Nasc, the Irish Immigrant Support Centre - Our Year in Review, 2011

1. Work and projects undertaken during the year

2011 proved to be an eventful year in immigration and asylum law. New developments in jurisprudence and government policy generated a lot of attention and Nasc registered a record number of new service users in 2011. In total over 1,000 people presented at Nasc’s legal clinics for advice on a diverse and varied number of issues during the year.

One of the areas of work that has remained a constant in our legal information clincis has been undertaking advocacy for applicants who experience difficulty with the naturalisation process. Refugees are people for whom the state has recognised that contact with the organs of the state from which they have fled could be dangerous for them. Despite this, refugees in Ireland have found themselves faced with a request from the Citizenship section to obtain a Birth Certificate from their country of origin. Having successfully advocated for a waiver of this requirement in the cases of several refugee applicants for naturalisation, Nasc undertook a joint intervention with the UNHCR, which included the submission of an evidence base from our clinics detailing the practical reasons why this requirement constituted an absolute bar to naturalisation for many refugees. Following this, the Department of Justice and Equality have reversed their requirement that Birth Certificates were required for refugees when applying for Naturalisation.

What we learn through our case work forms the basis for all of our campaigns. Early this year it came to our attention that immigrants were being routinely, and usually informally, refused when applying for social housing. We examined the legislation, and were at a loss to understand the grounds on which people were being refused. During the following months we encouraged applicants (through the clinics and online) to insist on receiving a formal refusal. Through PILA, the Public Interest Law Alliance, we sourced the Opinion of Neil Maddox, BL, whose book Housing Authority Law, was published by Roundhall in 2010. When we were sure that what we were seeing constituted state-sponsored, and unconstitutional, discrimination, we began liaiasing with colleagues in other organisations, and we wrote together to the Minister for Social Housing. When we didn’t get a response, we started working on getting a journalist interested in the story. We were delighted to read Jennifer Hough’s article, “Nasc: Non-EU Workers kept off housing list”, in the Irish Examiner on the 6th of December. The article included the news that a “spokesperson for the department said that guidance regarding access to social housing by non-Irish nationals was under review and updated rules would be issued to local authorities shortly.” You can read the full story behind the article here. 

In addition to a huge volume of casework, Nasc has also been heavily involved in promoting integration both locally and nationally. We were proud to be part of organising Cork City’s first Integration Conference, which took place in the City Hall on the 12th of September last. As well as linking a wide range of independent and statutory organisations in the city to opportunities to foster integration, we have been busy promoting and operating our racism monitoring project, which is linked locally with An Garda Síochána, and nationally to our work as members of the Irish Network Against Racism. Many of the reports concerned verbal abuse, in workplaces and in neighbourhoods. Even where the incidents didn’t constitute a crime, the Community Gardaí in Cork have responded with subtle interventions and real victim support. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Sgt. Trevor Laffan and his team for demonstrating a real commitment to keeping Cork “a safe harbour”.

2. Highlights of the year

The appointment of Mr. Justice Hogan to the High Court

The appointment of Mr. Justice Gerard Hogan to the High Court was undoubtedly a highlight of 2011. Justice Hogan, in a series of cases – particularly P.S. and B.E. v M.J.E.L.R. [2011] IEHC 92 – has redrawn the balance between individual’s rights and the right of the State to protect its borders. At paragraph 23 of his judgement, Justice Hogan states that the principle of maintaining the integrity of the asylum system, important as it is, must sometimes yield “if only, perhaps, in unusual and exceptional cases – to countervailing and competing values, one of which is the importance of protecting the institution of marriage.” This is by no means revolutionary; we have far to go to catch up to our English counterparts, who have embraced the possibilities of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which requires the protection of “private and family life.” However, Justice Hogan’s judgement has introduced some humanity to the status quo in Ireland, where the integrity of the asylum system has traditionally been seen as more important than the rights of the family.

The reunifications of the families of 70 of our service users , and hope for others through Zambrano 

Reuniting families has always been at the core of our work in Nasc; we assist people in making residency applications, visa applications and applications for family reunification under the Refugee Act. The importance of recent jurisprudence to our work, in particular the judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Case C-34/09 Zambrano v Office National de l’emploi (ONEm) cannot be overstated; our FAQ for parents of Irish Citizen Children, whose right to reside in Ireland with their Irish citizen child had now been recognised, was this year’s big website hit.

On Tuesday 6th December 2011 Nasc successfully reunited its 70th family of 2011. In June 2011, Nasc applied for a 'Zambrano' visa to enable a mother and her young Irish citizen child to return to Ireland. She had previously been obliged to leave the State on the expiration of her immigration visa. After a long delay by the visa office in processing her application, we would like to wish all the best to our newest family, who should be home in time for Christmas.
 
3. Lowlights of the Year

A dissapointing response to Zambrano 

Although the judgment in Zambrano was one of the year’s highlights, the subsequent response by the Department of Justice and Equality can only be described as a disappointment. The response of the Minister for Justice and Equality, Mr. Alan Shatter, post Zambrano initially appeared to be quite positive and gave us reason to believe that the old dialectic of the Department of Justice had changed. In his statement of the 21st March 2011, he spoke of taking a “positive approach” and of acting in “the best interests of the welfare of eligible minor Irish citizen children...”

Unfortunately, in practice, the commitment to the best interests of minor Irish citizen children has been surface deep. Immigration permissions are being issued on a discretionary basis with stringent conditions for renewal, visa applications are languishing for months in the visa office in Dublin and the policy for granting visas to enter the State is extremely narrow. Parents of Irish citizen children who obeyed the laws of the State and left the country when their immigration permission expired are not considered eligible to apply for visas to enter the State, nor are the parents of Irish citizen children who have never been able to enter the State. Additionally, parents named on Irish birth certificates are being required by the Department of Justice to pay for DNA testing to provide ‘conclusive’ proof of their parentage of the child.

Introduction of steep fees for applications for naturalisation

Nasc was also extremely concerned by the introduction a fee of €175 to apply for naturalisation. Prior to the introduction of this fee the cost of attaining Irish citizenship was already the third highest in the MIPEX countries at €950. According to the independent Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), “[b]ecoming Irish is one of the most expensive gambles in Europe and North America, with fees rising to €950.” Now applicants are faced with an additional application fee of €175. The application fee is forfeited if an application is rejected, even on the basis of a minor oversight on the form. We are concerned that this is will act as a very real disincentive for migrants who may be considering applying for naturalisation.

Ireland’s broken asylum system creaks on.

The rate of acceptance of protection applications in Ireland must count as the absolute lowlight of the year. The statistics for 2010, which were published this year, showed that Ireland had fallen below Greece in its approval rates, so that we now have the lowedt recognition rate for refugees in the European Union. Figures published by Eurostat show that the acceptance rate in Ireland fell to just 1.3% in 2010.

We are often asked why people have to wait so long for a final decision in their case. It's a result of the low rate of acceptance of asylum claims, and because we don't have a "single procedure" system here - instead, once the asylum application is rejected (98.7% likely), applicants go on to ask for "subsidiary protection", and then for "humanitarian leave to remain", in separate applications. Add in bad standards of decision making, and High Court waiting times of around two years to have the various, separate, decisions reviewed, and you begin too see why people end up waiting years. Hopefully 2012 will see the introduction of a streamlined and fair asylum system here, with a single procedure instead of a series of separate applications.

4. Plans for next year

Ensuring immigrants in Cork can access effective advice and information services

We have been working to ensure that our service users can access mainstream information centres, and to make sure that those service providers are enabled to deal with queries that are specific to immigrants – matters concerning their residency, for example. We are working with the Citizens’ Information Centres to test our information resources, which we hope to publish for the use of the general public in 2012. Immigrants resident in Cork will now find their local C.I.C. can provide assistance with matters such as social welfare applications, work permit applications, travel documents and holiday visas.

Likewise, having dealt with hundreds of such applications over the past few years, we have begun testing a detailed information resource to guide applicants for naturalisation, who find themselves presented with an arcane and untransparent system. We have tested this resource in several seminars during the year, and we are now revising it to incorporate recent changes in the application process.

Campaigning for change

Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter, TD, is expected to publish a revised version of the Immigration Residence and Protection Bill 2010 early next year. We worked with our colleagues in several other human rights organisations this Summer, to produce a joint briefing document on the IRP Bill outlining key matters of concern. We will be burying our heads in the new Bill when it comes out, to examine how the changes seem likely to affect our service users… and then we’ll be doing everything we can to campaign for a fair immigration system.

One of the changes we hope will be included in the new Bill is a recognition of the need to protect immigrant victims of domestic violence. Migrants whose immigration status is tied to that of their spouse (for example the wives of work permit holders), are often not aware that independence is achievable for them, because there is no formal pathway to independent residency for them in the legislation. In 2011 we published a guide to obtaining independent residency status for immigrants experiencing domestic abuse, based on evidence of practices and solutions developed in our personal advocacy work, for the use of survivors and their advocates. In 2012, we will be working shoulder to shoulder with the Immigrant Council of Ireland, AkiDwa, and a number of other NGO’s and Domestic Violence Service providers, through a coalition we have formed, to campaign for independent residency for victims of Domestic Violence.

Another issue about which we remain deeply concerned is the appaling fact that the the state is failing to protect asylum seekers and their children from abuse and neglect. Our plans for 2012 include documenting the concerns of asylum seekers who live in residential institutions, and who are afraid to “complain” to the authorities when their health and welfare is jeopardised. We have been working with an expanding network of organisations who share our concerns, through the Forum on Direct Provision. Between us, we will be visiting TDs and Senators throughout Ireland in 2012, to ask them not to fail another generation of children who are growing up in residential institutions, whose pleas for help have been falling on deaf ears.

We are looking forward to the new year, and espacially to holding a Cork “launch” of our joint publication with the Immigrant Council, “Living in Limbo – Migrants’ Experiences of Applying for Naturalisation in Ireland.” We have been lining up a fantastic key-note speaker and a wonderful venue for the occasion, so watch this space for details in January!

5. How you can support our work

The funding climate has changed radically in Ireland over the last year or so. We have never received funding from the state, and the philanthropic funders who got us off the ground and who have kept us afloat over the past decade are winding down.

That puts our future entirely in your hands.

If you think our work is valuable, do please consider committing to a monthly donation, or making a donation to us this Christmas through our website.

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