David White
Eason Diao is a 17-year-old New Zealand citizen, but both his parents are overstayers. His father died and his mother faces deportation.
Thousands of people live in Aotearoa illegally, surviving in a shadow world of cash jobs, without benefits or healthcare. In part two of a three-part series going inside the world of overstayers, National Correspondent Steve Kilgallon examines what keeps them here. A few days before Eason Diao’s 17th birthday, his father, a 62-year-old house painter named Chuanjin Diao, fell from a roof and died. Next month, on his 18th birthday, there’s a very real possibility Diao’s mother, Xianglan Hao, could be deported to her native China.