Immigration Referendum

rde

I ask this question and I ask for an answer and please no more rhetorical questions in answer to factual ones. Yes or No. Do you believe that the rest of Europe is racist because, unlike Ireland, it does not allow citizenship solely on the basis of birth?

I'll answer that when you point out once single instance where I used the word 'racist'. Apart from that one.

We can no longer afford to take the chance that terrorists will not use our asylum-systems to infiltrate our country and plan attacks on other states. It is known that some of the September 11th hijackers, including Mohammad Atta, had Irish passports.

Did they get their passports solely because they were born in this country? If not, it's irrelevent.

rde, at least then it would be our elected government and parliament making that decision rather than being lumbered with a system designed in 1998 which was intended to protect NI Nationalists but which has instead benefited illegal-immigrants.

So you don't think the we should be lumbered with laws that we're stuck with because of bad constitutional referenda, then?

And once again: if people are in this country illegally, then there are procedures in place to deal with them. This constitutional amendment won't change that, or their status.

dathi1

I cant see why we have to have 3 years...why not 10?? as a matter of fact why do we have to have illegal immigrants full stop?

ishmael whale

Originally posted by dathi1
I cant see why we have to have 3 years...why not 10?? as a matter of fact why do we have to have illegal immigrants full stop?

As I understand it, the proposed legislation will require three years legal residence - periods of illegal residence will not count. The question should nearly be put the other way. Clearly there is no case to be made for granting citizenship to children of people illegally entering the country, which is the flaw in the present provision that needs to be corrected. But if someone has legally entered the country, why make them wait three years? If the purpose of the time limit is to stop, say, people legally entering the country on a holiday visa close to term with the purpose of getting Irish/EU citizenship for their child then the period could be much shorter.

That said, the planned legislation still seems to be more open than other European states.

Phil_321

Originally posted by Victor

quote:

---

Originally posted by arcadegame2004
And Victor, I do believe that Al-Qaida would sink to any tactic to get their people into our country, including possibly using the baby-rule.

Ah, yes new headline "Al-Qaida signing up foetuses". :rolleyes:

Hey arcadegame2004 ,I don't think this immigration referendum has anything to do with combating international terrorism. Nobody has ever even suggested it.

arcadegame2004

Victor don't be twisting what I'm saying please. Of course I am not suggesting the babies are members of Al-Qaida!!! I am saying that Al-Qaida could use the current baby rule to get their adult cells into our state.

Phil_321

Originally posted by arcadegame2004
Victor don't be twisting what I'm saying please. Of course I am not suggesting the babies are members of Al-Qaida!!! I am saying that Al-Qaida could use the current baby rule to get their adult cells into our state.

He was being sarcastic. There are plenty of valid reasons for voting yes. Al Quaeeda isn't one of them. You don't need citizenship to enter the country. Unless they were planning on getting welfare while they're planning attacks, I don't see them applying for citizenship/asylum.

arcadegame2004

Good to see the results of the TV3 poll that replies to the q "Should all children born in Ireland have Irish citizenship?" with an 84% "No". This will hopefully translate into a decisive "Yes" in the referendum.

Victor

Originally posted by arcadegame2004
I am saying that Al-Qaida could use the current baby rule to get their adult cells into our state.

And stem cells no doubt. Imagine the Prime Time documentaty "Al-Qaida: Inside the Womb".

Honestly, if someone want's to enter this country they can, they need not encumber themselves with a pregnant woman.

sceptre

I can tell that I'll have no problems getting my future children to go to bed - no need to threaten them with a phantom bogeyman or bogeymen, I'll just threaten them with Al-Qu'ada, the clinching point in all arguments, even when dragged in kicking, screaming and moaning about irrelevancy.

ishmael whale

Originally posted by arcadegame2004
Good to see the results of the TV3 poll that replies to the q "Should all children born in Ireland have Irish citizenship?" with an 84% "No". This will hopefully translate into a decisive "Yes" in the referendum.

It should, but not if you keep on about Al-Qaida.

dathi1

Good to see the results of the TV3 poll that replies to the q "Should all children born in Ireland have Irish citizenship?" with an 84% "No". This will hopefully translate into a decisive "Yes" in the referendum.

Considering the typical audience demographics of TV3 is around the 18-35 yr age group and the boards poll here would probably show the same age group but with a lot more lefties thrown in..I'd say the result will break the 90% barrier. This should verify beyond all reasonable doubt the results of a private research firm brought in by Ahearn 2 months ago from the states was correct when people surveyed on the street put immigration as their first No1 concern 7 points above healthcare!! Hopefully if its a resounding yes it will actually have more of an effect on the Government's future policy on illegal immigration instead of the past deliberate pro IBEC, drive the wages down, open border policy which backfired and introduced a new €500 million a year social welfare dependant class.

Victor

Looks like McDowell lied in his radio interview.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0422/citizenship.html

40-50% non-EU births for citizenship: McDowell

22 April 2004 17:30
The Minister for Justice has claimed that between 40% and 50% of non-EU nationals who give birth in Ireland do so to gain Irish citizenship for their children.

Mr McDowell also told RTÉ News that he accepted that the Masters of Dublin maternity hospitals had not asked him to change the Constitution.

However, he said they had asked him to tighten immigration controls.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio, the Master of the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street, Dr Declan Keane, said they had not asked Mr McDowell to take action on the issue of non-national pregnant women availing of a citizenship loophole.

His counterpart at the Coombe Hospital, Sean Daly, told RTÉ that this was a resource issue for the hospitals.

According to figures from the three maternity hospitals, the total number of non-EU nationals who booked in late or who arrived without booking at all last year was 548.

Earlier, in the continuing Dáil debate on the citizenship referendum, Opposition speakers questioned the need to hold it in the light of new figures suggesting that so-called 'citizenship tourism' may be very low.

A Government backbencher, David Andrews of Fianna Fáil, also questioned the urgency of pressing ahead with a referendum in June.

Cork

I think that no country in the EU give automatic citizenship except for Ireland.

It is being abused. Airlines should not allow heavily pregnant women to travel.

These women arrive in hospitals where doctors do not know their medical history.

This referendum is absolutely necessery.

arcadegame2004

Victor, he did not "lie". The release of the memorandum makes things crystal-clear. Whatever some people may try to do in the way of rewriting history, the fact is that the Masters of the Rotunda were asking for immigration-controls to be tightened. Michael McDowell has never specifically said that the Masters of the Rotunda were asking for a referendum. Even so, a referendum of this kind is a logical move in the direction of such immigration-policy tightening.

arcadegame2004

May I add that no statistics are available from the Coombe Hospital. May I add also that there is more to "citizenship-tourism" than arriving here in the late stages of pregnancy (thought undoubtedly it is a major part of this phenomenon). To my mind, the term also encompasses asylum-seekers who have children while their applications are being processed, with a view to making the powers that be look more favourably on their asylum-applications. This too is wrong.

netman

Being a non-EU national myself, I can see a whole lot of problems with the current legislation, but quite frankly the citizenship process is a bit silly.

Currently, if you want to be an Irish national, you have a choice of:

A) Work here for 5 years, then apply for citizenship if you intend to stay, and wait for another few years while your application is being processed. All this time you're dutifully paying your taxes and making the goverment tens of thousands of euro.

Get any woman pregnant, bring her over and let her have your child here, boom - instant Irish passport.

The B option is open to abuse and I guess that's why the goverment is trying to change the legislation.

I don't even need to stress out the fact that the option B is very risky to the health of the mother and child, but I guess the Irish hospitals would be better equiped than the ones in Africa or Asia for example.

Victor

Originally posted by netman
Get any woman pregnant, bring her over and let her have your child here, boom - instant Irish passport.

Fuk off you ignorant muppet, back under whatever rock you came out from under (but read the rest of the thread first). At most this would entitle someone "leave to remain", for some it ends up in deportation. No passport.

Chaz

Originally posted by Victor
Fuk off you ignorant muppet, back under whatever rock you came out from under (but read the rest of the thread first). At most this would entitle someone "leave to remain", for some it ends up in deportation. No passport.

Thats a nice way to have a civilised debate. Insult the guy - perhaps he said something incorrect or a blantant guess - but that requires no name calling and insulting. I reckon you owe him and others in this thread an apology.

sceptre

Originally posted by netman
Currently, if you want to be an Irish national, you have a choice of:

A) Work here for 5 years, then apply for citizenship if you intend to stay, and wait for another few years while your application is being processed. All this time you're dutifully paying your taxes and making the goverment tens of thousands of euro.

Get any woman pregnant, bring her over and let her have your child here, boom - instant Irish passport.

You are misinformed and misinforming. Option B doesn't get you an Irish passport, it gives your child the option of an Irish passport. There are additional reasons why option B wouldn't work but the fact is that you don't get one even if you are the legal guardian of the child.

dathi1

this makes interesting listening on the subject: RealPlayer (RTE)

Morning Ireland: Lisa Pereira spoke to a Nigerian woman who was about to give birth to her second Irish child Lisa Pereira spoke to a Nigerian woman who was about to give birth to her second Irish child
Morning Ireland: Dr Declan Keane, Master of the National Maternity Hospital (Holles St), says he believes there is a tendency to travel to Ireland for citizenship births

netman

Originally posted by sceptre
You are misinformed and misinforming. Option B doesn't get you an Irish passport, it gives your child the option of an Irish passport. There are additional reasons why option B wouldn't work but the fact is that you don't get one even if you are the legal guardian of the child.

Ok, so it was an overstatement. But the child becomes an Irish citizen, and the parents are allowed to stay and work in the country. I don't think any of these people really care what's on the front page of their passport as long as they can live and work in the country. (or claim benefits, whatever the case may be)

netman

Originally posted by Victor
Fuk off you ignorant muppet, back under whatever rock you came out from under (but read the rest of the thread first). At most this would entitle someone "leave to remain", for some it ends up in deportation. No passport.

You poor bastard. If this is the way you speak to people I really feel sorry for you.

sceptre

Originally posted by netman
Ok, so it was an overstatement. But the child becomes an Irish citizen, and the parents are allowed to stay and work in the country

No it wasn't an "overstatement", it was a misleading statement and if you knew it was a misleading statement then it was a lie.

Some parents have been allowed to stay. Some parents have been deported. We had a Supreme Court decision on that and it confirmed the right of the State to deport people who had given birth to a child here. Go look it up.

arcadegame2004

"Some parents have been allowed to stay. Some parents have been deported. We had a Supreme Court decision on that and it confirmed the right of the State to deport people who had given birth to a child here. Go look it up."

That may be the theory Sceptre but in practice only a absolutely tiny percentage of asylum-seekers coming to this state are deported. Last year it ran into maybe 600. But 8,800 people applied for asylum in this country then. What's that about 7%? What ever about Supreme Court Judgements, the practical reality on the ground is that illegal immigrants coming here know there is virtually no chance that they are going to be deported. Well a 7 in 100 chance then but still that's hardly any.

I fail to understand how ANY of the asylum-seekers in this country can be legal. Because the 1981 Dublin Convention makes it clear that you are supposed to claim asylum in the first EU country you enter. It is impossible that a single one of the asylum-seekers in our country entered Ireland before they enterred any other country. As such all asylum-seekers almost in this state must be illegal-immigrants, Irish-born child or no Irish-born child. I resent the way in which supporters of the "No" side have sought to make out that the number of citizenship-tourists in our country is only around 400. Especially when you consider that figures for the Coombe Hospital in Dublin are not available nor are they even compiled. In any case, my definition of a "citizenship-tourist" is broader than just someone coming here in the late stages of pregnancy to win citizenship for her Irish-born child. I extend the definition to include illegal-immigrants who have children born here at ANY stage of their claim for asylum. Clearly they too have Irish citizenship in mind. Tha tbeing the case the number of citizenship-tourists runs into the thousands.

arcadegame2004

"We had a Supreme Court decision on that and it confirmed the right of the State to deport people who had given birth to a child here. "

Another misleading point by Sceptre. The Supreme Court did NOT say that in all cases, the parent can be deported.

Cork

Originally posted by arcadegame2004

I fail to understand how ANY of the asylum-seekers in this country can be legal. Because the 1981 Dublin Convention makes it clear that you are supposed to claim asylum in the first EU country you enter. It is impossible that a single one of the asylum-seekers in our country entered Ireland before they enterred any other country. As such all asylum-seekers almost in this state must be illegal-immigrants, Irish-born child or no Irish-born child. I resent the way in which supporters of the "No" side have sought to make out that the number of citizenship-tourists in our country is only around 400. Especially when you consider that figures for the Coombe Hospital in Dublin are not available nor are they even compiled. In any case, my definition of a "citizenship-tourist" is broader than just someone coming here in the late stages of pregnancy to win citizenship for her Irish-born child. I extend the definition to include illegal-immigrants who have children born here at ANY stage of their claim for asylum. Clearly they too have Irish citizenship in mind. Tha tbeing the case the number of citizenship-tourists runs into the thousands.

I can't understand why the Dublin Convention is not been applied.

What this referendum is about is stopping abuse of Irish nationality laws. If this referendum is passed - the same situation would be in Ireland as the rest of the EU.

sceptre

Originally posted by arcadegame2004
Another misleading point by Sceptre. The Supreme Court did NOT say that in all cases, the parent can be deported.

Of course it didn't.

By the way I'm trying to find the first point - you've quoted "Some parents have been allowed to stay. Some parents have been deported. We had a Supreme Court decision on that and it confirmed the right of the State to deport people who had given birth to a child here. Go look it up." above, repeated half of it here and I can't find another "misleading" point. Drop me a link to it, will you?

Meanwhile, to deal with the substance of what you're probably trying to say...

The decisions in Osayande and Lobe confirmed that the State had the right of deportation, having regard for rights confirmed by Fajujonu a number of years before. The first two cases I've mentioned also confirmed the absolute right of children born here to Irish citizenship and there's the rub of the whole thing. We had a decision in 2000 that confirmed the constitutionality of the then Illegal Immigrants (Traficking) Bill, specifically articles 5 and 10 (In The Matter of Article 26 of the Constitution and Section 5 and Section 10 of the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Bill, 1999). I've my doubts about the legality of article 5 and think an ECHR judgement would confirm my suspicions but until that happens the article stands. In any case, a successful ECHR case would merely increase the time allowed for a judicial review from 14 days to six months, not affecting the thrust of the article.

Under the Fajujonu ruling, the decision of whether to grant clemency rests with the Minister for Justice. It's important to remember the ruling in Laurentiu v. Minister for Justice (1999) when considering whether the State has the right of deportation or not (Keane J: "The general principle that the right to expel or deport aliens inheres in the State by virtue of its nature and not because it has been conferred on particular organs of the State by statute"). Section 3 (6) of the Immigration Act 1999 lays down a list of considerations the Minister for Justice must take into consideration before issuing a deportation order. The wording in the Act is that the Minister "shall have regard for..." where the applicant has the status of a person without title to remain in the State (as is the case with all asylum-seekers whose applications have been refused). "Have regard for" doesn't mean that the Minister is bound to leave anyone who's set up a family here to stay, it merely means that he needs to have regard for it when making his decision - the ultimate decision remains with the Minister. It doesn't include an obligation to revisit the original decision and the Minister's reasons need only be properly intelligible and adequate (see MJT Securities Ltd. v. Secretary of State for the Environment (1998)) (quoted with approval in the 2001 cases I mention below), he need not provide a discursive judgement on his deliberations (O'Donoghue v. An Bord Pleanala (1988)), confirmed as relevant by Geoghan J in Laurentin.

Meanwhile the use of Article 41.3.1 of Bunreacht na hEireann to allow applicants to remain in the State has been substantially rejected in P v The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and L v The Minister for Justice Equality and Law Reform as well as B v The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and The Attorney General[/i] (all judgements delivered at the same time in 2001).

Hence in the cases of all individuals who have been refused status as refugees the decision on whether or not to deport lies with the State, regardless of whether the refused applicant has had a child here or not. Any court decision made after the refusal essentially revisits the original judgement. Whether they actually do choose to deport or not is another matter but I didn't bring that up so I'm not going to bother addressing it - it's outside the scope of what you've called on me to address and is irrelevant to what I'm rebutting.

I do hope you weren't implying that I said that the State had the right to deport anyone who had a child here, regardless of who they were? Such a right would be rather silly and would imply that the State had the right to deport whoever the hell it wanted, including current citizens.

edit: Funny, I haven't commented properly on whether the proposed amendment is a good thing or not and you choose to call me misleading just because I pulled some guy on a stupid comment made. There are other fish in the barrel you might have an easier time with.

arcadegame2004

More proof of the blatent abuse of our asylum-system by citizenship tourists in today's Sunday Independent:

"Report backs up maternity crisis

ADVERTISEMENT



JIM CUSACK

DESPITE the Supreme Court judgement in February last year, the numbers of women coming here to give birth rose as the parents involved double-guessed the Government and decided that if they had a child here they would eventually be allowed entry.

This conclusion has been set out in a series of Government replies and additional letters and documents provided to Fine Gael's Jim O'Keeffe, which were lodged in the Dail Library on Friday.

It paints a bleak picture of conditions in the three Dublin maternity hospitals where staff have been assaulted and have had to deal with hundreds of late arrival pregnancies including women with HIV, hepatitis and syphilis.

A 10-page document, drawn up by senior officials in Justice and Foreign Affairs, reveals that the attraction of having a baby in Ireland, conferring citizenship on the child if not the parents, is still drawing hundreds of women here from around the world.

Despite the February 2003 Supreme Court judgement denying parents the right to automatic citizenship, the numbers of pregnant women coming here actually increased last year. The document shows that the number of births to non-nationals in Dublin's three maternity hospitals rose from 4,440 in 2002 (before the Supreme Court judgement) to 5,471 in 2003.

This represented a rise of 19.9 per cent of all births in Dublin in 2002 to 23.9 per cent in 2003. At Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, the main maternity hospital used by immigrants outside Dublin, 20.3 per cent of births were to non-nationals last year. Last year asylum applications were received from 1,893 pregnant women.

The report referred back to the concerns raised with the Government by the masters of the three Dublin hospitals. The National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street had to contend with 163 foreign women who had not booked ahead and arrived either in or near labour. The Rotunda had more with 269.

In 2002 the Dublin maternity hospitals had 1,641 non-EU mothers and last year this rose to 2,670.

The arrival of women in such late stages of pregnancy and the increasing numbers infected with hepatitis, HIV and syphilis has been causing crises in the hospitals for the past three years.

The Government's reply to Mr O'Keeffe is accompanied by copies of letters received from the masters of the Dublin maternity hospitals raising concerns about the serious impact of late arrivals on the hospitals. It also includes minutes of a meeting between Michael McDowell and two of the masters, Dr Michael Geary of the Rotunda and Dr Sean Daly of the Coombe on October 18, 2002.

The minutes include the following passages: "Dr Geary said the high rate of infectious diseases among these groups has huge cost implications for the maternity hospitals. He went on to say that, having regard to all the circumstances, it was surprising that there had not been a major catastrophe within the maternity services as yet."

It adds: "Three categories of women attend the Dublin hospitals - nationals, non-nationals (mainly asylum seekers) and those who arrived from the UK, have their babies and return. This latter group generally is not involved in the asylum process. Non-nationals usually stay, on average, about two days longer in maternity facilities and the 'race card' is regularly played by many of them in seeking services. In a recent incident a midwife was knocked out by the male partner of one of the patients and the hospital and INO (Irish Nursing Organisation) are examining the matter."

And: "The hospital managers said that the strains being put on their financial, human and other resources by non-nationals (ie, due to late arrivals, high rates of HIV, hepatitis and syphilis) flow directly from immigration control issues which are solely matters for the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and its agencies."

A letter dated January 20, 2003 to Health Minister Micheal Martin is also attached in which the three Dublin masters wrote: "We are writing to update you on what is currently happening in three Dublin maternity hospitals. Many women who have low-risk pregnancies are being allocated housing and given access to maternity care in areas other than Dublin.

"Unfortunately, the Department of Social Welfare and the welfare officers pay women their entitlements at 32 weeks of pregnancy. This allows them to relocate to Dublin and they arrive into any of the three Dublin maternity hospitals in labour, having received no antenatal care and we have no access to important medical information such as their HIV status. This severely compromises our ability to deliver care.

"We cannot emphasise strongly enough the importance of a unified approach by the various Government departments in dealing with this problem.

"If both the Department of Justice and Department of Health recognise the difficulties of retaining many thousands of women in Dublin then the Department of Social Welfare needs to ensure that welfare payments are not being made available until after the delivery of the baby and that they can only be claimed in the region where accommodation and medical services are being provided. We hope that you will be able to do something in terms of co-ordinating the Government's approach to this problem," the letter stated.

The doctors' plea for Government action includes the rider that if the present trends were to continue, Dublin would need a fourth maternity hospital. During discussions, the Government decided it would seek a referendum in order to amend the section, inserted under the Good Friday Agreement that gives automatic citizenship to anyone born on the island of Ireland. "

So the problem is actually WORSE than before the much-vaunted Supreme Court judgement.

sceptre

The Irish Times has a completely different take on citizenship tourists. Incidentally the January 2003 letter quoted in the Independent doesn't appear to mention either asylum seekers or immigrants, illegal or otherwise and could be read to mean people from Munster travelling to Dublin as easily. Is some of the letter missing?

Irish Times, last Thursday.

'Citizenship tourists' a tiny group, statistics indicate
Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent


Newly released figures imply that the number of women arriving in Ireland in late pregnancy in order to claim citizenship for their child represents only a tiny proportion of total births.

The figures were released by the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, as a bitter Dáil debate got under way yesterday on the Government's proposal to hold a referendum to allow the Oireachtas restrict the existing automatic entitlement of children of non-nationals to hold Irish citizenship. The Dáil proceedings continue today.

The statistics and documents published yesterday indicate that there is a phenomenon of "citizenship tourism", as Mr McDowell has insisted, but that it appears to be very small.

In the Dáil yesterday Mr McDowell said he knew anecdotally of "women from eastern Europe and elsewhere in the world who have come here on holiday visas, given birth, collected the birth certificate and the passport for the child and returned home." The Government has said that the need to end this phenomenon is among the reasons for holding an early referendum.

However, the statistics show that in 2003, just 442 births in the two largest Dublin maternity hospitals were to non-EU nationals who either booked into the hospital late or arrived without booking at all.

Of these an unknown number involved births to non-EU nationals legally resident in Ireland, and a small number are believed to have involved women transferred from other hospitals because of medical complications.

Based on these figures, best estimates suggest that between the Rotunda and Holles Street hospitals there was roughly one birth a day to women arriving late in pregnancy - the category to which so-called "citizenship tourists" belong.

There are no statistics available of this type for the third major Dublin maternity hospital, the Coombe. There were 22,895 births in the three main Dublin maternity hospitals in 2003.

Another letter released yesterday from the Master of the Coombe Hospital, Dr Sean Daly, in January 2003 suggests that many of the pregnant women arriving at the last minute in Dublin hospitals to give birth are not coming directly from outside the State, but are asylum seekers already resident elsewhere in the State who choose to come to Dublin to give birth. If true this means the number of "citizenship tourists" is smaller.

Nevertheless an internal Department of Justice memo also released yesterday reports that in August 2003 the Masters of the maternity hospitals said there was "quite a number" of pregnant women who "arrive with their antenatal notes from the UK, deliver and return immediately. According to Dr Declan Keane, Master, Holles Street, this cohort is now causing the hospitals greater difficulty than the asylum seekers," this memo says.

Other letters and records released show that the Masters of Dublin's three main maternity hospitals have been expressing concern to the Government for 18 months about the growing number of non-national births. The letters from the Masters do not propose any constitutional change, despite the assertion last month by Mr McDowell that they had "pleaded" for constitutional change.

However, an internal Department of Justice memo of August 2003 reports that the Masters believed that "something needs to be done to tighten up controls in the immigration area".

A note of a meeting between the Minister and two of the Masters in October 2002 appears to bear out Mr McDowell's insistence that in proposing the referendum he is motivated by a desire not to fuel racism. He promised the Masters decisive action to ease the pressure on maternity services caused by the high number of asylum seekers arriving late in pregnancy, as the existing difficulties were "fuelling racist thinking" among the public, the note says.

The Taoiseach yesterday spoke strongly in support of holding the referendum on June 11th.

Either the Sunday Independent or Irish Times is seeking to mislead.

arcadegame2004

The absence of statistics for the Coombe Hospital is interesting. The Sunday Indo quotes Department of Health statistics and I imgine they would be more familiar with the problem than the Justice Dept.