Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Policies forcibly separate families - bishop

THE GOVERNMENT’S immigration policies are forcibly separating families of Irish children, and allow no mechanism to appeal, Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin Raymond Field has said.

“Not only are parents forced to live in different countries but they must choose where and with whom their child will live,” he notes. 

Writing in the Rite and Reason column in today’s Irish Times, Bishop Field, chairman of the Irish Bishops’ Council for Justice and Peace, says: “Ireland is the only EU member state without primary legislation on family reunification for immigrants.”

This is so despite the Constitution’s recognition of the inalienable and imprescriptible rights of the family, he adds.

“In Ireland, in accord with EU law, a child is entitled to Irish citizenship if one parent is an Irish citizen or a legally resident immigrant,” Dr Field says.

“The other parent may be someone whose visa is expiring or whose asylum application has failed. However, despite a child’s rights as an Irish citizen, we are now seeing the deportation of a parent whose immigration status is irregular.

“Not only are parents forced to live in different countries, but they must choose where and with whom their child will live. With no independent immigration appeals mechanism, there is little scope to challenge any deportation decision.

“The process of being reunited here with family members is, in effect, an obstacle course with application procedures and outcomes which are neither consistent nor transparent,” he notes.

“So at some future time, shall Ireland be confronting the issue of what was done to Irish children by the Irish government in the first decade of this millennium?”

SIC: IT/IE