The possibility that citizen children deported with their immigrant parents could return to Ireland at a future date and sue the State for violating their constitutional rights was raised at an Oireachtas committee yesterday.
What would happen such people was one of many questions which remain unanswered following a recent landmark Supreme Court ruling, according to a national network of asylum-seeker, refugee and immigrant support groups.
Mr Jean-Pierre Eyanga from Integrating Ireland called for a moratorium on deportations pending clarification of the conditions and criteria of implementing the judgment.
The justice committee of the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights is considering last January's Supreme Court decision that non-EU immigrants are not automatically entitled to live in this country by virtue of being parents of children born here, who are automatically entitled to citizenship.
The ruling could have implications for thousands of other non-nationals who have applications for residency pending, as well as their citizen children. In the wake of the judgment, the Department of Justice ended the practice of accepting residency applications from non-EU national parents of Irish citizens.
Mr Eyanga said people who applied for residency before the Supreme Court judgment should be granted it. Those who will have Irish citizen children in the future should also be allowed to apply for residency.
"So many questions related to the protection of the children's rights, which should be the priority of priorities, still remain without answers," he said.
These included the question of what would happen if authorities in the parents' native countries where the children were deported to would not allow them enter if they did not have valid visas. He asked whether there was any mechanism set up by the Department of Justice to make sure that "another class of excluded and discriminated against citizen is not created".
Mr Eyanga also asked what guarantee the Department had to protect these children's rights abroad, since they could be submitted to human rights abuses such as female genital mutilation and lack of freedom to practise religion in their parents' countries.
"What would happen if in future teenagers who are deported with their parents come back in Ireland and sue the State for violations of constitutional rights?" he asked.
Mr Eyanga, who is himself a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, described the humiliations, stress, fear and question marks experienced by people seeking asylum. "Your two feet are not on the ground. You can't either plan anything or make any important decision for yourself or your family," he said. "Somebody else directs your life and makes decisions that affect you and your family, now and in the future."
Mr Eyanga said Ireland was "very racist" when he came here in 1997.