More than 11,000 immigrant families with Irish-born children are anxiouslyawaiting a Government decision on whether they'll be deported, reports Nuala Haughey
Michael Bakay looks every bit the Irish toddler, with his pale complexion and wispy strawberry-blond hair. It is with wide-eyed amusement that his young mother, Svetlana, recounts how people are often surprised to learn that his parents are in fact Russian and Ukrainian.
Michael was born in Ireland 10 months ago, which makes him Irish and entitled to all the rights that citizenship confers. But availing of his right to live on the island of his birth depends on the fate of his parents, who are in a vulnerable legal position. They arrived in Ireland as asylum-seekers about a year ago, but dropped that claim after Michael's birth and sought residency here as the parents of an Irish citizen.
For the past few years, non-EU immigrants like the Bakays were more or less guaranteed that parentage of a child born here would confer on them residency rights. Word about this unusual state of affairs went around the world and it was not long before masters of Dublin's maternity hospitals were complaining about the stress of coping with the increasing numbers of women arriving unannounced in late stages of pregnancy.
Justice officials reported late last year that some 80 per cent of women of child-bearing age who sought asylum in the previous 12 months were visibly pregnant when they lodged their applications. It was a safe bet that many of these people would drop their asylum claims once they had become mothers, and instead claim residency.
And so it came to pass that being visibly an immigrant and visibly pregnant - or even in charge of a baby in a buggy - was enough to provoke hostile reactions from passers-by who perceived this as evidence of "circumventing" normal immigration controls.
Alert to the fact that what has become known as the "Irish-born child" route to residency was increasingly being used by people who did not otherwise have a claim to live here as refugees, the authorities had long since resolved to do something about it. Their efforts culminated in a landmark Supreme Court ruling last January involving a young immigrant couple and their citizen child, Kevin, who were threatened with deportation.
The court found that the Minister for Justice was entitled to deport non-EU immigrant parents of Irish citizens, and that parentage of a citizen did not in itself entitle such people to residency. There were about 10,500 outstanding applications for residency from parents of citizen children when the Supreme Court delivered its verdict; that has now risen to more than 11,500. The court ruling plunged these thousands of immigrant families into states of confusion and fear.
The Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, immediately assured such people that their cases would be dealt with on an individual basis, and ruled out mass deportations. Within days, the issue vanished from the headlines, but the immigrant rumour mill was abuzz.
Within a month of the judgment, it was announced that no further residency applications would be taken from non-EU immigrant parents of children born in Ireland, thus sealing off what had become in itself a busy immigration channel, separate from the asylum system. Already there is speculation that this change may account for a decline this year in the numbers of asylum-seekers arriving in Ireland, although asylum claims are generally down worldwide.
A spokesman for the department says that McDowell will bring a memorandum to Cabinet, setting out proposals for action on the ruling by the end of this month. In the meantime, the wait continues.
"It really affects us because we are now in-between times and we don't know what is going to happen us," says Svetlana in her heavily accented but proficient English. She is seated at a table in the Catherine McAuley Centre in Dublin, a large building run by the Sisters of Mercy, which provides limitless hospitality as well as training and other support for women, including immigrants.
Baby Michael explores the table as his mother talks about her dream to build a life in Ireland, her ambition to work here as a teacher (as she did in her native Moscow), and her worries about how the family would cope if forced to return to her husband's country of birth, Ukraine. Michael, she says, "would live like a foreigner" there and they would have to pay for education and health services for him.
Beside Svetlana sits Stella Williams, nursing her three-month-old daughter, Danielle. Williams is a banker from Nigeria and she made her residency claim after the Supreme Court ruling. She and her husband also still have an outstanding asylum claim. She says she thought she was coming to Britain when she left her country, but was advised - by whom exactly she does not specify - that "if you are pregnant, Ireland is better".
Williams says she was afraid to leave the house in the days immediately after the Supreme Court judgment.
"Everything seems so bleak," she explains. "What scares us is that if we are deported we could be sent to jail in my country. So leaving here would be a worse situation. The fear is what happens to your child."
Nigeria is so corrupt, she adds, "it is not an environment I would want my children to grow up in."
The Children's Rights Alliance says this issue should be all about children, but that they have been treated as "almost a footnote to a discussion of asylum policy".
Before the State effectively deports its own citizens - assuming that all parents denied residency will take their Irish-born offspring with them - it must seriously examine the impact of its actions on each child's constitutional rights, says the alliance's chief executive, Ray Dooley.
"Officials need to satisfy themselves that they have given consideration to the best interests of the children and determined whether there is a real and probable risk that their constitutional rights will be violated in the country they are being deported to," he says.
Assessing the prospect of future abuse or exploitation of children has to be part of a thorough procedure and "not just a little box to tick off", he adds.
Sister Joan McManus, of the Catherine McAuley Centre, estimates that 200 women have come through its doors in the past year, and only about five have residency status. She noticed the "hoo-ha", emotion and distress that greeted the Supreme Court ruling and how a "low-key" depression has settled on some women in the period of limbo since.
"While I don't know the details of everyone's story, I know everyone has a story," she says. "Our role is to offer them the support and the sense of belonging and welcome that they deserve and to empower them when they are here with skills to enable them to take a role in society in Ireland or any country."