Sir, - David Blake (April 20th) claims to have read Medb Ruane's column on Nigeria (April 6th). He seems to have missed the bit where she admits that no one in their right mind would want to live in Nigeria ("Ask yourself whether you'd like to live in Nigeria"). He also seems to have missed Paul Cullen's article on Nigeria in your series on human trafficking ("It's almost impossible to convey the level of difficulty of life in Nigeria") - an article in which he admits that the road to the West is seen as "the road to paradise".
Yet David Blake tells us that Nigerian asylum-seekers "had everything to lose and nothing to gain" in coming to Ireland.
A country with a population of 120 million is now targeting Ireland as its destination of choice. (We received around half of Nigerian EU applications last year although we have fewer than 1 per cent of its population.)
Nevertheless, David Blake says we should not deport failed Nigerian asylum-seekers who at that point are in the category of illegal immigrants. Perhaps we should also take out an ad in the Lagos dailies: "Come to Ireland - the only EU country where an asylum-seeker's/illegal immigrant's newborn child is a citizen and from which no Nigerians are deported." - Yours, etc.,
Aine Ni Chonaill, PRO, Immigration Control Platform, PO Box 6469, Dublin 2.