A LEADING ADVOCACY group for migrant nurses working in Ireland has spoken out about “widespread” instances of recruitment agencies promising jobs that do not actually exist, leaving unsuspecting nurses unemployed once they arrive in Ireland.
Migrant Nurses Ireland (MNI) is calling on nursing homes that hire nurses from abroad to ensure that they are working with legitimate agencies that are properly registered.
Varghese Joy, a senior Dublin-based nurse and the convener of MNI, told The Journal that multiple agencies committing suspected visa fraud are often operating on an unlicensed basis in at least one country, when they should be licensed in both Ireland and the other country.
Additionally, these companies are also charging nurses thousands of euros in unlawful agency fees on top of the standard expenses a nurse has to pay when they come to work in Ireland in order to get a work permit, and a registration pin from the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland (NMBI).
In these instances of suspected visa fraud, the agencies are charging nurses up to €4,000 (and in some cases more) to come to Ireland for jobs that do not exist.
The Journal has spoken to one nurse who was in this situation, and did not know the job she paid to move to Ireland for was not real until after she had received a work permit through the Government’s Atypical Working Scheme. She had also completed the RCSI’s adaptation examination for overseas nurses, which essentially converts nursing qualifications and ensures they meet Irish standards.
Joy told The Journal how these agencies are tricking the Department of Justice and the Department of Enterprise into issuing work permits for fake job offers.
“These agencies secured genuine work offers for nurses in the past from nursing homes. They take the letterheads and the text body of those contracts, and they edit them and put other nurses names on them, then they submit the edited document to the Departments,” he explained.
In many cases these nurses do not know that they have paid up to €4,000 in an unlawful agency fee, on top of nearly €3,000 in legitimate fees, to come to Ireland for a fake job until they are already in the country and have passed their exams.
Often, when they reach out to the agencies they are met with silence. If they manage to get in touch with the nursing homes, they realise that there was no job offer in place in the first place.
“In the last year we have been hearing from nurses who are in this situation on an increasing basis. They are devastated and distraught when they realise what they have been the victim of. Many of them have young families back in India that they have come here to try and support.
“We will point these nurses in the direction of legitimate agents to try and help them to secure new jobs before their work permit runs out and they have to leave the country, but we have also seen cases where they have had to leave as they couldn’t secure any employment,” Joy said.
MNI is calling on the Government departments that run the Atypical Working Scheme to check with employers that job offers are real before they issue work permits.
The organisation is also urging nursing homes to make sure they work with ethical and registered companies that will not take genuine job contracts and later use them to this end.
The Department of Justice told The Journal that it is “aware” of these “matters”, but that the Department of Enterprise is chiefly overseeing the scheme.
“This Department works diligently to detect instances where false or misleading information is submitted as part of an immigration application. Atypical Working Scheme applications and Visa applications undergo checks at all stages of the application process to establish if the applicant meets the criteria for the permission type applied for and to verify all information supplied,” a spokesperson said.
