A Chinese man has been living in an Auckland garage for three months and working illegally after paying more than $17,000 for an accredited employer work visa.

The construction company who was supposed to give him work said it did not realise he was in the country even though the visa was approved in January...

The man, who RNZ is not naming, said he had been paying $120 a week to live in the garage of a West Auckland house...

The man said he was barely getting by after paying more than $17,000 for his visa to a China-based labour export company...

Welldone Construction manager Jerry Zhang said the man did have a contract with the company and it knew his visa had been approved in January.

He said the agent Johnson Yang only told the firm this month that the worker had arrived and had been doing other jobs.

The company decided to cancel the man's visa.

It also denied taking a cut from the agent fee the worker had paid.

Yang had hung up on RNZ when asked about what had happened, but just days after RNZ made contact, the worker was reimbursed half the money he had paid...

The Migrant Workers' Association's president Anu Kaloti said it had dealt with about 30 cases of workers in similar situations over the past three months.

She said the majority were on accredited work visas and in every case there were offshore agents involved but also complicit employers...