Rohingya refugee fights to bring husband to NZ under visa rules

Saturday, 7 February 2026

Rohingya refugee Khaleda Begum is trying to get a partnership visa to bring husband Nur Sona Ali to New Zealand to be a father to her son Arafat.

Khaleda Begum is grateful to be here. To no longer be one of the million persecuted Rohingya refugees languishing in camps in Bangladesh.

“Alhamdulillah,” she says. Thank God. But sometimes, she looks at her life as a 38-year-old widow and solo mother to two children, fighting for more than a decade to bring a husband here to complete her family, and wonders if she wouldn’t have been happier elsewhere.

She can’t help but look at her former husband, who tired of waiting after five years of trying to get a visa, and abandoned her with a child in the womb.

“He got married to somebody else, and he’s got three kids, and being in a refugee camp, he is still living a happy life without me.

“And me being in New Zealand, I cannot live a happy life, because I cannot bring my current husband.”

Growing up in a Bangladesh refugee camp after her parents fled ethnic persecution in Burma in 1978, Begum‘s hopes were modest. She never got a proper education, so didn’t dream of being a doctor or a lawyer. She hoped for a family, and happiness.

When she was about 19, her parents found her a husband and, in March 2008, the couple had a daughter. But when Zannat Ara was just 40 days old, her father died in a fire at the road works where he worked outside the camp.

When Zannat Ara was 18 months old, New Zealand took the family in as refugees, so Begum arrived as a solo mum, with her parents and two brothers, Aman and Anayat.

Wanting her daughter to have a father figure, she returned to Bangladesh in 2012, to marry her late husband’s cousin. For five years they tried to get a partnership visa to bring him to Auckland.

Someone suggested they’d have a better chance if they had a child. So Begum returned to Bangladesh. But before their son Arafat was born, her husband abandoned her.

“He got fed up and eventually he ended up marrying somebody else, leaving me alone with my two children, from two different fathers … I was so devastated and completely broken down that I never thought I would ever get married to anybody else.“

But time passed and Arafat was growing up without a dad. Living on a benefit, with limited English, and unable to drive, Begum craved a husband’s support.

It was important to her to marry a Muslim, and a Rohingya, and the New Zealand community is small. So her eldest brother, Aman, set her up with Nur Sona Ali - a friend in Malaysia who the family had also known in the Bangladesh camp.

“I’ve already had so many trauma. I felt comfortable to get married to him,” Begum says. “I thought, he will be the person who will look after me and will look after my children.”

So in 2022, Begum and Arafat travelled to Malaysia for the wedding and stayed several months. They were accompanied by Anayat, as Aman was diagnosed with cancer just months earlier.

Three years on, every night before bed, 8-year-old Arafat talks to the man 8000 kilometres away who he thinks of as his father. But the distance remains.

Immigration New Zealand has twice declined the couple’s application for a partnership visitor visa, questioning the relationship’s credibility, and the fact they don’t live together.

That’s despite Anayat - who runs his own business - offering to sponsor Sona Ali.

While returning to Malaysia to try for a baby might increase their chances, Begum is afraid of history repeating.

“I don’t want to have another child because then it will leave me with three kids from three different dads and me being a single mother again, it will become very hard for me to look after those children.”

In December, the couple’s final plea to the minister to bring Sona Ali here was rejected. It feels like the end of the only dream Begum dared bring with her.

“I did not have any other hope - just that I wanted to have my own family.

While it acknowledges the “humanitarian factors” the couple faces, Immigration NZ questions the credibility of their relationship.

“Imagine if I also lose my current husband, where my life will end … Now I’ve got two elderly parents that I need to look after, and a brother with a medical condition. My current situation is in limbo. I don't know what's going to happen to me.”

To qualify for a partnership visa, a couple has to prove their relationship is genuine, stable and ongoing, supported by evidence of living together.

Immigration NZ (INZ) deputy chief operating officer Jeannie Melville says the agency remains unsatisfied that the couple has demonstrated that. Or that they had maintained it during extended separation, with only short periods of living together “due to Mr Nur’s uncertain status in Malaysia and Ms Begum’s need to maintain residency, income and care for her children in New Zealand”.

“We understand the challenges the family is facing, and we’re sympathetic to their situation. At the same time, INZ is required to consider each application against the immigration requirements.”

Begum says her son Arafat thinks of Sona Ali as his father, and speaks to him every night.

But Hafsar Tameesuddin, a resettled Rohingya refugee and co-secretary general of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, argues Rohingya should be treated differently, because of the barriers created by being a stateless people, often with no identification documents.

“Everyone should have the right to have their loved ones with them, especially when you are integrating in a new country … Having to prove that you live with your partner … that is almost impossible for this community.”

Begum’s immigration adviser, Carla Grant, says while other cultures can substantiate arranged marriages with big parties and the couple living for months in the family home, that’s not an option for Rohingya, who have no homeland to return to.

Many are on benefits and living in Kainga Ora homes - both of which restrict overseas stays. Their partners often live in camps, or as undocumented immigrants, and the language has no written form, making it hard to prove ongoing communication.

Grant has dealt with six Rohingya couples declined partnership visas in the past few years. Only those with shared children were eventually accepted, after appealing to the minister, she says.

(INZ says pregnancy or having a child does not guarantee visa approval)

While she understands that INZ has to be careful who they allow in, Grant also calls for an exemption for the “incredibly unique” circumstances of the Rohingya people.

“We invite them here and give them a new life away from violence and abuse, and they love being here. But to take away, effectively, the ability to establish a family - I’m not sure of the justice in that.”