An information session for immigrant parents of Irish citizen children who face threatened deportation will be held in Dublin next week.
Experts from immigrant support groups will answer queries from people whose claims for residency as parents of Irish children were recently nullified by the authorities. These non-EU immigrants are now obliged to make fresh applications to the Minister for Justice for temporary leave to remain in Ireland.
Hundreds of families have been issued with letters in recent weeks, telling them the authorities wish to deport them, and giving them three weeks to make final applications for leave to remain on humanitarian grounds.
Immigrant support groups say the move has caused confusion and panic among immigrants, some of whom made their original residency applications almost two years ago.
It had been the practice in recent years that non-EU immigrants would be granted residency rights upon the birth of their children, who are entitled to Irish citizenship.
However, this was reversed following a Supreme Court ruling last January that parents of Irish children do not have an automatic right to remain in the State. There are some 11,000 outstanding residency claims from parents of Irish-citizen children on these grounds.
The information meeting in Liberty Hall in Dublin city on August 27th is organised by a newly formed organisation, the Coalition Against Deportation of Irish Children.
Ms Salome Mbugua from the African Women's Network said the aim of the meeting was to offer information to people who fear they could be deported.
"People are panicking big time, even those who have made the new applications," she said.
Mr Raymond Dooley of the Children's Rights Alliance said: "Procedures should be established which make sense, which are understandable and accessible to ordinary people, and if the Department [of Justice] is going to put in place a practice which only lawyers understand, then they should make lawyers available."