Ruchira Ranasingha, 50, has spent three years on the tiny archipelago in the South Pacific, with visa troubles impacting her return home. A Sri Lankan woman has been stranded in the Cook Islands for three years and is desperate to go back home, but neither New Zealand nor Australia is approving her transit visa.
Facing pressure from lenders back home, an immigration interpreter helped her apply for asylum. This earned her a one-year open work visa, and she eventually secured a job at a restaurant that offered to sponsor her long-term employment visa. “While the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration has worked to identify possible travel arrangements, any departure depends on the approval of the necessary transit and travel documents by the relevant authorities.
In December 2022, Ranasingha traveled to New Zealand on a two-month visit visa to stay with a cousin.
Ranasingha agreed to return to Sri Lanka, but when she tried to board her flight, she was told she could not travel without a New Zealand transit visa. “The individual remains in the Cook Islands not because options for departure have not been explored, but because of difficulties obtaining the transit visas needed to travel through other countries on the way to her final destination,” Arthur said in an email to RNZ.
On April 11, 2025, Principal Immigration Officer Chere Arthur wrote to Immigration New Zealand proposing that an official escort accompany Ranasingha through Auckland Airport directly to her connecting flight to Singapore so she would not enter the country. “I will do anything they ask of me – I just want to go home.
Local authorities in the Cook Islands have tried to intervene, according to a report in New Zealand news website RNZ.
