A dozen Tongan seasonal workers in Hastings due to return home next week are asking for urgent work visa exemptions, as their home island of Atata was wiped out in the January tsunami.
Their earnings are critical as all their families have been evacuated to the mainland and are staying in church halls, or in overcrowded conditions.
Seasonal worker Simione Fonua told 1News: "I care about my wife and kids, when the tsunami broke everything in my island, for a long time I didn't hear from my family I think maybe two weeks,I don't know where they are, whether they are still alive or if they are gone."
They survived but the tsunami took everything else, including their home and fishing boat, so Fonua is returning home to uncertainty.
Suliana Fusikata, another seasonal worker of 14 years said, “I earned money, enough money to build a house for me and my husband. I am so proud of me to build a house, that house I was working hard for so many years, it's all gone."
When Fusikata and her son-in-law go back to Tonga on May 4, they are going back to live in a household of 16 people and she's unsure how they are going to survive.
All of the group returning to Tonga in 10 days time will go to some type of emergency housing in a church hall or bunk down with extended family.
Their island is unlivable and any livelihood is destroyed.
Both Fonua and Fusikata say they are caught between two worlds, desperate to see their families but needing to stay in New Zealand to make a living.
New Zealand Immigration said anyone on the RSE seasonal workers scheme has to return home before applying for a work visa but the workers are begging for an exemption.
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