The Star: January 20, 2022

The Star Thursday January 20 2022
10
NEWS
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
‘I feel like our family is complete now’
It hurt Rajdeep to think she
wasn’t there for all his milestones
– teething, sitting up, crawling,
his first steps. “Two years, I
missed everything, his childhood
memories,” she said. She wasn’t
there for his birthdays. “I spent
them crying, all day.”
The times Harbaaz fell sick
were the hardest. In August 2021
he was sent to hospital a third
time for vomiting and diarrhoea,
hardly eating for a month after
his discharge. He was so weak he
couldn’t walk and had no interest
in the video calls that meant
everything to his mother.
Harbaaz had turned two but
still wore the clothes of a oneyear-old.
“He’s still not eating, he doesn’t
like food at all. I see my family [in
India] struggle to make him eat,”
said Rajdeep, telling herself she
should be there as well, trying.
“That’s my big regret, I wasn’t able
to provide.”
Desperate, Rajdeep posted a
last-ditch plea on Facebook asking
for someone – anyone she
could trust to bring her baby to
New Zealand. Many responded
with sympathy, others said they
were in the same boat. No one
had a solution.
The same month, she applied to
Immigration for a border exception
on humanitarian grounds for
Harbaaz’s grandmother to travel
with him. Everyone around them
said it wasn’t possible, including
the immigration advisers they
sought out. Rajdeep told herself,
one last time. If it failed, she
would give up and go back to
India to get her baby.
A few weeks later, her phone
beeped at work. She took it out
of the pocket of her nursing
uniform. An email from Immigration.
The nurse sat down in a corner
with a friend and colleague, her
heart beating fast. “My friend
said: ‘Open it!’ “
She did and the two women
jumped up and down. Rajdeep
was crying and laughing at the
same time, going to every room
in the care home to tell colleagues
and residents the good news.
FAMILY: Harbaaz with his father Sarbit Singh Dhaliwal,
Rajdeep and grandmother at home in Christchurch.
PHOTOS: GEORGE HEARD
Border exceptions in
numbers
•According to
Immigration New Zealand,
15,458 people (2701
approved) have requested
a border exception under
the “family of a temporary
visa holder category” as of
November 2, 2021.
•Under the
“humanitarian” category,
27,753 people (3373
approved) made requests.
•The numbers are not
unique individuals, as
people who make more
than one request are
counted each time.
“Most of them started crying
with me. I was running around,
so happy.”
It would be another two
months before they would see
each other. Rajdeep couldn’t wait
but was equally terrified of the
day. “He might not come to me,”
she said. He called her mama on
video calls but she knew he felt
differently. “For him, I’m not his
mother.”
In November Harbaaz and
his grandmother left India for
Dubai, a “green zone” where they
stayed for 14 days as part of Covid
travel requirements. They landed
in New Zealand and stayed in a
quarantine hotel for seven days
before they went home for another
three days of home isolation.
The family were reunited in
early December, nearly two years
from the day they said goodbye.
“I feel like our family is complete
now,” Rajdeep said, speaking
to the New Zealand Herald
nearly a week after Harbaaz came
home.
She had burst into tears when
she first saw him. “I was crying
like mad. He’s [staring at me]
like, what’s happening, why is she
crying?
“I showed him the car keys and
said, let’s go?” She knew her boy
was crazy about cars. “And he
jumped to me.”
The 29-year-old nurse takes
heart in the fact that Harbaaz is
a spoiled, happy child with no
idea what his parents have gone
through on the other side of the
world.
She had poured her heart out
in her border exception applications.
“Put as much information
and feelings, everything you can,
because the Immigration person
who’s going to read it is also human.
They are not machines,” she
said.
“Let them understand how
broken you are.”
– NZ Herald
HAPPY TIMES: The family were living in Auckland when
Harbaaz was born, before moving to Christchurch.