NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL
LET THE PARENTS OF IRISH CHILDREN STAY

 

Eleven thousand asylum seekers face immediate deportation under new laws announced by Minister of Injustice Michael Mc Dowell.  On 17 July Mc Dowell announced that parents of Irish children were also to be deported- his officials immediately issued the first 400 notices of deportation.  They were told that they only had 15 days to appeal- but without legal aid for a process that could cost between 2-4,000 euro.

This follows a disgraceful Supreme Court decision in February removing the right of parents to remain with Irish born children.  While these Irish children cannot be legally deported, they will be forced to leave the country with their families.  In effect, this marks the beginning of a new definition of what it means to be Irish-  it will now be officially racialised.

FF/PDs scapegoat immigrants for their own mistakes

Ireland is now the most globalised economy in the world.  Giant multinationals are free to open
(and all too often, close) their factories here, with huge tax breaks and subsidies. They expatriate billions of euros profit from Ireland everyday- in reality, they are the real parasites.  Their friends in Fianna Fail and the PDs always boast how this corporate globalisation is good for Ireland, yet they are now attacking the human face of globalisation. A multicultural Ireland whose children have parents from elsewhere.

Fianna Fail and the PDs are deeply unpopular- they won the last election by pretending that the Celtic Tiger boom would continue.  The economy is going into recession, and they have made a mess of our hospitals, public transport and services.  Now, rather than have us turn our anger on them and their rich friends who ripped this country off during the boom, they want us to scapegoat immigrants to take
attention off themselves.

Human Globalisation versus Corporate Globalisation

Globalise Resistance believes that everybody has the right to live and work in this new global economy.   If capital and corporations are free to move around the world, then so too should people.  We oppose all forms of racism, whether on the streets or from official channels.  We think ordinary people have more in common with each other than with the governments or corporations, and that we should unite for a  multicultural world free from racism, hunger and war.   We agree with the revolutionary James Connolly, who in the 1916 proclamation declared that all the children of the nation should be cherished equally.
That means not ripping their families apart.

 

Globalise Resistance needs volunteers to help with the resistance to Mc Dowell's deportations.  If you can help in any way, please text us at 087 9032281 or

email us at nohumanisillegal@yahoo.com 

Information for Migrant Parents of Irish citizen children

provided by the Coalition Against Deportation of Irish Citizens (CADIC). The Coalition is a network of organisations and individuals who are concerned by the recent steps of the Irish Government to deport the families of Irish citizen children. The information provided does not constitute legal advice and should not be taken as such. PLEASE NOTE: The Information in this leaflet is Information valid as of 5th September 2003 1. On 23rd January 2003 the Supreme Court ruled that the Minister of Justice did have the power to deport a non-Irish national, even if they were parents of an Irish citizen child. The Court confirmed that anyone born in Ireland is entitled to Irish citizenship and the ruling does not and cannot change this fact. The Supreme Court also ruled that when the Minister considers the deportation of parents of an Irish citizen child, the Minister must consider each case on its individual merits and due process must be followed. The constitutional rights of the Irish citizen child must be considered and the rights of the immigrant parents and any other siblings must be respected. 2. The ruling has no impact on the decision of whether to recognise an individual as a refugee, or the existing status of those already recognised as refugees in Ireland or on those with permission to remain on other grounds such as employment or study etc. 3. On 19th February 2003 the Minister decided to remove the process whereby an immigrant parent could seek permission to remain in Ireland solely on the grounds that they were the parent of an Irish citizen child. Any application for leave to remain made exclusively on the basis of a person being the parent of an Irish citizen child which had not been determined by the 19th February appears not to have been processed any further. The situation of such parents will now be determined on a case-by-case basis upon the making of representations by them to the Minister. 4. Letters from the Department of Justice are being sent to parents whose residency applications remained pending on 19th February 2003. There appears to be a number of different letters. Two of the first types of letters are: (i) Individuals who had been in the asylum process or were undocumented migrants when they made their application for residency, receive letters informing them of the Minister's intention to deport them and are informed that they have three options: to leave Ireland voluntarily within 15 working days of the date of the letter, to make themselves available for deportation or to make representations in writing within 15 working days of the date of the letter, setting out the reasons why they should be allowed to remain in Ireland. (ii) Individuals who were legally resident in Ireland at the time they applied for permission to remain on the basis that they were the parent of an Irish citizen child, simply have their application and supporting documentation returned to them and receive no further information on the options open to them or any further process they might be able to engage in. 5. The Minister of Justice has failed to provide clear information on what exact procedures immigrant parents of Irish citizen children should follow now that he has removed the right to apply for leave to remain solely on the grounds of being a parent of an Irish citizen child. The Minister is however as a minimum bound by the ruling of the Supreme Court to consider the situation of each family on its individual merits. 5.6. Where the Minister proposes to make a deportation order, under Section 3 (6) of the Immigration Act 1999, the factors that must be taken into account by the Minister are: (a) The age of the person (b) The duration of residence in Ireland (c) The family and domestic circumstances of the person (d) The nature of the person’s connection with Ireland, if any (e) The employment (including self-employment) record of the person (f) The employment (including self –employment) prospects of the person (g) The character and conduct of the person both within and (where relevant and ascertainable) outside Ireland (including any criminal convictions) (h) Humanitarian considerations (i) Any representations duly made by or on behalf of the person (eg references etc) The Minister will also consider: (j) The common good; (k) Issues of national security and public policy 7. If you receive a letter telling you that the Minister is intending to issue a deportation order against you and you want to make representations to the Minister for permission to remain, we recommend that you seek legal advice if you can. Unfortunately if you cannot afford to pay the costs of a solicitor it may be difficult to access legal advice. More information about this is provided at paragraph 14. 6.8. If you do want to make representations to the Minister about why you should be allowed to remain in Ireland, it is very important that you provide as much information as possible about the factors listed at point 6 of this information leaflet as they apply to yourself. For example, you should make clear how long you have been in Ireland, how you have integrated into Irish society (membership of clubs, voluntary work etc.), what contributions you are already making to Irish society and/or would be able to make if allowed to enter employment, and you should provide information relating to your health and personal circumstances you would face if you had to return to your country of origin. 7.9. When you are providing information about your family and domestic circumstances, and the nature of your connection with Ireland it is very important that you provide as much information as possible about the situation of all of your children and in particular any Irish citizen member of the family. In the event that you have to make a representation, you should be able to provide the following information: · The number and ages of children in the family · How long the children have been in Ireland · How the children have integrated into Ireland – for example, have they been in school, or play groups, are they members of sports teams or other social clubs? · Do the children have any special connection with Ireland, for example an Irish god parent or other relatives residing in Ireland? · Whether the children have any special needs – either in terms of medical care, or education needs? · The language skills of the children – would the children have problems integrating in a non- English speaking country? · Would there be a threat to the children in the country to where they might be deported – e.g. from health conditions, conflict, laws, cultural practices? · Is the country to which the child could be taken a party to international human rights treaties to which Ireland is also a party – in particular the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child? (Ireland is a party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which obliges the government to place the best interests of the child at the heart of decisions, which will impact on the child.) 8.10. In the case of an Irish citizen child, it is very important to highlight the impact which the child’s Irish citizenship might have if the child were to leave Ireland with his/her parents and siblings. Therefore it will be important in the written representations to make clear: · The nationalities of both parents of the Irish citizen child: Is one of the parents an Irish or an EEA national? · Do the parents share the same nationality? · What are the guardianship rights of each parent in relation to the Irish child? · What other nationality could the Irish child be entitled to claim by virtue of their parentage? · What are the rules on dual citizenship in the national countries of the parents? · Will the Irish child be entitled to enter and reside in to the national countries of the parents? · Will both parents be liable for deportation to the same country or would deportation lead to the separation of the family? · If the child moves to a country as an Irish citizen, will the child be able to realise their right to a proper education, to decent health care, to protection from abuse etc? · As a resident non-national in the national country of the parents, will the Irish child be able to access free or subsidised public education and health services? · Are there laws or cultural practices in the national country of the parents that could breach the constitutional rights of the child – eg female genital mutilation, forced marriages? · What will the capacity of the parents be to provide for the Irish citizen child in another country – for example, in the case of a single parent of an Irish citizen child, would the parent have difficulties finding work or child care for the Irish citizen child while the parent was working? · Is there an Irish consulate in the national countries of the parents? Please note that if you have a child born in Ireland, in order to ensure that their citizenship rights have been fully asserted it is recommended that you apply for a passport for the child, if you have not already done so. However, you should be aware that possession of an Irish passport could have implications for the child if s/he were to be taken to another country, or the national country of his/her parents. 9.11. In some cases, parents of an Irish citizen child who had applied for asylum, were advised by state agencies to withdraw their application for asylum and to seek permission to remain in Ireland on the ground that they were the parent of an Irish citizen child. If this was the case, it is important that you include this in your representations and make clear who advised you to withdraw your application for asylum. 12. You should also include information in your representations about the human rights situation in your country of origin – existence of an armed conflict, torture, practices such as female genital mutilation etc. Information on the human rights situation in your country may be available from Amnesty International, Irish Section (42 Fleet Street, Dublin 2 Tel: 01-6776361) and the following websites: http://www.amnesty.org, http://www.hrw.org, http://www.irinnews.org. 13. Please remember – the Supreme Court decision has no impact whatsoever on the right of an individual fleeing persecution to seek asylum. An individual who had withdrawn from the asylum procedure, and continues to have a fear of persecution in their country of origin, may still re-apply for asylum. If the individual withdrew before their first interview, they may make a new application in the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner. If an individual withdrew after a first interview, but before an appeal, having received a negative decision at first instance, they may only make a fresh application with the consent of the Minister, under Section 17(7) of the Refugee Act 1996. To do so, they must write to the Ministerial Decisions Unit of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and request that their application now be considered. Once an individual has re-applied for asylum, or re-opened an existing application, the individual may then register with the Refugee Legal Service (RLS) or seek alternative legal advice. 14. Migrant parents of Irish citizen children will not receive assistance from the Refugee Legal Services (RLS) in making their representations or in seeking to re-enter the asylum process and will not be granted legal aid. There appears to be no proper basis for refusing legal aid in such cases and FLAC (an independent legal organisation that campaigns for right of access to legal services) will be seeking to challenge such refusals. If you have already received a letter and tried to seek legal assistance from the Refugee Legal Service or a Law Centre, but have been denied, you should contact FLAC (Tel: 01 – 67942399). 15. There are a number of organisations who may be able to provide further information to you depending on the particular circumstances of your case: If you need information on the Asylum and Refugee process contact: Irish Refugee Council, 88 Capel Street, Dublin 1. Tel. 01 – 8730042; Fax 01 – 8730088 or Refugee Information Service, Tel. 01-838 2740; Fax 01-838 2482, e.info@ris.ie If you need information on other Immigration matters contact: Immigrant Council of Ireland, 42 Upper Dorset Street, Dublin 1. Tel: 01 – 8656526 ; Fax: 01 - 874 9695 If you need further information on legal representation or access to legal aid contact: FLAC, 13 Lower Dorset Street, Dublin 1, Tel: 01 – 67942399; Fax: 01 - 8745320 If you need further information on the Rights of the Child contact: Children’s Rights Alliance, 13 Harcourt Street, Dublin 2 Tel: 01- 405 4823; Fax: 01 - 405 4826 If you need further general information on human rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, or your constitutional rights contact: Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Dominick Court, 40 – 41 Lower Dominick Street, Dublin 1 Tel : 01- 8783136; Fax: 01 – 8783109 Other Important Numbers Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform Tel: 01-6167700/1890 457032 Refugee Legal Service Tel: 01-6310800/1800 502400 Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner Tel: 01 -6028000     And now for the good news..."Ireland is not a racist society", says Minister McDowell

By Ronit  Lentin (thanks to Metro Eireann)   What irony: two weeks before the Central Statistics Office informed us that so-called ‘non nationals’ now make 5.8 per cent of the population, Justice Minister Michael McDowell told The Irish Times that, because we have had no race riots, Ireland is not a racist society. Smugly hitting at those of us who assert the opposite as ‘ascending moral pulpits’ and praising Ireland’s equality legislation as ‘among the most advanced in the world’, the minister glossed over two major issues. The first issue ignored by the Minister’s self-congratulatory statement, is the experience of Travellers, refugees, asylum seekers and other people of colour and racialised groups, of daily incidents of racist behaviour, intentional and unintentional, even though many ‘Irish’ people try to be helpful and welcoming. These racist experiences include violent attacks – many not reported to the Gardai who, despite the best efforts of the Garda Racial and Intercultural Office, are largely ineffectual and ignorant in dealing with such complaints; racial insults and verbal abuse; racist letters, emails and telephone calls; racialised people being ignored, or worse, followed, in shops and supermarkets; racialised pupils being slurred by fellow students; pregnant black women being spat at and insulted and often maltreated by service providers, although many health professionals are doing their best. They also include negative media portrayals and categorisations as ‘problems’ at best, and ‘scroungers’ and ‘spongers’ at worst. But much worse, the Minister’s insistence that ‘even those who were reticent about immigration were, generally, free from racism’ glosses over the role he, his department, the coalition government and the state in general play in racialising whole populations, primarily migrants and refugees. As I have written here before, racism is a political system, aiming to regulate bodies. Therefore, despite the commitment to state-run antiracism campaigns, restrictive immigration and asylum policies, which keep unwanted people out, are racist mechanisms of control. Take the Programme for Government agreed between Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats. In the section on asylum and immigration, the Coalition commits to ‘increase the rate of repatriations of failed asylum applicants’ and review the numbers of applications from ‘non-nationals’ to remain on the basis of parentage of so-called ‘Irish-born children’. These cold pronouncements wilfully erase the suffering of deportees to unknown, or dangerous destinations, and the terror and uncertainty experienced by the 11,000 migrant parents of children born in Ireland currently waiting to hear whether, and when, they are to be deported. Furthermore, as the Irish Refugee Council reminds us, last month the Government produced a 32-page document of ‘amendments’ to the Immigration Bill 2002, destined to be rushed through the Daíl before the summer recess. A new regulation decreed that all asylum seekers must now be dispersed to direct provision hostels, and exist on a meagre €19.10 allowance, not subject to inflation-linked rise. In addition, in 2002 3,000 potential asylum applicants have been ‘refused leave to land’ in Ireland, and some 50 people a month were deported. Finally, efforts to facilitate the integration of refugees do not include asylum seekers, whose contribution is ignored by the Minister, for whom the uppermost concern is the acceleration of the asylum process so he can increase the number of ‘repatriations’. Are you still swayed by his insistence that there is no racism in Ireland?

'Responding to the Racialisation of Irishness: Disavowed Multiculturalism and its Discontents'

by Doctor Ronit Lentin, TCD

1.1

In June 2000, as David Richardson, a white Englishman, and his black wife and son who was working in Dublin, were walking home outside Trinity College Dublin, they were attacked by a group of white Irish men, shouting 'Niggers out', 'black bastards' and 'monkeys', and stabbing David so that he had to spend several weeks in intensive care. On August 17, the stabbed man's son, Christian, having been called a 'black bastard' by passers-by, decided to resign his Dublin IT job and leave Ireland. Since arriving back in England, he said, he felt 'less tense and more relaxed than in the last couple of weeks', as he had been feeling 'a bit scared' living in Ireland (Halloran, 2000: 4).

1.2

Asylum-seeker John Tambwe of Ireland's African Refugee Network, angered by the extensive media attention for the incident, due, as he claims, to Mr Richardson being white, says this happens all the time: 'I have suffered all sorts of racial abuse. Once someone spat in my face. Some fellows urinated in my letterbox. I have been called "nigger" countless times, and had my apartment spray- painted with obscenities' (Sweeney, 2000: 10). Tambwe also reports racist discrimination by bouncers in nightclubs and restaurants and by service providers such as ambulance drivers, racist graffiti and casual racist abuse yelled by passers by. He is determined, however, to combat racism, which he links to the Irish government's exclusionary asylum policies. The African Refugee Network is one of several organisations headed by asylum-seekers and refugees charting new antiracist spaces in Dublin's changing ethnic landscape.

1.3

In July, a Somali asylum-seeker who had been raped and who had to abandon her three children in Somalia, ^[1] told a meeting of the Irish Association of Minority Ethnic Women, a transversal inter-ethnic group, currently raising funds for a centre in Dublin, that as she was walking to the local mosque, she was attacked three times from behind with a large stone and once with a can of paint. As a result, she is terrified to leave her one-room flat, where she sits all day, wearing several layers of clothing to fend against the cold. She hopes that the Association will offer her a safe space.

1.4

These tales reveal the multi-layered racialised exclusions which are charting new ethnicised spaces in Ireland's geographies of exclusion (Sibley, 1995). Christian Richardson's flight from the city where he had many friends and a good job because of racial harassment; Tambwe's determination to construct antiracist spaces in inner city Dublin; and the Somali woman's hopes for a woman-friendly space are all examples of processes of racialisation which are constructing new versions of Irishness. In the case of the Somali woman, gender intersects with racialised exclusions; in the case of Christian Richardson, labour shortages, resulting from Ireland's economic boom intersect with racialisation; and in the case of Tambwe, as that of the Somali woman, asylum restrictions intersect with racialisation. However, these spatial narratives by members of racialised ethnic groups and diasporic communities not only denote Irish specificities of racism; they are also changing Ireland's 'political architecture' (Amiraux, Forthcoming).

1.5

While discussions of 'new racism' (e.g., Barker, 1981), and of the need to theorise racism beyond the colour divide have characterised recent debates on 'race' and racism in Europe (e.g. Miles, 1989; Modood, 1992; Brah, 1996; Mac an Ghaill, 1999; Gilroy, 2000), racism in contemporary Ireland has until recently been considered both 'new' and 'part of human nature'. In contemporary Ireland, the 'semantics of race' (Goldberg, 2000: 362-77) is linked first and foremost to the racialisation of Travellers, asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants, despite the well sustained arguments (McVeigh, 1992; 1996; Lentin, 1998; Lentin, 2000a; Lentin and McVeigh, forthcoming ) that Irish racism is neither 'natural', 'new', nor caused by in-coming outgroups. In theorising racism in Ireland, we need firstly to problematise Irishness itself and put paid to the notion of Ireland as a monoculture, a notion fostered by Ireland's strong sense of community (as argued by McVeigh, 1992).

1.6

Racialised ethnic groups in Ireland - black-Irish people, Jewish people, members of African and Asian communities, but not Travellers, with 25,000 members, Ireland's largest racialised ethnic group ^[2] - have been largely invisible in the narrative of the Irish 'imagined community'. There is, however, little doubt that the Irish ethnic landscape is in a process of transition, not only because of late 1990s changing migration patterns or the internationalisation of labour, ^[3] but also because of the increasing politicisation of ethnic minorities in their struggle against multi-racisms, an inevitable by-product of Ireland's increasing multiculturality. Ethnic difference, historically constructed as religious difference - in relation, for example, to the narrow definition of ethnicity in the Irish Constitution (Lentin, 1998) - is now being articulated explicitly in government and NGO policy initiatives to combat racism and support migrant communities (European Year Against Racism, 1997; Platform Against Racism, 1997; Tannam et al., 1998; NCCRI, 1999). ^[4] However, I would argue that most of these initiatives are based on what Hesse (1999: 215) calls 'disavowed multiculturalism': what is disavowed is the official version of the Irish nation, a western construction despite its colonised past, which at the same time constructs a non-national 'other' as both 'difference' and 'pathological'.

1.7

I begin this article by discussing the specificities of racism in Irish society. Critiquing multiculturalist and top-down antiracism policies, I then argue that Irish multiculturalist, but also interculturalist politics, ^[5] are anchored in a liberal politics of recognition of difference, which do not depart from western cultural imperialism (as argued, for instance, by Hesse, 1999) and are therefore inadequate in terms of deconstructing inter-ethnic power relations. Multiculturalist approaches to antiracism result in a climate, on the one hand, of a growing tendency towards separatist identity politics groupings, and on the other, the top-down ethnicisation of Irish society, and are failing to intervene in the uneasy interface of minority and majority power relations in Ireland. The majority-minority interface is in itself extremely problematic, because it reduces issues of unequal power relationship to one of numbers, with the effect of naturalising, rather than challenging the power differential, as argued by Brah (1996: 186-7).

1.8

Instead of a 'politics of recognition' guiding multiculturalist initiatives, I conclude the article by developing Hesse's (1999) idea of a 'politics of interrogation' of the Irish 'we' and propose disavowed multiculturalism as a way of theorising Irish responses to ethnic diversity. Interrogating the Irish 'we' cannot evade interrogating the painful past of emigration, a wound still festering because it was never tended - as depicted in some recent cultural works (e.g. Murphy, 2000; O'Grady and Pyke, 1998; Bruce, 2000) - and which, I would suggest, is returning to haunt Irish people through the presence of the immigrant 'other'.

CONTINUED AT

http://www.socresonline.org.uk/5/4/lentin.html