Sir, - In response to remarks made by the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin (The Irish Times, April 5th), a Department of Justice spokesman noted that the Department had always handled the refugee situation in accordance with guidelines laid down by the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). But the question must be asked: is the Department hiding behind the strict terms of the Geneva Convention in order to maintain a very ungenerous immigration policy towards people from outside the EU?
The main concern of the UNHCR is to see that the 1951 Convention on Refugees is upheld and is not compromised. It is concerned that if governments found the convention impossible to administer and control they might abandon it altogether, and people facing very explicit persecution for political or religious beliefs could then find no asylum. For this reason the UNHCR is supportive of Departmental decisions to turn down many applications.
However, the UNHCR maintains that it is not healthy to have only one channel (the asylum-seeking route) whereby immigrants from outside the EC can get into Ireland. The UNHCR would welcome another system alongside the refugee route, such as immigration quotas, whereby immigrants from certain countries could get visas to come to Ireland to seek work. It feels that, if such a route existed, many of the existing asylum-seekers would choose it in preference to the current one.
Those seeking refugee status currently amount to about 4,000 a year. While this is not an insignificant figure, it amounts to only about 10 per cent of total annual immigration. A great deal of the efforts of the Department of Justice to curb immigration is directed at this 10 per cent. Since 1994, 10,475 people have come to Ireland to seek asylum and 458 of these have been recognised as refugees. The issue of concern is our treatment of the 96 per cent of applicants - 10,017 people - who fled their countries to rebuild their lives in Ireland. Hiding behind narrow legal definitions as a justification for not responding to the plight of people fleeing from famine, civil breakdown, plague or even war might justifiably be termed "abominable"! - Yours, etc., Tony O'Riordan SJ,
Communications Officer, Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, Upper Sherrard Street, Dublin 1.