Three New Zealand-born children will be sent to live in squalor in India if their parents are deported, supporters say.
Hastings couple Sital Ram Mall and Usha Rani are facing deportation after overstaying in New Zealand when their work permit expired in 2003.
Their children, 6-year-old twin boys and a 10-year-old girl,are New Zealand citizens and have the right to remain. But Mrs Rani said they couldn't leave their children behind.
Mr Mall was taken into custody last week pending a decision on deportation, while Mrs Rani was allowed to remain at home.
She said through a translator that she didn't want to raise her family in India.
"There is no life for them, no future for them there," she said.
If sent home, they would return to a village in Punjab with no school or doctor, and live with two other families in a small house.
Daughter Hemani, 10, said she wanted the Prime Minister to come to her school and "tell me and my brothers and my friends and teachers face-to-face why he's going to send me to India".
The couple have been in New Zealand for 11 years and applied to stay after their permits expired, but were refused. Mrs Rani said her husband had supported his family through car-painting and working in orchards, and had carpentry skills.
Supporters in Hastings said it was ironic the Government was willing to send the children to live in conditions worse than those facing New Zealand athletes at the Commonwealth Games.
"They are Kiwi kids and they have all the rights of Kiwi kids, and parents should be with their kids," neighbour Jess Kaur said.
Family friend Julie O'Shea said a petition supporting the children already had several hundred signatures.
The family's representative, immigration consultant and former Immigration Minister Tuariki Delamere, said he didn't condone the actions of the parents in becoming overstayers.
But the children were New Zealand citizens, and should not be sent back to India.
"The beginning and end of it is the children," he said. "If those kids go back to India they will live in complete, total poverty."
Immigration officers are conducting "humanitarian interviews" with the parents before making a decision on removal this week.
A spokesman for associate Immigration Minister Kate Wilkinson said she couldn't comment for privacy reasons.
