Ten foreign workers employed by a subcontractor on BlueScope's No 5 blast furnace reline project face deportation after the Immigration Department raided the Port Kembla site.One of the men, all of whom are believed to be South Korean nationals, was in Villawood Detention Centre yesterday after he and his colleagues were escorted from the steelworks by immigration officials on Tuesday.A department spokesman said BlueScope had co-operated with the officers and that none of the workers were their direct employees.
Immigration officers raid Bluescope Steel"The Department of Immigration and Citizenship has conducted a compliance operation at BlueScope Steel," the spokesman said. "The department was acting on information there may be unlawful non-citizens on the site."Of 15 workers removed from the steelworks and interviewed, six were found to be in breach of their visa conditions and have been granted temporary bridging visas so they can arrange to leave Australia.Three others were granted bridging visas after they were found to have no visa and have also been asked to leave.The man in detention will be deported while the other five, who had visas that did not allow them to work, have been "counselled", the department spokesman said.A BlueScope Steel spokesman confirmed officers from the Immigration Department visited on Tuesday."The government officers were escorted onto our site, spoke with a number of people and asked some of them to leave the site with them," the spokesman said."BlueScope's contractual arrangements are with the prime contractors who in turn award contracts to the subcontractors."The spokesman said BlueScope had a procedure of seeking assurances that employees of contractors were eligible to participate in work and that assurances had been given in this case."Further, both BlueScope Steel and the contractor who engaged the subcontractor of interest to the department ... conducted random audits of the eligibility of some foreign-born workers to work on the project," the spokesman said."Those people audited were found to have the correct immigration documentation."
