With moves being made to relax immigration restrictions and allow migrant workers into the State, the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) has urged the Government to enable non-EU students to take up work here, even on a temporary basis.

Martin French, USI's equality officer, says: "Non-EU students have already been penalised enough by having to pay higher fees than EU students."

Officially, non-EU students are not allowed to seek either voluntary or paid employment, except when their courses have a compulsory work placement (usually unpaid).

At the moment, a number of recruitment agencies and employers are known to be providing non-EU students with jobs, in spite of the regulations.

Recently, the Government announced plans to import workers under its immigrants' work visa initiative, with an expected annual intake of more than 6,000; as yet, however, no consideration has been given to the legal residents, including students, whom the law does not allow to work.

Allowing full-time non-EU students to take up part-time employment in the academic year and full-time in the summer would let them to acquire valuable work experience and address widespread labour shortages. And of course, non-EU students who must depend on financial support from home, their governments or sponsors could earn a few bob to supplement their limited resources.

A spokesperson at the Department of Enterprise, Trade, and Employment says that "because they come here as students with student visas, they are not allowed to work, not evenpart time. Before they came into the country, they showed evidence that they had sufficient funds to study and maintain themselves here in Ireland."

A student from the Middle East, studying sciences in a Dublin college, who does not want to be identified for personal reasons, explains his situation: "I have been looking for a work placement for the last three years during my time off from college, including the summer. In the last six months I have been constantly contacting all the various departments - the Departments of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Education and Justice, Equality and Law Reform. They keep on sending me from one department to another. "I have applied for voluntary work just to get work experience, but they said absolutely no, because it is the law that I am not allowed to work whether paid or not."

What disturbs him, he says, is that "they all agree that I should be allowed to work, especially now that there is a big shortage of workers in this country. But it might take years to change the laws.

"I still have sufficient funds to continue my studies, what I want is just work experience. I am not trying to abuse the system by using a student visa to gain access to the employment market. I pay £5,500 on fees and £5,000 on living expenses for an academic year - I am not going to make a fraction of the amount of money that I am spending. "It does not sound so good that when I graduate, I will apply for a job and say that I have never had enough work experience in my life."

In some other EU states, such as Britain and Germany, full-time non-EU students are entitled to work up to 20 hours a week.