Kerre McIvor: Immigration pleas bogged down in robotic system

Sam Wijerathne and Dinesha Amarasinghe (pictured with MP Hamish Walker) must leave NZ. Photo / Otago Daily Times

This weekend, I'm in Sydney, enjoying a girls' weekend away. We're celebrating my friend Di's wedding anniversary with a trip across the ditch to see Muriel's Wedding, the stage show.

I had been looking forward to this weekend for such a long time because I love the women I'm with and I get to spend quality time with them and because when we planned the trip, it would have been a couple of weeks after my daughter and grandson had left to go back home to London and it was to have been the perfect balm for my soul.

I was dreading saying goodbye, and my caring friends arranged all sorts of lovely adventures to ease the pain of their going.

Except they're not gone.

My wee mate's cot is still up in my room, the pushchair is still on the verandah and the car seat is still anchored firmly in my car.

Baby Bart needs a visa to get back into the United Kingdom, despite the fact he was born there.

My daughter, Kate, applied for a visa on the day they arrived from London, back on October 13.

It was declined on a technicality and she and her husband were told to apply again. Some people suggested blagging it and getting on the plane and hoping for the best but that wasn't an option.

Kate told me they had already been warned the baby would need to get a visa when they returned from a trip to Amsterdam.

When they came back from a trip to Serbia, where the baby had gone to meet his great grandparents, they were given a stern warning that the next time they tried to re-enter the UK they would probably be turned away if Bart still didn't have a visa.

The thought of Kate and the baby being turned around at Heathrow and being sent back to New Zealand, 60 hours of travel with a rambunctious 9-month-old, was just too awful to contemplate winging it, especially given Kate's husband is already back in England for work and wouldn't be there to be an extra pair of hands.

So here they are — and I'm loving every second of this precious extra time.

It's awful for Kate's husband having to return to a cold and empty flat every day but he's one of hundreds of thousands of people around the world waiting on immigration officials to decide their fate.

A caller to my radio show told me a New Zealand woman is still waiting for a visa to go to the UK to be with her husband 10 months after her initial application.

And a gorgeous young Irish woman I was speaking to at a play group this week said she was threatened with deportation from New Zealand despite the fact she has been here 10 years, is married to a Kiwi and has two kids who attend the local kohanga reo.

Again, a technicality, but the bureaucracy involved has to be experienced to be believed.

When the computer says no, it says no big time.

So I suppose it's no surprise Dinesha Amarasinghe is facing such a tough time getting permission to stay in this country.

She is originally from Sri Lanka but she, her husband and their three boys have made their home in Queenstown.

They're valued members of the community but Amarasinghe was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis three years ago and her work visa has been denied. Which means she and her family must return to Sri Lanka even though the kids don't speak the language and regard themselves as Kiwis.

We've seen this countless times. Good hardworking people from all around the world make New Zealand their home and then disaster strikes.

I've spent countless hours doing talkback on so many similar cases. But until my daughter and her husband entered the labyrinth that is immigration and government bureaucracy I had no idea how hardcore and brutal the system is.

There's no assistance in unravelling the red tape, there's extraordinary expense and there are implacable robots at the end of the phone.

Nobody cares about individual stories and the compelling case studies — when computer says no, it says no.