Sela Talanoa and her husband Piliki Talanoa, who are appealing for Sela to be allowed to remain in New Zealand and avoid deportation to Tonga. Sela provides vital care for her husband, who has serious health conditions including kidney failure. Photo / Dean Purcell
Sela Talanoa and her husband Piliki Talanoa, who are appealing for Sela to be allowed to remain in New Zealand and avoid deportation to Tonga. Sela provides vital care for her husband, who has serious health conditions including kidney failure. Photo / Dean Purcell
A New Zealander on dialysis and who has serious heart problems says it will be a death sentence if his wife is deported to Tonga.
Piliki Talanoa, 65, and his wife Sela Talanoa, 53, have appealed to Associate Minister of Immigration Chris Penk to allow her to remain by her ailing husband’s side.
Both are Tongan-born. Piliki, a recently retired accountant, has had permanent residence in New Zealand since 1988. Sela overstayed a visitor visa that ended in 2011, and was subsequently asked by Immigration NZ to leave the country before January 2016.
The couple met at a community group, and have been in a relationship since 2022, marrying last year and living in South Auckland’s Hillpark.
In May last year Piliki collapsed at home. At hospital, doctors discovered he had total heart block. Bypass surgery followed, and a pacemaker was fitted.
Around the same time, other health issues came to the fore, including diabetes and kidney failure that requires Piliki to have three sessions of dialysis at Middlemore Hospital every week.
Swelling and pain in his hands means he struggles to do basic tasks, and Sela is his fulltime carer - helping him wash and get dressed, cooking for him and doing other household tasks. She is also a vital emotional support, sitting by his side during each dialysis session.
“I am totally dependent on her. I can’t imagine living without her - I can hardly hold my toothbrush…my wife is the only person that is here with me,” Piliki said. “Without her, I am lost. Without her, I am really a dead man walking.”
During the Herald interview with Sela Talanoa and her husband Piliki Talanoa, Piliki unbuttoned his shirt to show scars from recent heart and pacemaker surgeries, and a dialysis line. Photo / Dean Purcell
Sela has previously unsuccessfully sought (in 2016, 2023, 2024 and in January this year) for permission to remain in New Zealand under Section 61 of the Immigration Act, which provides the Immigration Minister (delegated to the Associate Minister and to senior immigration officers) with the power to grant a visa of any type to a person unlawfully in the country and otherwise liable for deportation.
Late last month an immigration compliance officer arranged for them to book Sela a flight to Tonga. They contacted immigration adviser Salote Heleta-Lilo, who on March 7 made a fresh Section 61 appeal, and contacted the Herald.
Heleta-Lilo has been an immigration adviser for more than 30 years, and said she has never taken this action before. The humanitarian grounds for allowing the couple to remain together were clear, she said.
Dialysis isn’t available in Tonga, so the deportation would separate them. Both Piliki and Sela have been married before, and Piliki has four adult children. However, only a daughter lives in Auckland, he said, and she is busy with her own family of seven children.
“It is a death sentence. Because no one else is looking after him, or doing all the caring like the wife does. The children have their own lives, they live with their own families,” Heleta-Lilo said. “He has a wife who is healthy and willing to help out. The unity of the family should be recognised by the society and the state.”
Immigration adviser Salote Heleta-Lilo. Photo / Dean Purcell
In their latest application to the minister, the couple apologised for the situation.
“We understand and we acknowledge that she has been wrong to start with, she breached the immigration conditions, and we offer our apology for that,” Piliki said. “But that doesn’t stop us from being a new husband and wife, pursuing our life together as a normal family. She wouldn’t have any problem going back to Tonga. The only problem is me, because she is very much supporting me.”
Jeannie Melville, deputy chief operating officer for Immigration New Zealand, said she appreciated the “difficult circumstances” the couple were in, but multiple visa requests under Section 61 of the Act had been declined by a delegated immigration official, and the minister’s office.
“Mrs Talanoa’s case is currently with the Associate Minister of Immigration, following a request for ministerial intervention from her representative [Heleta-Lilo]. No compliance action will take place while the request is being considered, however, if the request is declined, she will need to depart New Zealand at the earliest opportunity.”
Penk confirmed in a statement that his office had received the latest request for a ministerial intervention. A prior application, made in January, was declined by his office, as it is usual practice to not consider requests where the person has been declined for intervention in the past 18 months. Until now, case notes have not gone before the minister.
“My office is yet to respond to this latest correspondence, and I maintain my policy not to comment on the circumstances involved in individual cases,” Penk said.
Meanwhile, Piliki continues his life-saving treatment. Each dialysis session takes about four hours. Sela keeps a careful watch on the monitors, including his blood pressure, while Piliki’s mind races.
“It is very stressful,” he said. “I think about it every day. Even going and lying down on dialysis you can still think about all these things, and can’t imagine life without her.”
The couple met the Herald at Heleta-Lilo’s office in Māngere East. Sela dabbed at tears throughout the interview - “I don’t like to say it…if I go to Tonga, maybe my husband will pass away” - and Piliki unbuttoned his shirt to show scars from heart and pacemaker surgeries, and a dangling dialysis line (soft plastic tubes inserted through the skin, which are connected to the haemodialysis machine).
“I would like to show this to Chris Penk - ‘Here, this is the problem with me, this is why I need my wife to be with me.’ We care about each other, we love each other, we are husband and wife.”
