Sri Lankan woman stranded in Cook Islands after transit visa refusals

Ruchira Ranasingha, a 50-year-old Sri Lankan woman, has been stranded in the Cook Islands for three years after New Zealand and Australia rejected her applications for transit visas to travel home, leaving her without a route she can use to leave the islands.

Ranasingha had hoped to settle in New Zealand. She says an immigration adviser recommended that she leave the country temporarily to apply for an employment visa from overseas. The application was refused, and leaving New Zealand meant she breached the conditions of her existing asylum-linked visa.

She says she has since made three unsuccessful applications for a New Zealand transit visa and four for an Australian one. New Zealand’s immigration agency told the BBC it refused her applications because it was not satisfied she had a genuine intention to transit through the country. A representative of the immigration minister’s office said that being escorted or handcuffed would not prevent her from claiming asylum.

The other international destinations available from the Cook Islands — Tahiti and Hawaii — require her to provide biometric information in person in New Zealand before processing a visa, according to the BBC. That leaves her unable to pursue those routes while she cannot enter New Zealand.

Ranasingha says her son is due to marry in November and that she wants to be with him. She also says her mother’s health is poor. “I will do anything they ask of me — I just want to go home,” she told the BBC.

She left Sri Lanka in 2018 after financial difficulties forced her to close a T-shirt factory, then worked as a caregiver in Hong Kong. In 2022, she travelled to New Zealand and sought asylum, saying she feared threats from lenders in Sri Lanka. She was given an open work visa while her asylum claim was processed.

After her employment-visa application was refused, Ranasingha contacted Immigration & Secretarial Services. The BBC says it reviewed emails in which the firm’s manager, Sylviane Gallant, said she would start an application once Ranasingha had left New Zealand. Ranasingha says Gallant later told her the situation was her fault and that there was nothing more she could do. The BBC says Gallant did not respond to its request for comment.

A New Zealand immigration law specialist told the BBC that Ranasingha had received “terrible advice” and pointed to the risks of using immigration consultants who may not understand the consequences of applications. Ranasingha says she paid the firm thousands of New Zealand dollars in fees.

The specialist said New Zealand may be concerned that she would seek asylum again, given her earlier claim that her life was in danger in Sri Lanka. He said Australia could take a similar view, and that France and the United States might reach the same conclusion.