cost of $800 for each visa application.
He provided a link to a questionnaire to be filled in by each applicant for a visa, and was soon afterwards sent documents and a form for Immigration New Zealand, supposedly signed by each client.
The workers were being recruited in China by an agency that had a director based in New Zealand.
They were told that work on the clean-up would be arranged and each man handed over the equivalent of $16,666 to get the job and a visa to come to New Zealand.
The experience of one of the workers, identified only as H.G., was typical of the others.
He arrived in Auckland on a six-month work visa on 8 April 2023.
There was no job for him. He did not even know the supposed employer's name.
H.G. eventually found a few days of work cleaning.
In relation to another man, identified as EI, the tribunal said: "The complainant paid a substantial sum for a non-existent job".
"By cutting the complainant out of the communications, Mr Liu facilitated what appears to have been an immigration scam perpetrated on the complainant, though there is no evidence Mr Liu knew of the fraud."
NZME attempted to talk to Liu to ask if he had made visa applications only for the eight men who were the subjects of complaints to the tribunal, or if there were others.
"I have no comment on the matter, I'm sorry," he said.
In telling his side of the story to the tribunal, Liu said that his own Auckland home had been flooded during the extreme weather events of 2023.
"His eagerness to contribute to the urgent recovery, coupled with the distress of the flooding of his own home, inadvertently led to the omissions in his professional conduct," one of the tribunal decisions said.
"He had always strived to act honestly and fairly," it said.
Liu, an immigration adviser since 2017, told the tribunal that he was "misled" into believing that the person who contacted him, and an associate who sent him documents, had sufficient authority to act on behalf of the client.
But in its decision in the case of HG, the tribunal said that while he had acknowledged professional breaches, Liu had made no apology to the worker.
"His attitude to any compensation and portraying himself as a victim shows limited remorse and contrition," the decision said.
"He is not a victim. He did not know about the scam, but he bears some responsibility by operating in a way which prevented the complainant from taking advice direct from him.
"If that had occurred, it is less likely that the complainant would have been the victim of immigration fraud."
Liu told the tribunal that he had updated his protocols and it was now his practice to obtain a client's authorisation in writing when they engaged with him through an agent.
* This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald.
