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Ketan Barhate has been forced to return to India to prove to Immigration New Zealand that his marriage is “stable”. His wife Kalindi initially received a visitor visa prior to Covid-19, but was denied entry to New Zealand when he boarded their plane from India on March 18 last year.
A stranded couple in India is devastated after New Zealand Immigration again rejected their partner visa, because they have not lived together long enough.
Ketan Barhate and his wife Kalindi Chaudhari joined a culturally arranged marriage in late 2019.
Chaudhari received a visitor visa from Immigration New Zealand (INZ) on March 5 of last year and was given 24 hours to accept it. On March 18 of last year, she was turned away at the Mumbai airport gate, as New Zealand had closed its borders due to Covid-19.
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INZ was open to granting the culturally arranged marriage visa, being more appropriate to their circumstances, but was not offered one, said the couple’s immigration attorney, Mark Luscombe.
Barhate, a permanent resident of New Zealand for five years, returned to India in January to live with his wife, in order to prove to INZ that their relationship was “stable.”
Chaudhari’s visa had been put on “indefinite suspension,” despite INZ’s satisfaction that the relationship was genuine and the couple were currently living together.
“Ketan will not return to New Zealand until he reaches INZ’s inscrutable time threshold which is sufficient to demonstrate his stability. I’m very disappointed, ”Luscombe said.
“There are no rules or policy guidelines to determine the duration of a relationship to achieve stability. Each individual immigration officer can decide that based on their impression of the evidence provided.
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Ketan Barhate and his wife Kalindi Chaudhari (right) pictured with Ketan’s parents.
Barhate said that when the couple received the news from INZ they were “broken.”
After canceling his March 23 MIQ position in New Zealand, Barhate said that there were no MIQ positions available until June / July, and that he would remain in India with his wife.
For the past 16 months, the couple had endured 12 months apart, and Chaudhari lived alone with her in-laws for much of the time, and the couple spent a total of three months living together.
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Ketan Barhate and his wife Kalindi on their wedding day in India.
“If INZ insists that three months is not enough for Ketan and Kalindi, one wonders how a culturally arranged marriage is acceptable to INZ given their current attitude.”
INZ confirmed that Chaudhari’s most recent application for a “critical purpose visitor visa” was rejected because “no new information or evidence of a change in circumstances was provided to support the application” and that “it has not yet been compliment”. immigration instructions for association visas.
“While there is no set period of time to meet the ‘cohabitation’ requirements as per immigration instructions, INZ must be satisfied that a couple share a home as partners, rather than visit each other while maintaining individual residences,” he said a spokesman.
