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Sri Lankan woman stuck on Cook Islands for 3 years, unable to fly home due to visa troubles
A Sri Lankan woman has been stranded in the Cook Islands for three years, but neither New Zealand nor Australia is approving her transit visa.
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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. Ruchira Ranasingha, 50, has spent three years on the tiny archipelago in the South Pacific, with visa troubles impacting her return home.
Ranasingha told the BBC that she is ready to go back “handcuffed, bound and gagged”.
The start of her troubles
Her troubles began almost a decade ago when she had to close her small T-shirt factory in Sri Lanka due to financial hardship. Facing heavy debts and the death of her husband—who her brother notes was a drug addict killed about seven years ago—she left Sri Lanka in 2018 to work as a domestic caregiver in Hong Kong.
In December 2022, Ranasingha traveled to New Zealand on a two-month visit visa to stay with a cousin. 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.
However, because New Zealand generally does not allow asylum seekers to switch to other visas during application processing, her request was denied.
Seeking help, she hired an immigration agency called Immigration & Secretarial Services. The firm's manager, Sylviane Gallant, advised her to temporarily leave New Zealand to reapply for an employment visa from abroad. Following this advice, Ranasingha flew to the Cook Islands on November 8, 2023.
Stranded on Cook Islands
Flying to the Cook Islands proved to be a very bad decision for Ruchir Ranasingha.
Her new visa application was rejected, and leaving New Zealand automatically breached the terms of her asylum-linked visa, leading authorities to ban her from receiving future New Zealand visas.
Although Gallant says she attempted to write to politicians, including former Immigration Minister Chris Penk, she eventually admitted her mistake and confessed that there was nothing more she could do.
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.
She is now stuck in the Cook Islands without a visa to stay there and without the necessary authorization to leave. New Zealand has rejected three of her transit visa applications because officials are not convinced she will depart the country during her layover. Australia has similarly denied four transit visa requests.
The only other international routes out of the Cook Islands—via Tahiti or Hawaii—require her to submit biometric data in person in New Zealand first, creating an inescapable loop.
‘I want to go home’
"I have lost so much money on tickets. For almost four years I have been just applying for visa after visa with nothing working out," she told the BBC.
Ranasingha says her mother’s health has suffered due to anxiety about her situation, while her only son is getting married soon.
"My son - my only child - is getting married in November and I really want to be there for his wedding. My mother is so worried about what has happened to me that she is constantly in and out of hospital," the Sri Lankan woman said, speaking through tears.
"I will do anything they ask of me - I just want to go home."
Authorities tried to help
According to a report in New Zealand news website RNZ, local authorities in the Cook Islands have tried to intervene. 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.
"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.
"Transit visas are issued by the countries a person needs to pass through during their journey. Decisions about these visas are made by those countries and are outside the control of the Cook Islands government.
"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.
"The government continues to manage the matter in accordance with the law and, to protect the individual's privacy, will not comment further on the details of the case."
