THOSE criticising the increase in refugees coming to Ireland have forgotten the reasons why refugees flee. Half Serb, half Croat, Drazen Nozinic is welcome in neither state. His country - Yugoslavia - no longer exists, his home town is now part of Croatia.
Drazen was working as a curator in the museum in Karlovac when the war broke out. The Croats were evacuated, but he and his neighbours became a human shield in the sniperfire and shelling between the Croatian forces and the Yugoslav army.
The Croatian government told him to deal only with ethnic Croats in his work but he refused. Friends were killed, others disappeared. His mother, even his handicapped brother were beaten, up.
"I left the night I beard on Croatian radio that conscription was being introduced." He went into hiding in Sarajevo for three months, hoping to get into Sweden before that country pulled the shutters down on Croatian refugees.
Denmark was a possibility, but that meant crossing Germany. "Because of its support of Croatia, I would rather die than enter Germany," he says.
Britain said no, but then friends contacted Irish people in Brussels who found a solicitor in Dublin to represent him.
Drazen flew to Ireland in August 1992 - and was deported 20 minutes later. He ended up in a prison in Paris, increasingly fearful of being sent back to Croatia. As a deserter, he was likely to face the death penalty there.
The Irish Embassy was unhelpful, but Irish people in Paris rallied to his cause. Lawyers established that his deportation was illegal. Drazen flew to Dublin again in September, helped by a cheap ticket given him by Aer Lingus.
His ordeal was not yet over. The following month, he was grilled by Department of Justice officials. "This was one of the most disgusting things of my time here. They spent 90 minutes telling me to go back, saying I was an economic immigrant, that I had been briefed by the Refugee Council.
"I told them I had a flat, my family and a good job in Yugoslavia. Why would I give up all that for some social welfare here?"
Thanks to some influential friends - his solicitor's brother is a leading politician - Drazen's refugee status finally came through.
Trinity College offered him a scholarship to do a Ph.D. which made him financially independent for a few years. In May 1996, he became an Irish citizen.
Unlike Drazen, Khalid dreams that one day he may be able to return home to his native Iraq. As a Shia Muslim and a Kurd, he says he was doubly persecuted under Saddam Hussein's regime. Half his relatives have been deported, many others were tortured, executed or have disappeared.
Khalid fled during the Marsh Arabs' uprising in 1991. With Saddam Hussein's forces closing in, he walked for 14 hours to the Iranian border, where Iraqi opposition circles fixed him up with a false passport.
From Tehran, he travelled to Syria, Turkey and then Russia. His plan was to join his two brothers in the UK, but the British authorities refused to grant him a visa. The Irish Embassy in Moscow was more generous, however, and he flew here in 1995.
Khalid has just been granted refugee status and hopes now to start work again. "I don't want to get benefit any more. I have told FAS to find any job for me, even cleaning dishes," says this qualified physicist.
