Sri Lankan woman stranded in the Cook Islands as transit visas are refused

Ruchira Ranasingha, a 50-year-old Sri Lankan woman, has been stuck in the Cook Islands for three years and says she is desperate to go home. New Zealand and Australia have both refused her the transit visas she would need to fly through their territory on the way to Sri Lanka, BBC News reported.

Ranasingha left Sri Lanka in 2018, after the small T-shirt factory she ran closed because business had dried up. She then worked in Hong Kong as a domestic caregiver for elderly people and children. In December 2022 she travelled to New Zealand, where she says she lived with a cousin on a two-month visit visa.

While in New Zealand she applied for asylum, a form of protection for people who say they cannot safely return home. She said she feared threats from lenders in Sri Lanka. Her application was granted, and she received an open work visa for asylum seekers, which allowed her to work for almost any employer for a year.

She says an immigration adviser then recommended that she leave New Zealand briefly and apply for a work visa from abroad. Email correspondence seen by the BBC shows Sylviane Gallant, manager of Immigration & Secretarial Services, saying she would begin the employment visa process as soon as Ranasingha had left the country. After she departed, that employment visa application was rejected, and New Zealand authorities indicated they would not grant her future visas.

Ranasingha was then told she could not board an Air New Zealand flight to Sri Lanka without a New Zealand transit visa. She applied for one three times, and each application was rejected. According to the BBC, the authorities said they were not convinced she would leave New Zealand. She also made four applications for Australian transit visas, all of which were refused.

The Cook Islands has only two other international destinations reachable by direct flight, Tahiti and Hawaii. Travel to either requires Ranasingha to provide biometric information, such as fingerprints and a facial scan, in New Zealand before a visa can be processed, the BBC reported.

Ranasingha has described her time in the Cook Islands as a psychological nightmare, and has said she wants to return to her family, RNZ reported in October.