A 102-year-old retired dentist from Hampshire and his 87-year-old wife will pass into their newly adopted country of New Zealand this weekend with a smile at passport control and, presumably, a little welcoming party.
Soon to be going out the other way, with a grimace, will be New Zealand’s second-oldest immigrant, a 101-year-old British widower who has been told that he must leave the land of the long white cloud.
As Eric King-Turner and his New Zealand-born wife, Doris, haul their luggage off a cruise ship from Southampton, the other centenarian, who has not been named, will be packing his bags as he prepares to bid farewell to his adopted 63-year-old son and his daughter-in-law. The retired research chemist arrived on a visitor’s permit in July 2006 with the intention of spending his twilight years with his only living relatives.
He told immigration officials that he no longer wanted to live alone in Britain, and his son thought the sensible and responsible option was for his father to live with him and his wife. “I no longer have any property or assets outside of New Zealand; the centre of gravity of my immediate family is very clearly in New Zealand,” he said.
Neither would he be a burden on the welfare system, with “adequate financial resources” to support himself – savings of NZ$363,000 (£147,000) and an annual pension of nearly NZ$83,000.
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In a final plea, he requested that his circumstances should be considered exceptional. But rules are rules and the elderly man’s son, an adjunct professor who was granted New Zealand residency in 1994, had not lived in the country for the required minimum 184 days in each of the three years before the application was made.
He could not sponsor his father under the parent category. And regardless of the centenarian’s advanced years, officials say that his circumstances “do not make him special”.
The New Zealand authorities said that they could understand the preference for the elderly man’s son to relocate to New Zealand and to bring his father with him but “the fact remains that there is no evidence (nor claim made) that his father could not live in Great Britain in a residence where care is provided”.
The Residence Review Board said that the man’s son could still visit his father in Britain, and argued that “given the most recent medical evidence submitted about the appellant, he may well be able to visit his son in New Zealand”.
Mr King-Turner, who was a Surgeon Commander in the Royal Navy, has five children and nine grandchildren. He and his wife have a property in Nelson, on the South Island of New Zealand, where they will live.