Ireland of the Exclusionary Welcomes - Uncovering Immigration Related Detention

Tony O'Riordan, SJ

Vol.96, No.381, March 2007

The number of would-be immigrants being excluded from landing (i.e., entering the country at ports and airports) is now greater than the number entering the asylum-seeking process. 4,827 people were refused permission to land in 2003 – and 4,844 in 2004. According to the amended 1996 Refugee Act, asylum-seekers may be detained “with reasonable cause”. One example of such a cause is the suspicion that the person might abscond to another country – or, if ordered to be deported, might go to ground. Another cause cited is the absence of proper documentation…But if people left their own country under genuine duress, how are they expected to have documents in order ? …Yet another cause deemed to justify detention is that the immigrant has a criminal record, or constitutes a threat to the security of the state. In which case, however, why not have recourse to our criminal law system ? (Besides, the Act allows methods, other than detention, of pin-pointing the whereabouts of an asylum-seeker). 

Having entered the asylum-seeking process, the immigrant may next be kept in quarantine conditions (of itself, an exclusionary regime). 4,400 asylum-seekers are lodged in “accommodation centres” throughout Ireland – with a weekly personal allowance of €19.30, with no permission to cook, study or be employed, and with little opportunity to integrate with the local community.

But the public’s level of unawareness of Ireland’s exclusionary measures came most clearly to light when a January 2007 proposal by the Minister for Justice was treated by some commentators as a new departure – the proposal that detention-centres should be set up for “high risk” asylum-seekers. Comment at times betrayed unawareness of the fact that incarceration is already taking place on foot of our immigration laws. Between 2003 and 2005, 3,500 individuals have been detained in prison here as immigrants. The number of immigrants held in prison in 2003, 2004 and 2005 was, respectively, 1852, 946, 860. Admittedly, by 2005 more than half were held for less than three days. The imprisoned immigrants fall into three categories : those awaiting deportation; those refused permission to land; asylum applicants waiting to be processed. There is little or no information regarding the precise provision of law on foot of which a particular individual is detained.

The UN International Convention on Refugees places a duty on a host state to accept and process each asylum application : each applicant is entitled to a full, fair, transparent, efficient hearing. In the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Human Rights, the right to personal liberty of movement is protected. The Charter obliges a state to give a reason, should it find it necessary to limit this (which demonstrates that only in absolutely exceptional circumstances is a limitation allowable). But Irish circumstances are not so exceptional as to warrant detention as a routine administrative procedure – much less to warrant any proposed extension of this practice.