KEY POINTS:
A Romanian boy with a life-threatening blood disorder that could require taxpayers to foot a $5 million bill for his healthcare could still be deported from New Zealand.
The Deportation Review Tribunal ruled that Adrian Vilceanu, 11, could remain in New Zealand despite his parents having deliberately withheld details about his costly health status from immigration officials.
But an appeal has been lodged in the High Court at Wellington by Immigration Minister David Cunliffe against the tribunal's decision to let Adrian and his parents, Cezar and Constanta Camelia Vilceanu, stay.
Mr Cunliffe said the decision raised serious immigration and legal issues.
Adrian has the rare hereditary blood condition thalassaemia major and requires monthly blood transfusions and injections up to seven times a week.
It is estimated that his treatment in the two years until January 2006 cost taxpayers $57,000 - and if he were to live to 50, that bill could rise to $5 million.
The tribunal had said that prioritising and allocating funds for healthcare in New Zealand were matters of serious public concern.
"However ... the humanitarian factors in this particular case outweigh any of these other considerations."
The tribunal had also considered the skills of Adrian's parents - his mother, an economist, is caring for the couple's healthy New Zealand-born daughter and his father is working as an aircraft engineer.
The couple lied during a medical examination in Romania, incorrectly answering four questions that could have alerted authorities to the financial burden their son would present.
Immigration authorities investigated the family after being alerted by staff at Starship children's hospital in Auckland. The minister then demanded the family's residence permits be revoked but the family appealed.
In Romania Adrian's life expectancy was 20. In New Zealand he could live to 50.
- NZPA
