3 SEPTEMBER 2016

Independent investigation demanded for Export Education crime

Indian students are being deported over document fraud by agents – but education providers and the government are getting off scot free, says New Zealand First.

“The commissions paid by these education providers to agents tempted them to falsify documents to get as many students to NZ as possible,” New Zealand First Leader and Northland Member of Parliament Rt Hon Winston Peters.

“The government heavily promoted international education on behalf of these private education companies regardless of the quality or New Zealand’s international reputation.

“Tertiary, Skills and Employment Minister Steven Joyce and the government have long known students have been coming here with false documentation provided by crooked agents.

“In the year to March 2016, a total of 9800 Indian students on student visas arrived from India and nearly all of them had been exploited by their agents.

“Munish Sekhri, spokesman for the India-based group Licensed Immigration Advisers of New Zealand (Lianz), said that up to eight in 10 Indian students here might have been misled by their agents.

“An alarming percentage of New Zealand’s $3 billion international student industry is nothing more than a giant-sized racket with the main incentive for the students being to get permanent residency here.

“This is what happens when Mr Joyce and the government pump up a business so private enterprise can profit but there are no standards; no tight rules or regulations just an open end industry to get as many students here as possible.

“It’s a scandal that both the education providers and Mr Joyce have encouraged this fraud on the New Zealand educational system. In any other First World democracy Mr Joyce would have been held accountable and fired.

“There needs to be full scale investigation into export education fraud,” says Mr Peters.

ENDS

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