Family Bonthuys

My name is Peter – Don Bonthuys and I am a migrant working and living in Dunedin, New Zealand (NZ). I was born in South Africa (SA) and as a child dreamed of becoming a police detective.

At the tender age of 18 I joined the South African Police Service where I served proudly as a detective for 17 years in the Western Cape province of Cape Town, SA, where I specialised in the investigation of organised crime and street gangs.

In 2007 I met my wife, Natasha. We got married in 2014 and we now have three children. Our eldest son, Tylo, is adopted, and we have a daughter called Zoe and younger son called Ryan. The family is my everything.

In 2018 my wife and I decided that we want to immigrate to NZ to start a new life to provide a better future for our children. In December 2018 I resigned from the SA Police Service in the only job I have ever known.

In 2019 after numerous job applications, I was blessed with a job offer from Otago Regional Council (ORC) in the South Island. ORC was looking for an experienced investigator to investigate breaches of NZ’s Resource Management Act. I submitted my visa application and Immigration New Zealand (INZ) approved a 60-month high-skilled Essential Work Skills Visa.

On the morning of 17th September 2019, I did the hardest thing I have ever done in my life and that was saying goodbye to my children at their schools. At that time Tylo was 11 years old, Zoe was three years old and Ryan was just 18 months old.

When I left SA, Tylo did not have a passport because we were still waiting on receipt of the final adoption order to first obtain his new unabridged birth certificate. The plan was that my wife and kids stay behind in SA and would apply for their visas as soon as these documents were obtained. Unfortunately, Covid-19 struck, and my family could not apply for their visas as we had planned.

I have been financially supporting my family back in SA since March 2020.

In 2020 ORC became an accredited employer and I applied to INZ for a Work-to-Residence Visa. This was approved on 9th April 2021 and it will allow my family and I to apply to INZ for residency in 2023.

I have now been separated from my family for 21 months. I have missed Christmases, birthdays, wedding anniversaries and so many other important family moments. These are all precious family moments we will never get back.

I speak with my wife and the children every morning and every night on my phone but that does not make up for a hug or a kiss from your loved ones.

Today Tylo is 13 years old, Zoe is 5 going on 6, and Ryan turned 3 this past February. Every day my kids ask my wife and I: “when are we going to Daddy?”, and every day we have to look into those little tearful eyes without being able to give them an answer.

Like so many others, we have sold and sacrificed everything in SA to be able to immigrate to NZ and we now feel that we are beyond the point of no return.

Family Mithani

My name is Rizwan Mithani. I became engaged to my now wife, Sonal, in May 2017 in my hometown of Bhavnagar in India.

When the time came, I submitted my application for a New Zealand (NZ) work visa with Immigration New Zealand (INZ) as an engaged man. In May 2019, I finished my MBA studies at the Auckland Institute of Studies, and I commenced work as an Operations Manager in a large holding company. Sonal has also obtained a Master’s degree in Commerce from a tertiary institution located in Gujarat, India.

I received a three-year NZ Post-Study Work Visa (open) on 18th May 2019. I booked a ticket to India for 28th May 2019 and Sonal and I had our culturally arranged marriage on 9th June 2019 with magnificent pre-wedding, wedding and post wedding ceremonies attended by hundreds of guests.

After our marriage, Sonal and I started our married life in Bhavnagar at my home, where Sonal still lives with my parents. We went to Goa, India for our honeymoon. Our time together in India after our marriage was so precious. I had rebooked my ticket to Auckland, NZ for Friday, 16th August 2019.

Finally, the day came for me to leave. Although we were sad, we gathered strength from the knowledge that we would soon reunite in NZ once Sonal’s visa was issued. I applied for her visa in mid-October 2019 and it was approved as a General Visitor Visa (GVV) on 20th February 2020. I booked her ticket to Auckland for 22nd March 2020, which has now ended up being the biggest mistake of my life.

INZ announced compulsory quarantine upon arrival on 17th March 2020. As such, I promptly booked a room for Sonal at Parnell Pine Hotel for two weeks. Everything else was prepared as I eagerly awaited Sonal’s arrival. On 19th March 2020 I received the soul shaking announcement that the NZ border was to be closed. I cried a lot when I informed Sonal of the news. At that stage we thought it would be temporary. It has now been our reality for more than a year. There is still no ray of hope as to when we can expect to be reunited. It has now been more than 659 days of forced separation and each day feels like thousands of years. We have already missed too many precious moments of our married life.

I worked during the L4 lockdown in NZ as an essential worker within the supply chain of a key NZ industry. I played an important role during this pandemic by serving New Zealanders. I am working hard and paying huge income tax to the NZ Government. I am also supporting my wife financially, as well as having to eventually pay for her MIQ, repatriation flight and all other expenses to enter NZ.

My parents have expressed their desire for me to pack up life in NZ and return to India. However, I feel that I have invested too much money, time and energy here to walk away now.

This prolonged separation is affecting both of us mentally and emotionally in our day to day life. Sonal is not a refugee; all she wants is to be in NZ with her life partner. I have already shown my commitment to NZ by spending 5 years here, studying, paying huge tuition fees for my studies and paying thousands of dollars in income tax each year. The NZ Government and INZ have allowed many celebrities and entertainers into the country notwithstanding the NZ border closure.

MIQ data shows that there have been close to 9,000 unused MIQ rooms since early 2021. It would not take even half of the unused rooms to reunite all of the split families affected as a result of the current approach.

It is my humble request that the NZ Government please reunite me with my wife as a matter of urgency.

Family Balda

My name is Sapna Balda and I am an Indian national and mother of a 4-year-old boy. My husband, Somnath Balda (also an Indian national) and I live in Auckland, New Zealand (NZ). I have lived in NZ since June 2019. Our young son, Vidyansh, has been separated from us, his parents, for more than a year due to the NZ border closure.

Our little champ was supposed to join us in April / May 2020 (with his NZ visa still valid at that time). I was studying at Massey University for my Master’s in Engineering (L9) at that time and I planned to collect Vidyansh in my semester break. Somnath joined me in NZ in January 2020 and we were busy coordinating everything for the arrival of our son in NZ.

On 23rd March 2020 our plans changed with the closure of the NZ border. Our little star has not been able to join us because of the border exemption process being employed by Immigration New Zealand (INZ). Vidyansh is currently in India without his parents. We have been waiting patiently since March 2020, desperately hoping for the reopening of the NZ border and the removal of such severe restrictions on travel to NZ so that we can reunite with our son in NZ.

We have applied for countless exemptions including on humanitarian grounds, but it seems it has all been in vain. Even with the new INZ border exemptions released recently for separated families to reunite, we still do not qualify for reunification with our son. My son’s only fault is that he is a child of temporary work visa holders and is not an investor. Nobody can even imagine my son’s circumstances and how hard it would have been for him and us to cope up with this separation. As a family we are emotionally and mentally broken. We have no answer to our child’s innocent questions of when we will next see each other or eat, play or live together.

Vidyansh was around 2 ½ years old when I last saw him and touched him, and will be 5 years old this October. He is such a chatterbox now when I talk to him in real-time. We have sacrificed so many wonderful moments of Vidyansh’s childhood and NZ’s border restrictions have devastated all of our family’s milestones. We think Vidyansh is now almost old enough to understand that his mother and father do not have the answer to his many questions. Every activity we undertake is carried out via WhatsApp. We live in two different time zones and have to present in both time zones.

We have been left with no options and no hope from INZ. We don’t understand why the children of temporary work visa holders are being so inhumanely prevented from receiving the love, quality time and day-to-day care of their parents. Equally, why are parents being prevented from exercising their parental duties due to NZ’s strict border controls?

We are completely heartbroken. We made the decision to immigrate to NZ to give Vidyansh a better life. We invested all of our savings in NZ and now our family is separated based only on the condition of our visa and salary status.

We have seen VIPs, children’s entertainers and sports personalities travel into NZ during this pandemic regardless of their ethnicity. However, a 4-year child cannot be reunited with his parents. The NZ border is firmly closed for families like ours. Each family matters. Each child matters.

It is unfair that INZ plays with our emotions, our lives and our future so callously, and provides us with no hope. I am now also losing all hope that we will be reunited by Vidyansh’s 5th birthday later this year.

Presently, we do not qualify as ‘highly-skilled workers here in NZ, but we are, in fact, future highly-skilled workers with our engineering qualifications. By then, who knows whether the INZ demands on us will have increased even further, as INZ is just so unpredictable and we could be kicked even further down the ladder.

Family Robinson & Ravichandran

My name is Mary Trazy Karen and I am the wife of Pravin Ravichandran who is residing in Wellington, New Zealand (NZ).

Pravin came to NZ in 2015 as a student and now he is working as a senior chef for the Wellington Hospitality Group holding a 3-year Essential Skills Work Visa (ESWV).

We got married on 28th April 2019 after a one-year long-distance relationship and we then applied to Immigration New Zealand (INZ) for a Partnership-based Visitor Visa in June 2019. Pravin had returned to NZ in May 2019 due to his work commitments and we had both sincerely hoped that I would be joining him soon.

Due to severe visa delays in the processing partnership visas, it took a lot longer than usual. I had submitted all relevant documents to prove that our relationship was both genuine and stable. Because our culture doesn’t support living together prior to marriage, we had to provide a lot of personal information as evidence of our relationship.

My husband returned to India on 19th February to see me as we had heard nothing from INZ regarding my visa application. After almost one year I was issued a General Visitor Visa instead of a Partnership-based Visitor Visa, as INZ stated that we did not meet relevant living together criteria.

After receiving the Visitor Visa from INZ we booked my ticket to NZ for as soon as possible. On 19th March 2020 I had to return home from the airport as the airport authorities would not let us board our flight to NZ due to the closure of the NZ border. I felt so deflated – that all of our effort was wasted.

My first entry date (28th May 2020) on the Visitor Visa has now expired. We contacted INZ several times, but their response was either to wait or simply to state that no decision has yet been made regarding new entry dates.

I applied for a variation of travel conditions to extend the entry dates of my Visitor Visa per INZ instructions. However, INZ then stated that they would not process offshore applications. Applying for a new visa will again take a year and it will be a nightmare for us. I’ve essentially been a granted a visa with no use. We are renting a large home in Wellington and I continue paying money towards rent and utility bills there despite not being physically present. I’ve now resigned from a reputable job in India as I was meant to be in NZ starting my new life. I feel both my relationship and career are at stake.

We were not able to enjoy the time we had together, as we are afraid of my husband losing his job and what will happen next – i.e. whether they would allow me to enter NZ or not.

The financial and mental distress itself is enough to have ongoing sleepless nights. The uncertainty has almost killed us. Luckily my husband was able to return to NZ due to the border exemptions introduced in October 2020, but my request to join him was declined because my travel to NZ for the first time was not deemed ‘critical’ by INZ.

I’m having sleepless nights and suffering mental due to Pravin and my separation over the course of the past two years. Pravin has been finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on his work due to all this pressure. Due to my own increased mental anguish and stress levels I am now regularly obtaining counselling for support.

Our life remains in a state of limbo. The early stages of marriage are meant to be a time for every married couple, but it now seems like a nightmare for most couples in situations like ours. Even after 2 – 3 years of married life we have not had a chance to start a proper life together. What hurts most is that none of this is our fault; it’s because of this broken immigration system in NZ.