The Star: January 20, 2022
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<strong>The</strong> <strong>Star</strong> Thursday <strong>January</strong> <strong>20</strong> <strong>20</strong>22<br />
10<br />
NEWS<br />
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz<br />
‘I feel like our family is complete now’<br />
It hurt Rajdeep to think she<br />
wasn’t there for all his milestones<br />
– teething, sitting up, crawling,<br />
his first steps. “Two years, I<br />
missed everything, his childhood<br />
memories,” she said. She wasn’t<br />
there for his birthdays. “I spent<br />
them crying, all day.”<br />
<strong>The</strong> times Harbaaz fell sick<br />
were the hardest. In August <strong>20</strong>21<br />
he was sent to hospital a third<br />
time for vomiting and diarrhoea,<br />
hardly eating for a month after<br />
his discharge. He was so weak he<br />
couldn’t walk and had no interest<br />
in the video calls that meant<br />
everything to his mother.<br />
Harbaaz had turned two but<br />
still wore the clothes of a oneyear-old.<br />
“He’s still not eating, he doesn’t<br />
like food at all. I see my family [in<br />
India] struggle to make him eat,”<br />
said Rajdeep, telling herself she<br />
should be there as well, trying.<br />
“That’s my big regret, I wasn’t able<br />
to provide.”<br />
Desperate, Rajdeep posted a<br />
last-ditch plea on Facebook asking<br />
for someone – anyone she<br />
could trust to bring her baby to<br />
New Zealand. Many responded<br />
with sympathy, others said they<br />
were in the same boat. No one<br />
had a solution.<br />
<strong>The</strong> same month, she applied to<br />
Immigration for a border exception<br />
on humanitarian grounds for<br />
Harbaaz’s grandmother to travel<br />
with him. Everyone around them<br />
said it wasn’t possible, including<br />
the immigration advisers they<br />
sought out. Rajdeep told herself,<br />
one last time. If it failed, she<br />
would give up and go back to<br />
India to get her baby.<br />
A few weeks later, her phone<br />
beeped at work. She took it out<br />
of the pocket of her nursing<br />
uniform. An email from Immigration.<br />
<strong>The</strong> nurse sat down in a corner<br />
with a friend and colleague, her<br />
heart beating fast. “My friend<br />
said: ‘Open it!’ “<br />
She did and the two women<br />
jumped up and down. Rajdeep<br />
was crying and laughing at the<br />
same time, going to every room<br />
in the care home to tell colleagues<br />
and residents the good news.<br />
FAMILY: Harbaaz with his father Sarbit Singh Dhaliwal,<br />
Rajdeep and grandmother at home in Christchurch.<br />
PHOTOS: GEORGE HEARD<br />
Border exceptions in<br />
numbers<br />
•According to<br />
Immigration New Zealand,<br />
15,458 people (2701<br />
approved) have requested<br />
a border exception under<br />
the “family of a temporary<br />
visa holder category” as of<br />
November 2, <strong>20</strong>21.<br />
•Under the<br />
“humanitarian” category,<br />
27,753 people (3373<br />
approved) made requests.<br />
•<strong>The</strong> numbers are not<br />
unique individuals, as<br />
people who make more<br />
than one request are<br />
counted each time.<br />
“Most of them started crying<br />
with me. I was running around,<br />
so happy.”<br />
It would be another two<br />
months before they would see<br />
each other. Rajdeep couldn’t wait<br />
but was equally terrified of the<br />
day. “He might not come to me,”<br />
she said. He called her mama on<br />
video calls but she knew he felt<br />
differently. “For him, I’m not his<br />
mother.”<br />
In November Harbaaz and<br />
his grandmother left India for<br />
Dubai, a “green zone” where they<br />
stayed for 14 days as part of Covid<br />
travel requirements. <strong>The</strong>y landed<br />
in New Zealand and stayed in a<br />
quarantine hotel for seven days<br />
before they went home for another<br />
three days of home isolation.<br />
<strong>The</strong> family were reunited in<br />
early December, nearly two years<br />
from the day they said goodbye.<br />
“I feel like our family is complete<br />
now,” Rajdeep said, speaking<br />
to the New Zealand Herald<br />
nearly a week after Harbaaz came<br />
home.<br />
She had burst into tears when<br />
she first saw him. “I was crying<br />
like mad. He’s [staring at me]<br />
like, what’s happening, why is she<br />
crying?<br />
“I showed him the car keys and<br />
said, let’s go?” She knew her boy<br />
was crazy about cars. “And he<br />
jumped to me.”<br />
<strong>The</strong> 29-year-old nurse takes<br />
heart in the fact that Harbaaz is<br />
a spoiled, happy child with no<br />
idea what his parents have gone<br />
through on the other side of the<br />
world.<br />
She had poured her heart out<br />
in her border exception applications.<br />
“Put as much information<br />
and feelings, everything you can,<br />
because the Immigration person<br />
who’s going to read it is also human.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y are not machines,” she<br />
said.<br />
“Let them understand how<br />
broken you are.”<br />
– NZ Herald<br />
HAPPY TIMES: <strong>The</strong> family were living in Auckland when<br />
Harbaaz was born, before moving to Christchurch.