Strangers in a foreign land: African migrants snubbed by Kiwi employers

Saturday, 28 April 2018

In Africa, they were accountants and engineers. In New Zealand, they work as hotel maids and security guards.

Michael Macdeba is a Doctor of Engineering, but can only find work as a security guard.

Research suggests discrimination is a factor in the social freefall African migrants are experiencing on arrival in Auckland.

Back home they were trained professionals and saw New Zealand as a place to further their careers. But their hard-earned qualifications and reputations have no currency here.

Forced into low skill and low pay work, they're left feeling Kiwi employers haven't given them a fair go. Here are some of their stories.

* No job, no qualification, no dream - migrant exploitation in NZ

* Here are some of the jobs that Kiwis can't, or won't, do**

'THE MOST OVERQUALIFIED SECURITY GUARD IN NZ'

Michael Macdeba is a Doctor of Engineering. He got his PhD in waste management and sustainability from an Auckland university.

Since the 49-year-old finished his studies in late 2016, he says he's applied for more than 500 jobs and hasn't been called for a single interview.

Instead, he works as a security guard and is paid minimum wage. His 17-year-old son works in a hardware store and earns more money than he does.

'Some of my colleagues who know my background, they will tell me I'm the most overqualified security guard in New Zealand,' he laughs.

'I'm not complaining about it. It's highly demoralising, but I don't have any solution for now. I'm still working hard and hoping that one day the situation will change.'

In Nigeria, he was a respected engineer and lecturer for almost 25 years.

In New Zealand, where he's lived for seven years, employers don't want to hear from him. It's been hard to figure out why, since he's never made it into an interview room.

But one of the things he's been told is that he lacks New Zealand work experience.

'If you work in engineering in Africa, are you not using the same principles that apply in New Zealand?'

'I ask them, is there a special way of doing things in New Zealand that is not obtainable overseas? No one has been able to give me an answer.'

When he applies for lower-level engineering and construction jobs, he gets told he's overqualified.

Macdeba is confused and he doesn't know what 'they want'.

Therefore he is applying for any jobs that he believes he can do, even if it's for a truck driver. He just wants to 'get in there and prove myself'.

He worried that when employers saw his African name, they will assume he wasn't a strong English speaker. So he made a habit of follow-up phone calls. Nothing changed.

During his studies, the first job he landed was as an interpreter for the police in a case where a group of Nigerians were involved in drug-smuggling.

'I was lucky to be an interpreter for the police during the trial. That was the most professional job I did throughout my studies, and up to this moment I'm talking to you,' he says.

He managed to land his current security job after he got to know a security guard who patrolled the university campus at night while he was studying.

His wife is in a similar situation. She was a registered teacher in Nigeria, but her qualifications aren't recognised in New Zealand, and she now works as a caregiver in a rest home.

Meanwhile, Macdeba has been granted a one-year extension on his visa to continue his search for an engineering job.

'SHE COLLAPSED AT WORK'

Balarabe Nkom, his wife Joy and their young children had high hopes for their time in New Zealand.

Balarabe Nkom came to New Zealand from Nigeria in 2013 with his wife Joy and their young son.

Nkom saw the move as a chance to improve his family's quality of life. Instead, despite being highly qualified, neither he nor his partner could find jobs, and Joy's attempts to support the family as a hotel cleaner ended in tragedy.

In Nigeria, Bala was an electrical engineer with a Master's degree. Joy was an accountant.

On arrival in Auckland, although they had working visas, they found they weren't certified to work in New Zealand. While trying to become registered, they had to turn elsewhere to support their young family.

Bala decided to further his engineering studies by doing a PhD at Auckland University of Technology while Joy took a cleaning job at a hotel.

'For you to be registered as an accountant, you need to be certified,' Nkom explains.

Nkom is raising his young children alone after his wife passed away.

'Joy wasn't able to get a job, but that's the policy. It should be made easier for migrants to transition into work in their chosen field when they get here.'

Joy's work at the hotel was stressful. She was expected to clean several rooms per shift, with only 30 minutes allocated to each room.

'She complained about the way they worked and the level of work they were given. But she was quite tenacious, and she felt she could handle it.'

On April 22, 2015, Joy was found unconscious in an elevator at work. Bala believes being overworked in a stressful environment caused her death. She was 34.

'She collapsed at work. She was taken to hospital, and the doctors said she'd had an aneurysm; a brain hemorrhage.

'I was at home with the kids, waiting for her to come home. They called me saying, 'She's very ill, she's in hospital.' And I got there, and there was no one there from the hotel. They'd sent her to the hospital alone.'

Bala was left to raise their two young children, including their daughter who was born in New Zealand. In the years since Joy's death, he has finished his PhD and hopes to become certified as an electrical engineer in the next couple of months.

Nkom (right) is still waiting for a job interview.

He is still struggling to find work.

'What I pinned my hopes on was to get a befitting job after completing the PhD, and that's where I have a problem,' he says.

He says he has applied for about 40 jobs since late last year and is yet to be invited for an interview.

Kudakwashe Tuwe went from insurance executive to toilet cleaner when he arrived in New Zealand.

'It's difficult because the employers know what they want. Some employers can play semantics and say you're not a fit for what they're looking for. What they're saying is, 'We need someone that's more like us.'

'You feel that there is some discrimination at play.'

FROM EXECUTIVE TO TOILET CLEANER

Kudakwashe Tuwe was an insurance executive in Zimbabwe, specialising in human resources.

The first job he landed after coming to New Zealand in 2002, was cleaning toilets.

'I was a professional migrant that was immediately turned into a toilet cleaner,' he jokes.

'It really required a lot of courage and a lot of humility to be able to do that.'

It was his only option; he says employers in his field didn't want a bar of him.

'They looked at the colour of my skin, and they heard my accent, and they wrote me off. So, as a result, I had to change my profession to community development and health promotion.

'Some employers, if they just pick that you don't have a Kiwi accent – coupled with the issue of race or skin colour – they totally dismiss you.'

Tuwe says migrants face many hurdles in their search for a job, and this is reflected in the preliminary findings of his PhD thesis on employment challenges for Africans in New Zealand.

Those include racism and discrimination, employers requiring New Zealand work experience, and a perception that Africans aren't proficient in English.

He says there is a tendency for Kiwis to assume African migrants were refugees, which often wasn't the case.

'If you see a migrant who has relocated to New Zealand, in the majority of cases these guys were well-to-do in their original country,' he explains.

'These are professionals who were doing very well in their home countries. They were able to buy a ticket to come to New Zealand. They have made an informed decision.'

He says employers also assume that applicants with strong accents have difficulties with English, when in fact most African migrants come from former British colonies, and English is their first language.

'They just assume that I'm a refugee and therefore English is an issue. Yet it is not. Most of the employers hide behind English language proficiency, yet they're actually displaying racist attitudes.'

Another sticking point was the lack of Kiwi work experience, which puts migrants in a Catch-22 situation.

'A lot of employers are missing out where they demand Kiwi work experience, where it is not required,' says Tuwe.

'If you don't give them a job how will they be able to get the so-called New Zealand work experience?'

As a result, the African community is an untapped pool of skills, with employers, and ultimately the economy missing out, says Tuwe.