Deporting refugees is unacceptable and inhumane and breaches agreements we have signed under our UN membership. Deporting illegal immigrants is neither unacceptable nor inhumane and is supported by the UN and, more specifically, the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The problem we have faced recently is telling one from the other.
Genuine refugees are defined as having a well-founded fear of persecution on the grounds of race, religion or nationality. They have decided to leave their homeland out of desperation and a very real fear for their lives and the lives of those closest to them.
We have a moral duty, quite apart from our international commitments, to protect these people from persecution. And we do.
In fact, we look after those seeking asylum in this State very carefully indeed. It takes six A4 sheets to describe in the broadest terms the new streamlined procedure, in operation since December 10th. It has been examined and approved by the UNHCR, and the Department of Justice is hiring 70 extra staff to administer it.
It allows for the provision of interpreters to assist those unable to communicate through English since, wherever possible, interviews will be conducted in addition to written representations from those seeking asylum. The validity of their claim will be examined thoroughly, including consultation with the UNHCR.
Should the individual in question be refused refugee status, he or she will have the opportunity to appeal the decision.
While all this formality is going on, asylum-seekers have to live. They need a roof over their head, food, and medical help if they're sick. To cover these, Ireland provided supplementary benefit, housing and medical care last year worth £20 million.
A further £20 million has been set aside for this year by the Department of Social Welfare alone, with further resources to be expended by the Departments of Health and Justice.
Perhaps "generous" would be an overstatement to describe these provisions. Given that the Irish economy is as buoyant as a helium balloon, and taking into account both our race memory of the dehumanising procedures at Ellis Island and elsewhere and our desire to see ourselves as a liberal and humane nation, anything less than the present set-up would be unsatisfactory.
For those who are permitted to stay in Ireland, it is fair, logical and dignified. But should an individual go through this procedure and fail to be accepted as a genuine refugee, that person becomes an illegal immigrant. He (the vast majority of asylum-seekers are single, adult men) will be invited to leave the country within 14 days and may be deported if he is still residing here after that time.
IT IS at this point that the system is indicted as anything but fair, logical and respectful of the dignity of refugees. In fact, it is at this point that the Government tends to find itself accused of racism. These accusations are both shortsighted and illinformed.
We are not deporting people who have come here seeking refuge from wars, natural disasters or despotic regimes. These are not the refugees that we see in news bulletins streaming from war zones with all they can carry.
The Irish mindset finds it difficult to imagine that anybody would uproot themselves and go to another country willingly; even though thousands of Irish people have gone to work in the US in the last few decades, not all of them with green cards.
There are lots of reasons someone might want to tie a Dick Whittington-type bag to their stick and get out of their homeland. Some of them would amount to legitimate opportunism. The grass may indeed be greener and the job opportunities better in Ireland at the moment than in many other countries.
In some cases, the illegal emigrant may have outstayed his welcome in his place of birth. It should be remembered that the Mariel boatlift from Cuba, while allowing dissidents the chance to escape a regime they found repressive, also allowed Fidel Castro to get rid of a large number of criminals he was happier to see in Miami and its environs than in Havana.
Whatever their reasons for leaving their homeland, illegal immigrants who fail to meet the criteria which would qualify them as refugees are a serious drain on our resources and have no right to be here any more.
The consequences of not deporting illegal immigrants, quite apart from the financial concerns, would be profoundly harmful. The Government could either cut off the support these people had been surviving on and, because they could seek no legal employment here, force them to turn to crime or continue to fund their stays.
Consider the resentment that would be felt by those living on the same estates as the illegals. They would see people with no claim whatsoever to the protection of the State receiving support from the Department of Social Welfare and the health boards, or a group of foreign nationals supporting themselves through crime.
A racist reaction, while deplorable, would be inevitable. This is no idle speculation. History has shown us repeatedly that it is a belief that "foreigners" are making out better than "natives" that is at the root of racist reactions to immigrants.
"Doing better" can now be interpreted as job opportunities or welfare benefits. It was not always such a broad issue. During the Irish diaspora, when the emigrants met with racist action, it was largely because they were the most recent arrivals, prepared to work for less than the previous boatloads of immigrants. Our emigrants, arriving in these new countries, were not in a position to take advantage of generous social welfare systems. They found jobs or they starved.
Of course, while Ireland is often portrayed as a people-exporting island, it have been an asylum for religious refugees in previous centuries. They brought skills we didn't have and added new elements to our view of ourselves and the world.
We must continue that tradition. But we must not allow indiscriminate sympathy to devalue our openness to genuine refugees. When our system says "No" that negative is based on internationally-agreed protocols punctiliously applied by professionals. It should be allowed to mean precisely what it says, so that a "Yes" continues to be a valued judgment on the part of a caring nation.