A Christchurch resident is pleading with immigration officials to allow her son who has Down syndrome to live with her in New Zealand, claiming he faces instability and danger if he remains in India.
The case has complications that have seen the now-teenager excluded from New Zealand for eight years.
“Please let him in,” Prince told the Herald.
Prince has New Zealand residency and has been working as a chef here for more than 10 years.
She cooks at a rest home in Christchurch’s Harewood and at Maruia Hot Springs in the Lewis Pass national reserve.
“I am an established chef here. New Zealand has given me everything...except my child,” she said.
Prince first came to New Zealand on a work visa in 2014 to help her brother-in-law with his restaurant. She came with her son Jap Sahib who was five years old at the time.
Two years later Jap was asked to leave the country when his application for a student visa was rejected.
Immigration New Zealand (INZ) has a policy called the acceptable standard of health (ASH), which is used to decide if an individual can work or study in New Zealand.
The policy considers health criteria like whether an applicant could add “significant cost to, or demands on, New Zealand’s health services”.
He’s a burden on taxpayers so they don’t want him to get a visa
Prince said Jap was born at home in India with assistance from a midwife.
She noticed developmental delays when Jap turned one, but her family convinced her there was nothing out of the ordinary and doctors were expensive, she told the Herald.
She said she didn’t learn Jap had Down syndrome until he had a medical assessment when he was six and already living in New Zealand.
INZ’s deputy chief operating officer Jeannie Melville said Jap’s student visa was subsequently rejected because he’d need learning support while at school.
“The student visa was declined due to his eligibility for Ongoing Resource Scheme (ORS) funding, which does not meet the health standard required for student visas,” she said.
Prince told the Herald she didn’t think it was right that her son’s visa was declined because of his disability.
“Immigration told me your son has Down syndrome, he’s a burden on taxpayers, so they don’t want him to get a visa,” she said.
Disability advocate Aine Kelly-Costello, from the Migrants Against Acceptable Standards of Health Aotearoa group, was scathing of the ASH policy and said she wanted it abolished.
“We find it morally reprehensible that migrants with disabilities and health conditions, including disabled children, are measured only by their economic value and considered a cost burden to the state,” she said.
She said people like Jap should not become scapegoats for “chronic underfunding” of learning support staff at schools by consecutive governments.
Prince said she had the means to provide the additional health and education support her son needed.
“I’m not asking the Government to pay for my son. I am very capable of looking after him financially,” she told the Herald.
When Jap’s student visa was rejected, Prince spent more than a year trying to unsuccessfully challenge the decision and eventually followed INZ’s orders and Jap flew back to India, where he has remained under his grandmother’s care.
Prince said the situation for her son, who is now 16 years old, has become untenable as her mother has become more elderly and too unwell to care properly for Jap.
She claims her son’s father has longstanding alcohol addiction issues and she fears for her son’s safety.
“We live in fear” Prince claimed.
Melville acknowledged it was a difficult situation.
“We understand that people may be dealing with complex personal situations, and these are taken into account where relevant. This can include family or health issues,” she said.
Prince’s marriage to Jap’s father was arranged, which is common practice in her homeland, and she said efforts to formalise a divorce have so far been unsuccessful.
It is unclear who has custody of Jap.
Prince said she and her husband have shared custody, but Melville said her staff were told by the adviser who filed her residency application in 2021 that Prince did not have custody.
Melville said these “unresolved” custody issues and concerns about Jap’s potential impact on New Zealand’s health and education services led to fresh visitor visa applications made on his behalf in 2022 and 2023 also being rejected, she said.
“We appreciate this is a difficult time for Ms Prince and her son, Jap,” Melville said.
Melville said another issue was that when Prince originally applied for New Zealand residency, her son was not included in her application.
She said dependent children should be included in residency applications if parents intend to live with them in New Zealand.
Prince told the Herald she followed the advice of her licensed immigration adviser when completing the form and referenced her son in her application but did not formally include him in it.
Prince has subsequently returned to India to care for Jap.
She is meanwhile seeking ministerial intervention in the case, meaning a final decision on whether Jap can live with her in Christchurch will rest with Associate Immigration Minister Chris Penk.
“The request is currently awaiting preparation for the Minister’s consideration, and it is not possible to say how long this will take,” Melville said.
Prince said she had the support of her two younger sisters and brother-in-law who also live in New Zealand.
She feared that if she and Jap had to remain in India, she’d be “starting from zero” and said her job in New Zealand allowed her to earn the money needed to support her son in the future.
Michael Morrah is a senior investigative reporter/team leader at the Herald. He won News Journalist of the Year at the 2025 Voyager Media Awards and has twice been named reporter of the year at the NZ Television Awards. He has been a broadcast journalist for 20 years and joined the Herald’s video team in July 2024.