Woman could be deported

A Fijian woman who found out she had lupus while applying for a work visa, ended up in debt to the health board and faces deportation.

In a decision delivered at the High Court in Auckland Justice Patricia Courtney said she had declined Sanita Devi’s application for Judicial Review of Immigration Minister Chester Burrow’s decision not to intervene in her application for a work visa on humanitarian grounds.

‘‘Mr Burrows was entitled to form his own view on the basis of all the information and a reasonable decision maker could clearly have refused to intervene,’’ the judgement, released recently, said.

Devi, a citizen of Fiji, moved to New Zealand in 2007 to join her husband, who started work as a senior cabling technician two years after they got married.

The court heard that her husband would remain in New Zealand.

‘‘He now has permanent residency in New Zealand,’’ Courtney said.

Devi discovered she had lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease, after a checkup for her work visa application revealed a large amount of fluid around her heart.

Treatment of the condition landed her $192,000 in debt to the Auckland District Health Board and Counties Manukau District Health boards.

She then needed a hip replacement after doctors prescribed large amounts of prednisone which unexpectedly caused her bones to degenerate.

Her work visa application was denied on the grounds that her illness ‘‘had already created a burden on the New Zealand health services and presented a continued risk of further costs’’.