Tuesday February 12, 2008

As New Zealand prepares a welcome mat for its oldest immigrant, another centenarian is being kicked out after immigration officials rejected his bid to spend his twilight years here with his only living relative.

Eric King-Turner, a 102-year-old retired dentist from Hampshire, is sailing to New Zealand with his New Zealand-born wife, Doris, 87, and is expected here on Saturday. But a 101-year-old widower, who has been living with his English-born, New Zealand-resident son since 2006, has been told he must go.

The Residence Review Board decided that the circumstances of the unnamed widower, a retired research chemist who has savings of $363,000 and gets an annual pension of nearly $83,000, "do not make him special". In his application for New Zealand residency, the 101-year-old said he wanted to live out his final years with his only living relative, his adopted son - now aged 63 - and his daughter-in-law.However, the elderly man's son, while having been granted New Zealand residency in 1994 and holding a New Zealand passport issued in 1997, hadn't lived in the country for the required minimum 184 days in each of the three years before the application was made.

The son spent only 13 days in New Zealand between March 2004 and March 2005, 23 days in the year to March 2006 and 174 days in the year to March 2007, and was therefore ineligible to sponsor his father for residency under the "parent" category.

A former senior employee with a New Zealand financial institution, the son had accepted a job running a similar organisation in Europe in the "mid- to late 1990s", according to the review board's decision. He decided to return to live in New Zealand in 2006 and last year was appointed an adjunct professor by a New Zealand university.In his appeal to the board, the 101-year-old said he had "adequate financial resources" to support himself and met Immigration New Zealand health requirements.

"I no longer have any property or assets outside of New Zealand; the centre of gravity of my immediate family is very clearly in New Zealand," he said.

He appealed against the decision to refuse him residency, requesting an exception to policy. In its decision, the board said: "Overall, the appellant's age, his financial resources, the fact that his son lives in New Zealand and the fact the appellant has no family in Great Britain do not make him special."

(Source - NZPA, Cullen Smith)