Southside Partnership



By Catherine Reilly

41 deportation visits - now he can stay
Thursday, 22 February 2007

A YOUNG Sierra Leonean man has been granted leave to remain in Ireland after reporting for possible deportation 41 times in just over three years. His life is now ahead of him, and he's very happy, he still can't believe it, commented Mary King of the Dun Laoghaire Refugee Project. She said the 22-year-old, who we do not have permission to name, officially received documentation relating to his status last week, following a complicated legal case. She said his situation will give hope to other young people in similar positions. Metro Eireann understands that the young man came to Ireland in 2001 as an unaccompanied minor (under-eighteen and without family members) from Sierra Leone, which was still emerging from a state of civil war at the time. He said he lost family members in attacks by the Revolutionary United Front rebel group. Read More

Letters to the Editor
Metro Eireann, Ireland's multicultural weekly
8 March 2007
Re: 41 appearances for deportation
It was a great story on your front page recently the revelation that a human being made 41 appearances for deportation before he was eventually granted leave to remain. It seems very, very strange to me. I am also confused about the whole report. Are we talking about a human or robot, I wonder what kind of understanding the lad from Sierra Leone had to be able to put up with that kind of humiliation. Ireland is probably the only country where such a story can ever emerge I have heard and read so much about immigration and deportation but this is definitely the exception. The 22-year-old boy who came to Ireland as a minor, I think in due course may become a role model for Irish children. He is already making headway in the area of sports following his leaving certificate. I am happy he shared the same front page of Metro Eireann with Irish VIPs, including two Ministers Conor Lenihan and Dermot Ahern - and Brian Kerr, former Republic of Ireland manager.
I can only wish him well and sincerely hope that he rebuilds his life in Ireland.
Many thanks to the Dun Laoghaire Refugee Project for supporting him.
Ken Layo,
NAAS,
Co Kildare.

By Aisling Ryan

The Irish delegation was focused on developments in the immigration debate, as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepared their version of the Immigration Bill to present to the floor. The stakes are high for the estimated 50,000 undocumented Irish now living in the United States. So far, the Bill passed by the House of Representatives last December, makes no provision for a guest worker scheme, which could help to regularize the many undocumented who now call the U.S their home. Certainly, collapse of negations in the Senate on the McCain/Kennedy Bill, which includes a guest worker scheme, is cause for serious concern. The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, who has raised the issue with President Bush on numerous visits, has stated that the issue remains the "highest priority" for the Irish government. Read More

By Village.ie - Ireland's Current Affairs Website

Somali family still waiting for asylum, nine years later
Thursday, 16 March 2006

A Somali family have yet to get an answer from the Department of Justice to their application for leave to remain for nine years after arriving in Ireland. And the Department is moving to deport aged-out minors to Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Angola. Colin Murphy reports A family from Somalia living in the west of Ireland have yet to have their application for leave to remain in Ireland answered, nine years after they first arrived here. The family, a woman and two children, arrived in Ireland in June 1997 from Kenya. They had initially fled violence in Somalia for a refugee camp near the border in Kenya, and subsequently made their way to Ireland. They were refused asylum, and subsequently applied for "leave to remain", an informal equivalent of asylum which can be granted, at the discretion of the Minister for Justice, to those who do not meet the legal criteria for refugees. The last communication they had from the Department of Justice was in 2000, when they applied for leave to remain. The mother said she did not want to be identified in this article. Her two children, a boy aged 12 and a girl aged 11, are now in sixth class in the local primary school, having started in senior infants. The mother is not allowed to work or take up full-time education, under Irish refugee law, and receives child benefit, oneparent benefit and rent allowance from the State. Read More

ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN ASYLAND By (Magazine of the Irish Refugee Council)

Issue 14, Spring 2006
It's a long, long way from there to here - Armel Ntwari

My name is Armel Ntwari. I am 19 years going on 20. I come from Burundi. I am in Ireland since October 2003. I came to Ireland as an asylum seeker. I didn't know what asylum seeking meant when I came to Ireland. It was explained to me though at the ORAC (Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner), and later on I got to understand what it involved etc. I came to Ireland because the political situation in Burundi was uncertain. We had been in an ethnic civil war for 10 years. When I first arrived in Ireland, I was taken to a hostel in Dublin's city centre. It was for unaccompanied minors who sought asylum, between age 16-17 years. We had one social worker for the whole hostel (about 30 people) who visited us once a week. In case we needed any help, we either had to arrange for an appointment at her office, or wait till she came to visit the hostel. Read More

What generation hostel did next by CATHERINE REILLY

HOW A PIANO came to grace the Old School House asylum seekers‟ hostel in Dún Laoghaire isn‟t known. All former resident Adeniyi Allen-Taylor does know is that it made life bearable. Most evenings, his impromptu recitals of Christian songs would find ears: teenagers sitting around lost in thought. Read More