A petition with 13,000 signatures asking the government to let an autistic five-year-old boy from Nelson stay in New Zealand has been handed to Parliament, putting fresh pressure on the new Associate Immigration Minister Cameron Brewer to step in where two of his predecessors refused.
The petition was presented on Wednesday by Nelson Labour MP Rachel Boyack and Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March on behalf of Aidhan Mankeel and his parents, who moved to Nelson from India in 2024 to take healthcare jobs the region has struggled to fill. Aidhan turns six next week.
His father, Nithin Mankeel, works as an elder care nurse. His mother is a senior healthcare assistant. Both are New Zealand residents. Immigration New Zealand refused their son’s visa application last year on the grounds that his autism diagnosis meant he was likely to impose significant costs or demands on the country’s health and education services.
According to reporting by RNZ, Boyack and National MP Carl Bates wrote to the former Associate Immigration Minister Chris Penk asking him to intervene. He declined. Boyack then escalated the case to Immigration Minister Erica Stanford, who has the power to look at the case on its merits and act outside settled policy. She also declined. Brewer is now the third minister with the file on his desk.
Boyack told reporters at Parliament the refusal so far had been disappointing and she would now write to Brewer.
“Nearly every week I have people ask me what’s happening to Nithin, the nurse and his family,” she said. “These are two critical healthcare workers that we need in Nelson. We have an ageing population, they both work in the health sector supporting our older communities and it’s just not okay that you can recruit healthcare workers to come and work in New Zealand and then deport the child.”
Aidhan has been granted an exemption to attend a Nelson kindergarten while his parents wait on a decision. Boyack said the staff and other parents had become some of the family’s strongest advocates.
“What I’ve heard from kindergarten teachers and people who’ve worked with him is that he’s a wonderful young boy. He’s thriving in the education environment. He’s happy here in New Zealand and so sending him away from New Zealand would be harmful to him.”
Boyack also said she held letters from residents and family members at the aged care home where Mr Mankeel works, describing him as the best nurse the home had ever had.
“He was the only person that was able to comfort people in their final days. When you get references like that about someone that’s where a minister actually should be looking at the merits of the case and saying this one sits outside policy and I’m going to overturn the decision.”
Menéndez March said the cross-party support for the family was unusual and significant. Labour, the Greens and National all had MPs on the record asking ministers to look again at the file.
“This is one of those unusual cases where the three largest political parties clearly can see that we have a migrant family who’s in distress and deserves certainty and so we hope that Cameron Brewer does the right thing by them, heeds the calls from his own colleagues and intervenes so that Aidhan can stay in the country in the community that he belongs to and is growing up in.”
Mr Mankeel said the past year had been heartbreaking. He described “so many days of tears” inside the small Nelson flat where he and his wife had been waiting for word.
“Aidhan is not aware of the situation, he’s really small,” he said. “We don’t have any other family relatives here. So me and my wife are supporting each other and we are holding each other because we need to live together as a small family until our death. That’s all we need.”
Brewer has been contacted for comment.
The case sits inside a wider tension Immigration New Zealand has yet to resolve. The government has spent the past two years actively recruiting overseas-trained nurses, aged care workers and healthcare assistants to plug shortages in regional hospitals and rest homes. Nelson, with its ageing population, was one of the regions identified as needing those workers most. At the same time, the medical character requirements that sit inside settled immigration policy are still written in a way that screens out children with diagnoses like autism on the basis of projected cost to the state, regardless of whether their parents are the people the country is actively asking to come and work here.
Boyack said it was that gap, between the recruitment pitch and the family unit being broken up at the other end, that had driven so many Nelson residents to sign the petition. Most signatories were not lobbyists or activists. They were neighbours, kindergarten parents, families of rest home residents and the wider Nelson community.
Cameron Brewer was sworn in as Associate Immigration Minister earlier this year. He has not yet indicated publicly whether he will look at the Mankeel file or maintain the position of his two predecessors. Boyack said the family, and the 13,000 people behind the petition, would now wait on his answer.
What do you think? Should ministers use their discretion to keep families like the Mankeels together, or should the medical character rules apply the same way to everyone? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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