When Ruchira Ranasingha left Sri Lanka almost a decade ago, she could never have imagined she would end up stranded on a tiny archipelago in the South Pacific.
The 50-year-old has now been stuck in the Cook Islands for three years. She told the BBC she is desperate to go back to Sri Lanka and has even offered to go “handcuffed, bound and gagged.”
Ranasingha had been hoping to settle in New Zealand.
After seeking asylum there, she said she followed an immigration adviser’s recommendation to temporarily exit the country to apply for a work visa. But once in the Cook Islands, her application was rejected. And by leaving New Zealand, she had breached the terms of her existing asylum-linked visa.
Now New Zealand is refusing to issue her a transit visa that would allow her to fly home to Sri Lanka.
Australia is refusing too. The only other international destinations she can fly to from the Cook Islands - Tahiti and Hawaii - require her to give biometric information in New Zealand before any visa can be processed.
As a result, she has no feasible way of leaving.
“My son - my only child - is getting married in November and I really want to be there for his wedding. My mother is so worried about what has happened to me that she is constantly in and out of hospital,” she said through tears.
“I will do anything they ask of me - I just want to go home,” she added.
Ranasingha left Sri Lanka in 2018 after being forced to close her small T-shirt factory due to a loss of business. Struggling to repay loans, she moved to Hong Kong to work as a domestic caregiver looking after elderly people and children.
Her brother tells BBC Sinhala she had come under immense financial pressure. Her husband was a drug addict who died about seven years ago, he added.
In December 2022, Ranasingha headed to New Zealand, where she said she lived with a cousin on a two-month visit visa. As it came close to expiring, she said an immigration interpreter helped her apply for asylum on the grounds she was facing threats from lenders in Sri Lanka.
She was granted an asylum seeker “open work visa”, enabling her to work for almost any employer for a year.
She found a job at a restaurant, she says, which ultimately agreed to sponsor an employment visa, which she believed would give her longer-term stability.
But as asylum seekers generally cannot apply for other visas while their applications are processed in New Zealand, it was declined.
That’s when she got in touch with Immigration & Secretarial Services, a firm she claimed told her a fresh application for an employment visa could be made from overseas.
Email correspondence the BBC has seen shows its manager, Sylviane Gallant, saying she would initiate the process as soon as Ranasingha had left the country.
So she booked a short stay in the Cook Islands while the application was made.
It turned out to be a disastrous decision.
She was again refused the employment visa. And by leaving New Zealand, she had violated the terms of her existing visa. New Zealand authorities made it clear they would not grant her any future visas.
Gallant claimed to make various interventions on her behalf, including writing to politicians including Chris Penk, New Zealand’s then-immigration minister.
But ultimately, Ranasingha said Gallant admitted the situation was her fault and told her “there was nothing more she could do.”
“She told me I was better off going home. There was nothing holding me there so I agreed to go.”
But when she turned up at the airport with an Air New Zealand ticket to Sri Lanka in hand, she was told she couldn’t board the flight without a New Zealand transit visa.
Three applications for a New Zealand transit visa were rejected. Authorities said they weren’t convinced she would leave New Zealand. Four applications for Australian transit visas were rejected too.
In one of its rejections, New Zealand suggested she explore other routes. But both the US state of Hawaii and the French Polynesian island of Tahiti told her she would need to provide biometric information before any visa could be processed - and that could only be done in person in New Zealand.
Her latest application to New Zealand, which included all the details of the alternative routes she’d been trying, as well as her son’s upcoming wedding and mother’s failing health, was also rejected.
“I have lost so much money on tickets. For almost four years I have been just applying for visa after visa with nothing working out,” she said, breaking down.
