This is a selection of past leaflets issued by Residents Against Racism, together with updates on the associated issues and campaigns.
March 2008
Over 50,000 Irish people in the United States are living without legal rights. They have no protection against illness, and cannot risk coming home for fear of being arrested upon returning to the US. Thousands are prevented from seeing their loved ones at Christmas or birthdays, at times of sickness, and even from attending funerals. Millions of other people, mainly from Latin America, are in the same desperate situation.
People without status in the US have organised strong protest movements demanding the right to stay legally in the country. Most Irish people are fully behind their demands. Even the Irish government says it supports calls for reform of the harsh American immigration system.
But the same situation exists here in Ireland. Thousands of people who have come here from other countries are denied the most basic legal status. They are legally banned from working, and have to survive on a miserable €19.10 a week. They face the threat of being deported to countries which, in many cases, they have fled from in fear of their lives. Their fate is in the hands of an immigration system used by ministers as a political football.
It is nothing put pure hypocrisy for the government to say it supports the demands of immigrants in the US when it presides over the same unfairness here. We cannot let them subject people to the same treatment as George Bush’s government does. People who have come to Ireland to escape oppression and poverty should be allowed to stay here and work, with the same rights and responsibilities as everyone else.
As Bertie Ahern himself said in the White House on St Patrick’s Day 2007:
"The resolution of this issue would mean an enormous amount to so many men and women. I fervently hope that they will, in the not too distant future, be able to step away from the shadows and into the sunshine of this great country."
LATEST: The Irish government continues to back regularisation of undocumented Irish workers in the United States, while turning its face to the plight of undocumented workers and asylum seekers in our midst.
February 2008
The Bill would also leave the worst aspects of the present system in place. Applications for asylum would still be decided upon by people hired and fired by the Minister for Justice. Their decisions would still be kept secret. Asylum seekers would still have no right of appeal to an independent body. They would still be banned from working, and forced to survive on only €19.10 a week. The Bill has been severely criticised by a whole range of groups including the Irish Human Rights Commission, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Catholic bishops.
We need to scrap the government's Immigration Bill, and create an entirely different approach to people seeking refuge in Ireland. Instead of looking for any excuse to turn people away, the system should actively do its best to welcome them to Ireland and protect their human rights.
LATEST: This bill has spent some months in committee and appears to have dropped down Government priorities at the present time but we will continue to oppose any progress of this legislation.
August 2007
On 14 August the government deported a six-year-old autistic boy along with his mother and sister. Great Agbonlahor had been living in Ireland for over four years with his mother Olivia and his twin sister Melissa. Since being diagnosed with autism, he had received the education and therapy he needs. But the family have now been deported to Nigeria, even though the children have never set foot in Africa. In Nigeria, Great will have no way of getting the treatment he needs. In fact, there is a danger that he could be dealt with as an outcast, and his family as if they were 'possessed by devils'.
The order to deport Great's family was one of the last decisions made by Michael McDowell before his political career was ended. The new minister, Brian Lenihan, once had a reputation for supporting the rights of children. He has now shown himself to be as heartless as McDowell was, attemping to ruin the life of an autistic child.
Thousands of people around Ireland signed petitions calling on the Minister for Justice to let Great and his family stay. People from all walks of life supported him. Now he needs your support to force the government to cancel the deportation and allow the family back.
Legal proceedings are underway to overturn the deportation of Great's family. In the meantime Brian Lenihan still has the power to reverse this deportation. In March 2005 Leaving Cert student Kunle Eluhanlo was deported to Nigeria in his school uniform, but popular pressure made the government allow him back to Ireland, and he has lived here safely since. If you believe in human rights, and above all the rights of children, now is the time to make your voice heard.
What you can do:
UPDATE: To date, the Department of Justice (now under new minister Dermot Ahern) has been unwilling to make any movement on this case.
May 2007
The end of Michael McDowell’s five-year reign in the Department of Justice is great news for everyone who wants an Ireland free from racism. His period as justice minister was marked by a cruel determination to attack the rights of people from other countries. He presided over a rotten system that routinely refused 92 per cent of people looking for asylum. His deportation mania led him to break up families and send snatch squads into schools. He took away the citizenship of children born and reared in Ireland, promoting racist prejudice in the process.
But McDowell didn’t have it all his own way. On many occasions popular protest forced him to back down from his tough guy image. People that he fully intended to deport won the right to stay, thanks to campaigning by friends, neighbours and anti-racist activists. Kunle Eluhanlo, a student deported to Nigeria in his school uniform, was brought back following a campaign led by his classmates. Even though McDowell surrounded it with conditions and limitations, he eventually had to allow the parents of Irish children the right to stay here.
The new minister, Brian Lenihan, will find it extremely hard to be as bad as his predecessor. But pressure will be needed to make sure that McDowell’s policies are thrown out along with him.
UPDATE: Brian Lenihan and his successor as Justice minister, Dermot Ahern, have continued much of McDowell's legacy.
March 2007
The Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, has launched a serious attack on the rights of people who have come to Ireland from other countries. In the run-up to the general election, he is trying to whip up racist prejudice, in the hope that it will divert attention from the real causes of the problems faced by Irish society.
He plans to abolish the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, even though the asylum system is extremely unfair as it is, with 92% of cases rejected. Abolishing the right to appeal would certainly mean sending people to face imprisonment, torture or death. The minister also wants the power to summarily imprison and deport people, denying them the right to go to court. This is a recipe for wholesale violation of human rights.
McDowell also plans to force non-Europeans to carry electronic ID cards with a biometric strip that carries personal information. This Big Brother system would increase the harassment such people already face, allowing gardaí and other state officials to stop people and demand to see their cards. Only non-Europeans would be subject to this law. It is little wonder that some have compared the proposal to the old apartheid laws in South Africa.
He proposes to detain asylum seekers in designated refugee centres, isolated from the rest of society. At the moment, asylum seekers are legally banned from working and have to live on €19.10 a week—but he says he wants to somehow restrict their access to social welfare. He wants powers to prevent people getting married if he suspects them. From next year, the government will no longer allow free movement of all EU citizens. McDowell’s plans are modelled on the United States—where millions of immigrants, Irish and others, are treated as criminals. And yet, the government claims to support the demands of Irish immigrants in the US for legal status!
McDowell is trying to play the race card as the general election approaches, hoping that some racist votes are there to be won. As Ireland faces serious problems in the health service, housing, and other areas, politicians hope to draw attention away from their own failures, and make people from other countries into scapegoats. Not just the government parties, but also opposition parties have gone down this sleazy road. The problems in the health service, for instance, have been with us for decades, and are not caused by immigration. In fact, bad and all as our hospitals are, they would collapse overnight if it wasn’t for doctors and nurses from other countries.
Whether we come from Ireland or elsewhere, most of us face the same everyday problems. Various governments bear responsibility for those problems, and letting politicians evade that responsibility will only mean that they continue. If we are foolish enough to play into their hands, they will get away with it. All of us, for our own sake, need to stand together against any attempt to whip up racist prejudice by attacking people from other countries.
UPDATE: Michael McDowell was dumped by the Irish electorate in June 2007. Some of his most outlandish ideas departed with him, but many remain.