Migrants are tricking examiners overseeing English language tests required to gain residency in New Zealand by using Photoshop to create "morphed" photo IDs that combine their own images with those of professional stand-ins.

Labour Department service delivery manager Arron Baker says the same technique is probably being used by migrants to avoid medical examinations and could be used to falsely obtain visas, adding pressure on the department to invest in biometric identity checks. Migrants need to speak English to varying levels to secure residency as skilled migrants or to settle in New Zealand under some other immigration criteria. Immigration New Zealand often requires non-native English speakers obtain an International English Language Testing Systems (IELTS) certificate, a qualification administered by the British Council.

Mr Baker says Chinese fraudsters are offering migrants a one-stop-shop service. Migrants upload their photo to a website, where it is combined with a photo of a similar-looking proficient English-language speaker and used to create a fake ID card for the stand-in, who then sits the exam for a fee and returns the certificate. "The test centre has a photograph associated with each applicant on their records. The morphed image is to try to enable the stand-in to successfully pass the document check at the door. "There are a number of cases that we are aware of,"

Mr Baker says. Immigration has also seen a morphed image used in a doctored foreign passport. "That was detected by one of our overseas liaison officers at an overseas airport before the person got on the plane."

The Labour Department has begun to shop for a biometric system that will let it capture and check fingerprints and face scans of visa applicants, and potentially other biometric identification, so it can conduct identity checks on foreign nationals before they are allowed to travel to New Zealand. The system will be trialled until June next year.

It will need to be able to scale up to record the details of 5000 applicants and conduct 7500 identity checks a day. Alex Bazin, head of biometrics at Fujitsu, says the fingerprinting of visa applicants has uncovered a "worrying underlying level of fraud" in the British immigration system, where biometric checks have resulted in more than 5000 arrests.

Fingerprinting has helped thwart a common scam, whereby people who settle in Britain post their passports to friends or family overseas who look vaguely like them, so they can enter the country on the same documentation.

Mr Baker says the Labour Department has had cases of "double-dipping" by asylum seekers, who have left and then re-entered New Zealand under new identities to claim multiple welfare benefits.

The Labour Department scanned 26,000 old passport photos last year to test their suitability for biometric matching, uncovering five frauds. The test found about 95 per cent of passport photos were worth scanning and software might be of some help detecting "morphed" photos.

(Source Christchurch Press)