Deportations from Ireland are being seen as a way of saving money, but some are concerned that human rights may be sidelined
WHEN OFFICIALS from the Department of Finance pored over the accounts of the State’s immigration and asylum bureaucracy last April in search of spending columns to pare and prune, they homed in on an apparent paradox.
The number of people claiming asylum here has been falling in recent years, from a peak of almost 11,600 in 2002 to 3,900 last year, yet the numbers of asylum seekers living in State-funded accommodation centres have been resolutely out of sync with that downward trend, which means that the cost of supporting aspirant refugees has continued rising steadily.
In 2008, the total bill came to some €91.5 million, about €8 million more than the previous year, and this despite the weekly allowance for asylum seekers having stood still at €19.10 per adult since 2000.
The cause, the officials concluded in a memo to the McCarthy expenditure group, was that with “almost every proposed deportee” going to court to fight every step of the removal process and others absconding at the last minute, too few unsuccessful asylum seekers were being deported.
“A priority should be put on ensuring that those who fail in their asylum applications are removed from the State as quickly as possible,” the memo advised. “While the cost of removing certain groups of failed asylum seekers is relatively expensive . . . it outweighs the cost of accommodation and certainly of incarceration in the State.” Flights to Nigeria have in the past cost the State up to €270,000.
The Department of Justice seems to have already arrived at the same conclusion. So far this year the authorities have deported 176 foreign nationals to their countries of origin – more than were expelled in the whole of last year – confirming anecdotal evidence that its “returns strategy” has been stepped up. A further 167 people have been transferred to other European states this year under the EU’s so-called Dublin Regulation, which stipulates that asylum must be sought in the applicant’s first EU country of arrival.
Officials concede that the increased activity is largely down to the pressure being exerted on the immigration and asylum divisions – together one of the largest areas of expenditure in the Department of Justice – to make savings. But, as one Government source puts it, “integration can’t happen without deportation”, by which he means that the social integration project must be underpinned by a sense of public consent that could be jeopardised by a loss of confidence in the immigration regime. In other words, deportations are clearly seen as a political as well as an economic imperative.
While officials believe the great majority of the 6,852 unsuccessful asylum seekers who are currently evading deportation have already left the State, they also worry that an impression of lax enforcement could attract more new arrivals. “The appetite for economic migration (often using the asylum process as a gateway) has not diminished,” the Department of Justice told the McCarthy group in its own submission. “Any relaxation in current strategies . . . could become a very rapid pull factor with serious consequences in the context of increasing asylum applications.”
The department’s efforts have been helped by the Warsaw-based EU border security agency, Frontex, which organises joint deportations between member states and allows them to share the travel costs. On one occasion last year, for example, a group of Ghanaians – including one Irish-based man – was assembled in Dublin by Irish, Italian and French police before being deported on the same flight to Accra.
In its submission, Department of Justice officials also argued that, when enacted, the Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill, which is currently making its way through the Oireachtas, would provide a “faster removals process” and shorten delays across the asylum system.
However, many of the Bill’s critics fear the integrity and fairness of the asylum process might be sacrificed in the process. When the draft law was published last year, the UN refugee agency, the Human Rights Commission and other bodies raised concern about sections that allow for summary deportation, new limitations on access to judicial review and the fact that taking a judicial review may not suspend an individual’s removal from the State. “There is a very real risk that people who should not be deported will be deported, and there will be no remedy available,” warns Derek Stewart, a solicitor specialising in immigration, adding that the potential effects of the proposed changes “would make one almost as concerned as the possibility of putting someone in the electric chair and then realising it was the wrong person, or that they were innocent.”
Because most charter flights depart at night and the authorities’ policy is not to confirm a deportation until the aircraft has set off, immigrant advocacy groups also point to the difficulty in monitoring the deportees’ welfare. And according to Josephine Ahern, director of the Refugee Information Service, the State’s right to deport must be weighed against its obligation not to return people to places where they face serious harm.
“In all of these situations, we’re dealing with human beings. In addition to protecting its borders and making sure that security requirements are met and that immigration law is followed, there has to be a level of humanity in decision-making,” she says.
"When you're dealing with families and children, decisions have to be taken very carefully and human rights have to be at the forefront of those decisions."
GOING DOWN
Asylum applications 1997-2008 (Source: Dept. of Justice)
2008 3,866
2007 3,985
2006 4,314
2005 4,323
2004 4,766
2003 7,900
2002 11,634
2001 10,325
2000 10,938
1999 7,724
1998 4,626
1997 3,883