Support has flooded in for an advocate for people with disabilities who risks being booted out of New Zealand.
The Herald on Sunday revealed last week that wheelchair-bound Brazilian-born Juliana Carvalho faced being kicked out of the country, despite her family living here and her doctor saying she would not be a health burden.
Immigration New Zealand declined an application for residency under the skilled migrant category and the 34-year-old has now appealed the decision.
Green MP Mojo Mathers, who is deaf, has now offered moral support to Carvalho. "It is wrong that we are rejecting such a skilled and talented young woman from residency here purely on the grounds of disability," Mathers said."Accepting all the family but rejecting the one member with a disability is cruel."
Carvalho was paralysed in 2001, aged 19, after contracting lupus, a disease that affects the auto-immune system.
