Two decades after a change to citizenship laws, the NZ-born children of overstayers are finding themselves undocumented and without a path forward.
When Helen Clark's Labour government brought in a law that would create waves of undocumented children, even the immigration experts had no idea of the impact it would have on thousands of lives.
The 2006 Citizenship Amendment Act ended automatic citizenship for children born here to overstayers or parents with temporary visas. It was also supported by the National party.
Immigration lawyer Alastair McClymont has been working in the sector for more than 25 years, but only recently discovered the fallout from the law.
"It never really occurred to me that this would actually be a problem," he says.
"It was only really when these children started coming forward that I thought 'this is really unusual, I wonder how many other children are in this sort of situation'.
"It is only recent because these children are now finishing high school and realising that their life has now come to an end, they don't have any options as to what to do."
They are called 'the invisible children', says RNZ immigration reporter Gill Bonnett. They are mainly children of overstayers or temporary visa holders from Pacific countries, India or China.
She's known about them for many years, but they have been hidden or protected by their parents and communities.
"These people don't want to come forward because they are scared about the consequences of doing so and they don't want to speak up either in the media or necessarily don't want to put their case in front of immigration officials in case it means that they or their parents get deported."
The case of Daman Kumar brought the issue to light, she says, when he bravely spoke to RNZ Asia reporter Blessen Tom two years ago. At the time, the teenager's voice was disguised and he went unnamed for fear that he would be deported to India, along with his parents.
This year he hit the headlines and his identity was revealed when he was on the verge of deportation.
"He'd been able to go to school okay but when it came to thinking about university or work he realised that he had nowhere to go," says Bonnett.
To further complicate the matter, Kumar's sister was unaffected because she was born before the 2006 law, meaning she is legally a New Zealand citizen. And it is not unique to the Kumar family, Bonnett says.
She explains to The Detail what was happening in New Zealand when the law was brought in, including the sense of moral panic.
At the time Helen Clark said she was concerned about incidents of people flying to New Zealand for a short time and having babies here to ensure they gained passports, known as "birth tourism".
Clark said the government would be silly not to look at this, given what other countries were doing.
"They call it the 'anchor babies'," says Bonnett. "The idea that if your child had citizenship that later on in life you might be able to get citizenship yourself or that you would just be bestowing good privileges on them for later on."
She says there were concerns on both sides of the ledger at the time, concerns on one side about birth tourism, where a child born on New Zealand soil would automatically get citizenship, and on the other side concerns about children who had lived here all their lives but didn't have citizenship.
It is not clear how many children are undocumented, but McClymont says it could be thousands and the number will keep growing.
"Every year now more and more children are going to be coming out of high school and realising that they can't study, they can't go and get jobs because it would be a breach of the law for employers to employ someone who's here unlawfully. So they can't work, they can't study, they can't travel, they just simply cannot do anything."
McClymont says he has not had a satisfactory response from the government to his suggestion that New Zealand follow Australia and Britain by giving children birthright citizenship after 10 years of habitual residence.
"Really, it's hard to see what the justification is for punishing these children. Nobody is making the argument that these children have done something wrong and that they deserve to be punished.
"The only potential argument is that these children are being punished as a deterrent for others against having children here in New Zealand," he says.
"It's just unfathomable as a society that we can actually do this to children and use them for this purpose. There doesn't seem to be any moral justification whatsoever for treating them so badly."
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