Having given the Minister for Justice a qualified welcome at the start of his term, the time has come to begin scrutinising the work of his Department on immigration and integration. Having abolished the office of the Minister for Integration and replaced it with an understaffed section called the office for the promotion of migrant integration, Minister Shatter has vowed to speed up citizenship applications – very good news, and introduce citizenship tests and citizenship ceremonies, less good news, but for some migrants a positive step all the same. And, last week his department granted residency to 850 non-EU parents of Irish citizen children, though only after the European Court of Justice ruled last March that the non-EU parents of EU citizens must be allowed to live and work in that EU state. Continue reading “Residency rights and deportations – good news for some?”
Month: January 2012
Stephen Lawrence: Justice at last
When black teenager Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death in 1993 by what a British court called last week a ‘gang of racist thugs’ no one expected it to become the most notorious case of justice evaded, leading to the indictment of the Metropolitan Police by the MacPherson Inquiry as ‘institutionally racist’. Had it not been for Stephen Lawrence’s indomitable family, particularly his mother Doreen, and their supporters, the conviction eighteen years after the killing of two of his five murderers, Gary Dobson and David Norris, may not have come to pass. While the conviction was a triumph for justice, late as it was, questions remain as to why it took so long and what we can learn from this case. Would Stephen Lawrence’s murder have been left unresolved for so long had he been white? Continue reading “Stephen Lawrence: Justice at last”