Viruses and visas
How border closures tear families apart
Migrant families shut out of New Zealand by border closures are calling on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to let them return to this country. As Covid-19 began to spread around the world, New Zealand closed its borders to almost everyone, except citizens and residents.
But that kept out some people who would normally live here – or wanted to. Nearly 15,000 applications have been filed for an exception to the travel ban, and an immigration specialist told the Sunday Star-Times she knew of at least 14 families in South Africa alone who were unable to get back to their lives here. Of those applicants, 2914 had been invited to apply for a visa and 2456 had been approved.
The E Sousa family, one of three families the Sunday Star-Times spoke to, has been split after wife Michelle came to New Zealand in late February for a job, and to look for schools and a rental home.
Husband Steven and their children, Jayden and Courtney, remained in South Africa, and had applied for visas to join her just before the Covid-19 outbreak.
But their visas have been delayed and their application for travel here has been rejected.
In a letter to Ardern, Steven E Sousa said he had sold his business, home and assets in preparation for the move.
He and his children, aged 10 and 13, had moved in with family.
‘‘Financially it’s very difficult as we are now living two lives, one in New Zealand and one back in South Africa.
‘‘We are staying on the floor on mattresses and it’s incredibly hard to face my children every day trying to reassure them of what the future holds, especially when not too long ago they had their own beds, home and toys.’’
He begged Ardern to help his family and all the others that were split waiting for visas.
‘‘It is literally destroying lives, relationships and putting families into financial ruin.’’
While citizens and permanent residents can come home without restriction, their partners, dependants and guardians must apply for a border exception.
Others who must apply are children and partners of visa-holders who are here, essential workers, Australians who normally live here, Samoan and Tongans on essential travel and those who have humanitarian grounds.
All are competing for space in Government quarantine facilities.
On Friday, the Government announced it was making changes to some of the rules. A key change includes removing the need for partners and dependants of NZ citizens and residents to travel together to return home, but only when they had a relationship-based visa or were ordinarily resident in New Zealand. It also introduced new short-term and long-term criteria for ‘‘other essential workers’’ requests, which will now be made by Immigration NZ and not Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford.
A Brazilian man on a three-year work visa in New Zealand was recently permitted to re-unite with his New Zealand-based family, after initially being declined because he was not yet a New Zealand citizen or resident.
Another family stuck in South Africa, Tristan and Clara Robins and their baby daughter, were caught after leaving New Zealand for a family wedding. The couple moved to New Zealand last October on a three-year visa to give their daughter a safer upbringing. All their possessions and Tristan’s job were here.
Clara Robins said their situation back in South Africa was quite tough.
They were moving from house to house to alleviate the financial burden on family members and while they were grateful for the wage subsidy from New Zealand, they would not have any income after it ended.
Small things had become a challenge. They had taken no winter clothes, their daughter Emelia was due for vaccinations and they had been unable to find a soy milk replacement for their dairy-intolerant baby.
‘‘There are days when we just can’t get out of bed due to feeling despondent and dejected,’’ she said.
‘‘We would like to get back to our home and back to some kind of normality.’’
Fortunately, she said, Tristan’s job as a mechanic, which was vital to their visa, was being kept open for him until his return.
However, they had had to ask friends to pack up their belongings and let go of their Auckland rental.
All the family really wanted was certainty about when they could come back, she said.
‘‘Like many others we have submitted multiple EOI [expressions of interest] for the exception, only to be declined with no explanation as to why it has been declined.’’
While over 14,900 people have expressed interest in an exception to the travel ban, just over 2300 permits have been granted, the majority on humanitarian grounds.
Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway told RNZ this week that the challenge was increasing the number of managed quarantine rooms.
At present there were 3200 quarantine places, which equated to about 250 people a day, but at the moment many of those places were going to returning citizens.
‘‘Of course, we understand the frustration. We understand being separated from loved ones, being separated from the place you’ve started to call home, is enormously frustrating and painful for a lot of people. But if we look around the world the virus has still not been suppressed in most other locations.’’
Katy Armstrong, an immigration adviser at Into NZ, said she completely supported the Government’s quarantine system but she questioned whether it was as booked out as it sounded. She said the exception process had become a ‘‘lottery’’, which was why applicants were putting in multiple requests. It was ‘‘beyond frustrating’’.
‘‘How can a family of five who have lived here for, say, four years, got their home here, got cheese in the fridge, with a job that a Kiwi can’t take – we’re not talking low-skilled people – how can they justify that they are not seen as humanitarian?’’
Armstrong said there were several categories in the exception process and she felt those who had the greatest connection to the country were not getting the priority they merited.
‘‘We’ve seen the odd single get through. We’ve seen a few who have never set foot in New Zealand get through who are not essential workers.’’
But a whole family who normally lived here could only tick the ‘‘humanitarian’’ box. ‘‘We have not seen a single family with children stuck get through even with very established lives in New Zealand.’’
Stuck in a one-bedroom unit in South Africa, a family of five, which asked to remain anonymous, said they were also desperate to return to their lives in New Zealand. Based in New Zealand since 2018, the parents are both working on five-year essential skills visas on a pathway to residency.
They went to South Africa to visit family, and have applied twice for the exception to return, but were declined.
‘‘We are running out of medicines, funds and are worried about schooling for my 11-year-old,’’ one of the parents said.
‘‘Our jobs have been frozen as we negotiated to at least keep them with no monthly salary.’’
Back in New Zealand, Michelle E Sousa said it was not clear to her why her family had been declined, as they met all the visa criteria.
The children were dependants, and she had a very stable 27-year relationship with her husband.
She said the separation was hard but they had invested too much of their lives to give up, and she would keep applying.
‘‘We want to raise our kids in an environment where you’re not simply worrying about getting hijacked. So we’ve put every single penny into this move and to backtrack now is not an option.’’
Immigration New Zealand said it could not comment on individual cases without a privacy waiver, but in general all requests for a border exception were considered case by case.
‘‘INZ has no ability to apply discretion when considering requests against the border criteria,’’ a spokeswoman said.
There had been 14,901 expressions of interest for the exception, and 2832 had been issued an ‘‘invitation to apply’’.
Of those, 2485 subsequent applications had been received and 2371 of those have been approved.
‘‘It’s incredibly hard to face my children every day trying to reassure them of what the future holds.’’ Steven E Sousa