A chara, - Áine Ní Chonáill (August 11th) manages to dismiss as largely unexceptional within the EU the potential deportation of immigrant parents of Irish children who are the recipients of letters from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. The reality is that the situation is very exceptional indeed.
Some 11,000 immigrant parents whose children are citizens of this country are potentially at risk of deportation on foot of the recent Government decision taken after the Supreme Court judgment of January last. There is no known parallel in any other EU country or elsewhere.
The Supreme Court reaffirmed the absolute constitutional right of children born in Ireland to citizenship in the State. Citizenship acquired by birth, unlike citizenship acquired by naturalisation, cannot be revoked.
A number of the children concerned are not automatically entitled to citizenship of any other country or, where their parents are from different countries, they may get only the citizenship of the father. One affected mother recently spoke of how her son would need a visa to be allowed into her home country and would not have full rights to free health care in that country because of being a non-citizen. The recent case of a child in war-torn Liberia being singled out from all others for protection because he held American citizenship is an indication of the kind of situation that may pertain if, in the future, Irish children find themselves living in war zones because of the expulsion from Ireland of their parents.
Immigrants affected by the decision are from a number of categories including migrant worker and overseas student, but many were former asylum-seekers who had withdrawn their asylum applications. This was done in a number of cases in the belief that they were legitimately entitled to residency in Ireland on the basis of having an Irish child and did not thus need to wait the considerable period it was then taking to process an asylum claim fully.
The judgment did not give an automatic right to deport all those families. Mitigating factors, such as length of residency in the State, humanitarian considerations and their Irish children's ability to integrate into the parents' country of origin, have to be considered. It would be disturbing if large-scale deportations went ahead and, in this context, the reassurance from the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform that there will be no mass deportations is important.
The stress that this situation is having on thousands of families living in Ireland has been compounded by the fact that free legal aid is not being provided to assist individuals to make representations on why they should be allowed to remain in the State. People who have been denied the right to work since they arrived in Ireland and whose cash income in many cases is limited to €19.10 per week are now anxiously trying to procure private solicitors, often at high cost. There is a real risk that cases, rather than being considered on their merits, may fail purely because the person concerned was unable to afford proper legal advice.
While deportation is a valid part of any immigration process the deportation from Ireland of the parents of Irish citizens will create more problems than it solves. - Is mise,
PETER O'MAHONY, Chief Executive, Irish Refugee Council, Capel Street, Dublin 1.