Licensed immigration adviser censured and fined for lack of professionalism

Adviser was acting for five clients from China seeking residence in NZ under the Skilled Migrant Category. Photo / File.

A licensed immigration adviser has been censured and ordered to pay a penalty of $2000 for her lack of professionalism and due care.

A complaint by Immigration New Zealand against Qing Tian was upheld by the Immigration Advisers Complaints and Disciplinary Tribunal.

The tribunal found Tian had not assessed and applied the immigration instructions with due care and professionalism, and that she had corresponded with INZ in a way that was neither professional nor respectful.

Tian, a director of Phoenix International Consultancy Group Limited, also refused to disclose her full files upon lawful demand by the authority.

She was acting for five clients, all from China, who were seeking residence in New Zealand under the skilled migrant category.

INZ had declined their applications on the grounds that their employment did not meet the skilled employment criteria and that their English did not meet the required threshold.

Appeals lodged by all five on the advice of Tian to the Immigration and Protection Tribunal had also been unsuccessful.

In its decision, the tribunal found Tian had misunderstood the immigration instructions, and that her correspondence with INZ brought the immigration advisers' profession into disrepute.

She had accused named immigration officers and managers of incompetence, racism, dishonesty, exploiting and abusing migrants, corruption, running an immigration scam, malice, of instituting a hate crime against her, criminal harassment and of abusing a complaint process as an act of revenge.

It was found that the alleged conspiracy against her because she was ethnically Chinese or a successful adviser was a figment of her imagination.

"Most advisers would be horrified by her personal animosity, and her lack of judgment and objectivity in her relationship with Immigration New Zealand," the decision said.

Tian also accused the authority's then registrar of colluding with INZ's complaint, and regarded that as an abuse of process.

Her conduct in relation to correspondence with INZ, the tribunal found, was too serious to be sanctioned by way of caution only.

"It amounted to sustained, personalised attack on not just the competence, but also the integrity and motivation of named officers," the tribunal said.