• The Bill would make it illegal to enter Ireland without a passport or identity document. People fleeing from war or persecution often have no passport when they manage to escape. International law lays down that refugees should always be allowed to enter a country to claim asylum.
• The Bill would give the state increased powers of detention. They would be allowed to imprison asylum seekers at every stage of the process. Even children could be detained.
• The Bill would allow the government to designate certain parts of countries as 'safe regions'. Rather than the individual circumstances of their case being exam­ined, people from such regions would face automatic deportation.
• The Bill would provide for summary deportation. The state could deport people to dangerous situations, without them having a real chance to obtain a right to stay. Someone could be deported based on nothing more than the opinion of a Garda.
• The Bill would severely restrict the right of asylum seekers to go to court. For the first time, lawyers who represent them could be held personally responsible for legal costs. Lawyers who represent the state against them face no such threat. Again and again, courts have upheld the rights of asylum seekers against the government. The Bill intends to stop this happening in the future.
• The Bill would deny people "unlawfully present" in Ireland access to benefits and services. So, for instance, workers who were sacked by an employer, and lost their work permits as a result, would have no right to take that employer to a tribunal - as well as not being allowed to claim social welfare or work for another employer.

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.