Officials are being urged to prioritise the best interests of the children when it comes to balancing concerns around our borders, with the benefits of reuniting family.
Judge Frances Eivers made the comments after 1News revealed that in 2021 around 20 children arrived here without their parents following Afghanistan's fall to the Taliban.
"This is a complex situation and my heart goes out to the mokopuna from Afghanistan who are separated from their whānau," she said.
"I recognise the practical constraints and complexities involved... I urge government agencies to put the best interests of children as a primary consideration in decision-making around family reunification."
A number of the Afghan minors were later found to have parents that came here on separate planes. But for the rest, given there was no immigration policy at the time to reunite them with their parents, officials were faced with a rare humanitarian situation of balancing the children's welfare with their concerns around the border.
They raised concerns that allowing the parents of the dozen others to follow, could set a precedent for dozens more refugees and provide an incentive for the illegal travel of minors across international borders.
Despite the officials' concerns, it's not the first time existing policy has been adapted to unite refugee families.
Under Helen Clark's government in 2004 the Tampa refugees' families were enabled to arrive as part of New Zealand's annual refugee quota - something the president of the Hazara Afghan Association, Assadullah Nazari, wants to see extended to those recent arrivals.
He is one of those who arrived here in 2001 after being rescued by the Tampa container ship from a sinking boat off the coast of Australia.
"For a child parents are everything, so it is important for every single child that they should have their parents," Nazari said.
In his view the parents of the recent arrivals were unlikely to have sent their children ahead in the hopes of being allowed to follow.
"I can guarantee these people who came, that wasn't the case, they purely left Afghanistan to be safe."
Ahmadullah Ahmadi, and Zabiullah Ahmadi, 15, fled Kabul with their grandmother, a New Zealand resident, in the chaos of the August 2021 evacuations. They weren't told until they got here that the rest of their family wouldn't be coming too.
It's at night that they struggle the most.
"You just feel lonely more, you think about your family," Ahmadullah Ahmadi said. "I hope they are going to come soon, so we can be together."
Recently the refugee family reunification category was expanded to allow for the Afghan arrivals, who aren't technically refugees. But the twins' family aren't eligible for the visa. It's currently only accepting applications from those aged 18 and over who have no other adult relative here in New Zealand.
More recently, the Green Party's Golriz Ghahraman said officials created a new category for Ukrainians fleeing war and it could do so again for the small number of Afghan children without their parents.
"We are sort of at a cross-roads globally. We can choose to go the way of Australia with its incredibly harsh inhumane policy around asylum seekers, or we can do what Europe did, which is to have a coordinated humanitarian response when something terrible happens," she said.
"What we are talking about is a tiny, tiny number, which per capita is lower than Australia. So we are not really at a risk of overflowing the system."
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