Au pairs detained, deported over Dutch agency's dodgy practices: report
Nina Care, the Netherlands’ largest au pair agency, sends au pairs to other countries without the required visa and trains them to lie at the border, Nieuwsuur reported after an investigation. Multiple young women have been detained by border police and then deported. The program spoke to two women who this happened to, one in the United Kingdom and one in Germany.
Sofia, 25 and from the United States, traveled to the United Kingdom to work as an au pair. Before her departure, Nina Care gave her clear instructions not to tell customs that she was coming as an au pair and earning money from it. At London Airport, she was detained and interrogated for hours. After telling the truth, the border police deported her. Nina Care then encouraged her to just try again.
Salma went to work as an au pair in Germany. Nina Care told her to pose as a tourist. She managed to enter the country, but when returning to Germany after a holiday, the police arrested, detained, and deported her.
In the United Kingdom, visa regulations are strict, and au pairs are entitled to the minimum wage. Nina Care tries to circumvent this with a self-devised scheme, Nieuwsuur reported. In the UK, the company does not refer to its young women as au pairs, but as “friends of the family” and sends them to Great Britain posing as tourists. According to Nina Care, a family friend can stay with a family for six months as a guest without a visa, performing all the au pair duties, and gets pocket money instead of the minimum wage.
“This is clearly illegal,” Helena Wray, a professor of migration law at the University of Exeter, told Nieuwsuur. “They are encouraging young, vulnerable women to breach immigration law.” The construction is also risky for host families. “Parents can be held financially liable if they employ someone who is not to work there, with fines of up to £45,000.”
“Even if it is just a family friend, someone you know very well, you can’t say to them: Come to the UK and I’ll give you £360 a month and you can babysit for me. That’s simply not allowed,” Professor Wray said.
Jasmijn and Lyla Kok, the owners of Nina Care, don’t deny that their au pairs are turned away at the border, but say it “rarely” happens, and when it does, it’s “unjustified.” They also maintain that their construction is legal. According to them, a family friend is not an employee, but a visa-exempt guest temporarily staying with a family as part of a cultural exchange and learning English. Never mind that these families and their “friends” have never met each other before. “There is room and board, but no employment relationship to which the minimum wage applies,” the company says.
After a previous investigation, Nieuwsuur reported that Nina Care wasn’t screening or training its au pairs properly. The company also used photos of families to recruit au pairs without the families’ permission or knowledge.
