29 July 1999 Edition
Important decisions for asylum seekers
At last the division in the cabinet over the right of asylum seekers in this country to work has been resolved - not unusually of course - in the PDs' favour, though not necessarily in favour of the refugees. There are about 6,000 refugees here waiting to be granted asylum, who have been forced to live in idleness, giving the impression that all are scroungers, by the ruling that denied them the right to work or to attend educational courses.
It was announced on Tuesday, 27 July, that asylum seekers who had been living in Ireland for the past year could now seek work.
On the face of it, asylum seekers should now be entitled to join educational courses, which up to now they were not allowed to do. Many refugees, with third-level qualifications, especially in the sciences, engineering and medicine in their country of origin, need to get comparable qualifications which are recognised in the EU. So far, asylum seekers have been denied the opportunity to do this.
It must also be said that the time when refugees most need access to education is when they first arrive here, when they are isolated, lost in a strange country, often without any knowledge of the language. Yet inexplicably, the government limited the right to work to those who had been in Ireland for over a year.
The Irish Refugee Council has welcomed the decision to grant the right to work to asylum-seekers who have been in the state longer than a year. The group pointed out that this essentially amounts to an amnesty in that it only grants right to work to asylum seekers who have applied for asylum, not those who will apply. The council has called for the measure to be applied to all asylum seekers.
The Minister of Justice has reiterated his intent to process asylum seekers' applications in a matter of months, and not years. The announcement yesterday may well mean very little if the government, now armed with its two-prong attack of the Deportation Bill and the Illegal Immigrant (Trafficking) Bill, succeeds in its intent to deport what O'Donoghue has called the 90% `bogus' refugees back to where they might have come from, in less than a year.
Of course the government's mainstay to get rid of 90% of refugees has been the so called `Dublin Convention', which says that asylum seekers into the EU must apply in the country where they first land. It is extremely rare that any refugee's first port of call into the EU is Ireland. The government thus can happily pass `the problem' on to other EU states.
An important decision in England last week may make this is more difficult for John O'Donoghue.
Three appeal judges at the Court of Appeal in London decided last Friday that three refugeees from Sri Lanka, Somalia and Algeria, could not be returned to France or Germany, because they were not `safe countries' - in effect that the Dublin Convention should not be applied to these two member states in the EU.
Germany and France take the position that a refugee can only be persecuted by the state, not by another political, social, or racial grouping.
The British judges therefore, decided that these three asylum seekers should not be returned to France or Germany, even though these two countries might have been their first point of entry into the EU, because of the very limited definition of persecution employed in these two countries.
It remains to be seen if the courts in Ireland take the same position as the three appeal judges in London last week. It also remains to be seen whether the category of `unsafe EU countries' might be stretched to include those EU countries where refugees have died whilst being deported.
It was announced on Tuesday, 27 July, that asylum seekers who had been living in Ireland for the past year could now seek work.
On the face of it, asylum seekers should now be entitled to join educational courses, which up to now they were not allowed to do. Many refugees, with third-level qualifications, especially in the sciences, engineering and medicine in their country of origin, need to get comparable qualifications which are recognised in the EU. So far, asylum seekers have been denied the opportunity to do this.
It must also be said that the time when refugees most need access to education is when they first arrive here, when they are isolated, lost in a strange country, often without any knowledge of the language. Yet inexplicably, the government limited the right to work to those who had been in Ireland for over a year.
The Irish Refugee Council has welcomed the decision to grant the right to work to asylum-seekers who have been in the state longer than a year. The group pointed out that this essentially amounts to an amnesty in that it only grants right to work to asylum seekers who have applied for asylum, not those who will apply. The council has called for the measure to be applied to all asylum seekers.
The Minister of Justice has reiterated his intent to process asylum seekers' applications in a matter of months, and not years. The announcement yesterday may well mean very little if the government, now armed with its two-prong attack of the Deportation Bill and the Illegal Immigrant (Trafficking) Bill, succeeds in its intent to deport what O'Donoghue has called the 90% `bogus' refugees back to where they might have come from, in less than a year.
Of course the government's mainstay to get rid of 90% of refugees has been the so called `Dublin Convention', which says that asylum seekers into the EU must apply in the country where they first land. It is extremely rare that any refugee's first port of call into the EU is Ireland. The government thus can happily pass `the problem' on to other EU states.
An important decision in England last week may make this is more difficult for John O'Donoghue.
Three appeal judges at the Court of Appeal in London decided last Friday that three refugeees from Sri Lanka, Somalia and Algeria, could not be returned to France or Germany, because they were not `safe countries' - in effect that the Dublin Convention should not be applied to these two member states in the EU.
Germany and France take the position that a refugee can only be persecuted by the state, not by another political, social, or racial grouping.
The British judges therefore, decided that these three asylum seekers should not be returned to France or Germany, even though these two countries might have been their first point of entry into the EU, because of the very limited definition of persecution employed in these two countries.
It remains to be seen if the courts in Ireland take the same position as the three appeal judges in London last week. It also remains to be seen whether the category of `unsafe EU countries' might be stretched to include those EU countries where refugees have died whilst being deported.