New Zealand

560 applications granted to reunite split families

June 17, 2021 4:17 pm

Caroline Waldron and Bart Constable with their daughter Olivia [Source: RNZ]

Today, one man will get to hold his 18-month-old son, whom he has not seen since he was four days old.

Meanwhile, his family’s friends are having to explain to their six-year-old girl why waiting on a visa decision meant she could not yet be reunited with her father while her friend is.

Olivia Constable has started doubting her Mum’s promise that “we’ll see Daddy again one day, but not sure which”.

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“She asked my friend Debbie whether the phone conversations she has with Bart on FaceTime ‘is that pre-recorded, is it like a movie?'” said her mother Caroline Waldron. “Because it feels to her like they are saying the same thing every time. And if it’s a recording of some sort she is listening to, and is her Dad actually dead?”

Waldron said Olivia no longer believed what she says about them joining her father, Bart Constable, in Ōāmaru, having missed milestones such as birthdays, first day at school, and Christmas.

Olivia is friends with Emmabella de Beer, who will this morning be reunited with her father Henco de Beer.

Along with her 18-month-old brother and mother Maryke, they were three of only 560 people granted border exemptions following a government announcement about split families in April.

The change allowed families of health workers, highly paid skilled workers, and those who had already applied for visas to come into the country.

De Beer said he had seen his family through a hotel window at a managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facility in Auckland and they would be reunited this morning.