After seven years in New Zealand, family stuck in visa limbo over daughter’s disability
Sunday, 27 February 2022
A Chilean family who have called New Zealand home for seven years are “stuck in limbo” because of visa issues related to their daughter's disability.
Like most teenage girls, Ignacia Vasquez loves shopping and going to the beach. “She loves to do everything,” says her mother, Carolina Vasquez.
The 17-year-old also lives with learning disabilities. She can speak few words, but is very clear when she wants something.
The Christchurch-based family, which includes Carolina’s husband, Cristian Vasquez, and 18-year-old son, Fernando, moved to New Zealand from Chile in 2015 on visitor visas.
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An attempt to obtain a student visa for Ignacia was rejected due to “significant costs on special education services”; she and her brother were forced to go back to Chile without their mother.
Four years later, Carolina Vasquez travelled back to Chile to try to bring her children to New Zealand.
Fernando, who is nondisabled, had his student visa processed and accepted within two weeks, but Ignacia’s visa application faced barriers with requests for medical reports and specialist reports.
At that point, Vasquez needed to return to New Zealand for work and her children stayed with their father, stepmother and grandparents.
Ignacia finally obtained a student visa in November 2019, but only after intervention from the then associate minister of immigration, Poto Williams, with an exception to health requirements.
That visa has since expired, and Ignacia has been on an interim visa until now. The entire family’s residency visa applications are dependent on a decision based on Ignacia’s student visa application.
Both Carolina Vasquez and her husband work fulltime in the hospitality industry.
Vasquez has a long-term skills shortage work-to-residence visa until May 2022, and her husband has a partnership visa.
However, Fernando’s life is still on pause and he has been forced to repeat his final year of high school as the family waits for the results of Ignacia’s student visa application to find out whether the family can stay in New Zealand as residents.
Immigration New Zealand’s argument
The most recent letter from Immigration New Zealand (INZ), related to the family’s latest application in January, stated Ignacia’s disability may affect the outcome of her student visa application because she could “impose significant costs or demands on New Zealand special education services”.
Special education services kick in when a student with additional learning needs qualifies for the Ministry of Education’s Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS) – a funding scheme for students needing specialist support.
The INZ letter also stated an applicant could be declined for a visa if their condition “requires health services costing in excess of NZ$41,000” within a five-year period.
A medical assessor’s advice to INZ stated Ignacia would “likely require fulltime care”, but Carolina Vasquez disputed that advice, calling it an “exaggeration”.
A letter to INZ, sighted by Stuff, from the family's GP clinic at Ferry Road Medical Centre, said Ignacia's 'general health is excellent' and she did not need any long-term medications.
The doctor also highlighted Ignacia’s independence, noting she 'has no trouble navigating stairs, she is able to toilet herself, she can dress herself and can feed herself'.
“Other than her cognitive problem, she is a very healthy girl,” Vasquez said. “She doesn't use any medication or medical care, and she has never used the government services except for education.”
Ignacia’s quality of life was much better in New Zealand than in Chile, her mother said, adding that the whole situation and being “stuck in limbo” was “very stressful”.
‘Playing with eugenics’
Disability advocate Juliana Carvalho’s own immigration “nightmare” started in 2019, seven years after she first came to New Zealand.
She arrived in New Zealand from Brazil on a student visa in 2012. Carvalho is paraplegic and has lupus, an autoimmune disease.
She said it was wrong to assume that all disabled people would impose significant costs or demands on New Zealand’s health and education services.
Carvalho works fulltime, she drives a car and doesn’t need carers to support her daily living, despite her disability being listed on INZ’s list of medical conditions “deemed to impose significant costs”.
Some people in society need more help and that’s “fair enough”, she said, but INZ was “playing with eugenics when you decide that some human beings have more value than others”.
After years of campaigning to fight her case with various lawyers and government agencies, her resident visa came through in July 2020, after intervention from Williams, the associate minister of immigration at the time.
She was exempted from the acceptable standard of health requirement because her character requirement was clean.
Despite the win, she said it took a huge toll on her mental health and that the whole immigration process was “hurtful and dehumanising”, trying to prove her worth as a disabled person.
On top of that, she estimated it cost around $100,000 to cover income loss, lawyer fees, tribunal costs, immigration fees and medical assessment fees.
In 2021, she presented a petition calling to “End discrimination on disability grounds in the immigration system’’ to the Education and Workforce Select Committee.
It recommended to the Government that the acceptable standard of health was reviewed so that the health requirements aligned to a strengths-based approach for disabilities, screening only for the most serious health conditions.
The Government must provide a written response to this recommendation by March 18, 2022.
In 2007, New Zealand signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
Article 18 (b) of the UNCRPD states that disabled people: “Are not deprived, on the basis of disability, of their ability to obtain, possess and utilize documentation of their nationality or other documentation of identification, or to utilize relevant processes such as immigration proceedings, that may be needed to facilitate exercise of the right to liberty of movement.”
Stuff asked Immigration NZ if its “A4.10 Acceptable standard of health (applicants for residence)” policy aligned with the UNCRPD.
The question was not answered.
Stuff also asked INZ for a response to Carvalho’s petition and the petition's recommendation. No response was given.
But, in a written statement, INZ general manager of border and visa operations Nicola Hogg did say that under immigration requirements, all applicants must have an acceptable standard of health to be granted a visa.
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Hogg said the health cost threshold of $41,000 was used to determine whether a resident visa applicant had a condition likely to impose significant costs on the public health system. That threshold was set at the top 5 per cent of health service users to ensure that only those migrants likely to impose the most significant cost would fail to meet health requirements.
“Those with minor or routine medical conditions will not be affected,” she said. “This threshold was last changed in 2012, however, INZ and the Ministry of Health are currently reviewing the $41,000 threshold to check it is appropriate.
“The Government supports inclusive policies for people with disabilities, but this needs to be balanced with ensuring migrants do not impose high costs on New Zealand taxpayers which is why there is a threshold test for the potential cost that may be incurred by an individual,” she said.
“The settings currently in place allow INZ to consider medical waivers on a case-by-case basis if a migrant does not have an acceptable standard of health to meet immigration requirements.”