In the middle of 2023, two migrant workers arrived in New Zealand carrying the weight of a $60,000 promise each — money paid in India for the chance to begin again. What they found instead was a system designed to turn their vulnerability into profit, their visa dependency into leverage, and their wages into a reimbursement for their own hiring. A Thames supermarket owner has now been fined and his store stripped of its brand, a small reckoning in the longer human story of those who cross borders in hope and find exploitation waiting.
Four Square owner fined $44k for charging migrants $120k for jobs
Two migrant workers were exploited and financially harmed, losing $120,000 combined to secure employment under false pretenses, though funds were eventually repaid.