A Fiji-Indian family has been left with a $31,815 hospital bill after their baby was born in Dunedin just three days after the parents’ New Zealand work visa expired.

Shalveen Sen and his wife Swastika Chand had lived in New Zealand for the past three years before their work visa expired on June 24.

The family says they did not return to Fiji before the visas expired because Chand had been medically advised not to travel during the third trimester due to complications with her pregnancy.

Their son, Nyshik Sen, was born at Dunedin Hospital on June 27. The timing mattered because longer-term work visa holders can qualify for New Zealand’s publicly-funded health system.

Immigration New Zealand (INZ) says people holding work visas allowing them to remain in New Zealand for two years or longer may be eligible for publicly funded healthcare.

Its guidance for accredited employers is more explicit. Workers whose visas allow them to be in New Zealand for at least two years can use publicly funded health services.

For Sen and Chand, that eligibility disappeared just before their baby arrived.

“Our baby was born on the 27/6/26 just three days after our work visa expired,” Sen says on a Givealittle page established to pay the bill.

“Because of this unfortunate timing, we were no longer eligible for the healthcare support that we would have received if our baby had been born before our visa expiry date.”

The family says it is now facing a Dunedin Hospital bill of $31,815.50. At the time of writing this story, it had raised $1,598 from 29 donors. The fundraising page says the money will be paid into Sen’s verified bank account and go towards Dunedin hospital.

Sen and Chand say they had been trying since last year to extend their visas but their application was declined because they fell just short of the experience required by INZ.

The couple had moved from Fiji about three years ago and, according to Sen, had sold their belongings there with the intention of settling in New Zealand.

As their visa expiry approached, Chand was in the later stages of pregnancy. The family says medical advice against travelling during the third trimester meant returning to Fiji was not considered safe.

“Had the birth occurred only a couple of days earlier, we would not have been faced with this overwhelming hospital bill,” Sen says.

Sen says the family's expired visas have created another problem. Neither parent is currently able to work and earn the money needed to pay the hospital debt.

“The burden of this hospital debt is beyond our current means,” he says.