A conversation with close friends turned to new Irish citizens. My friends said the people recently conferred with Irish citizenship in the mass ceremonies organised by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter (some 16,000 to date) should be, and were, grateful. Shatter is to be congratulated for dealing with the backlog and, according to Metro Eireann, the majority of the new citizens were pleased with the process. Being granted citizenship is no doubt a bonus for people hitherto unable to travel freely. However, citizenship is entirely at the discretion of the Minister, there are no clear qualification criteria and no obligation to provide reasons for refusals. When I argued against the high cost of citizenship in Ireland – of which more later – I failed to persuade them, because citizenship, my friends insisted, is something valuable ‘we’ bestow upon ‘them’. Continue reading “Citizens”
Tag: Ireland
Anti Deportation Ireland: End deportations now
The death a couple of weeks ago of Immanuel Marcel Landa, an elderly Congolese man, in Mosney, the 49th person to die in the direct provision system since 2000, focused my mind, yet again, on the invisible plight of Ireland’s asylum seekers. Ireland’s impetus to control asylum seekers rarely links the conflict zones which produce asylum seekers with their human consequences. Instead, the racial state demonises asylum seekers, stems their flow, often preventing them from landing to present their applications, all in order to regain control.
Asylum applications in Ireland have been going down ever since their peak in 2002 at 11,634; the number of applications received in 2011, 1,250, represented a 28% decrease on the corresponding figure of 1,939 in 2010. In 2012 (by June) only 458 asylum applications were made. The government seems delighted with the decrease in asylum applications. In 2010 Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern commended ‘the ongoing work within INIS, including the asylum agencies, to combat abuse while at the same time ensuring fairness and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of procedures in this area’. At 1.5% at first instance and 6% on appeal, Ireland is distinguished by the lowest acceptance rate in the EU, where the average is 27%. Continue reading “Anti Deportation Ireland: End deportations now”
Spoilsport
Don’t ask me why I was watching a bit of the extravagant but dead boring Olympics closing ceremony, and to be honest, also one or two events, when my interest in sports aspires to nil. I read the Guardian/ICM poll results, that 55 per cent of Britons considered the games ‘well worth’ the huge £9bn expense because they ‘were doing a good job in cheering the country during hard times’, and wondered how can the expense be justified in the face of the social problems that need tackling in Britain and elsewhere.
I then watched this country go crazy about Katie Taylor and the other boxers, show jumpers and sailors, and like the spoilsport I normally am, I couldn’t but reflect on some lessons of the extravaganza, which not only cost a fortune, but also heightened divisive nationalist sentiments. Continue reading “Spoilsport”
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