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Irish born, with illegal parents - should we deport 'em?

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  • Irish born, with illegal parents - should we deport 'em?

    Born Irish, but With Illegal Parents - New York Times

    DUBLIN — Cork-born and proud of it, George-Jordan Dimbo is top to toe the Irish lad. He studies Gaelic, eats rashers, plays hurling, prays to the saints, papers his walls with parochial school awards, and spends Saturdays at the telly watching Dustin the Turkey, a wisecracking puppet, mock the powerful.

    If the Irish government has its way, he may soon be living in Africa.

    Along with her husband and son, Ethelbert Dimbo lives in a single room in a Dublin hostel while facing the threat of deportation.


    George, 11, is an Irish citizen and has been since his birth when Ireland, alone in Europe, still gave citizenship to anyone born on its soil. His mother and father, Ifedinma and Ethelbert Dimbo, are illegal immigrants from Nigeria, who brought him back to Ireland three years ago, judging it the best place to raise him.

    Since then, the unusual trio — the Irish schoolboy and his African parents — have shared a single room in a worn Dublin hostel while facing a prospect dreaded by children on both sides of the Atlantic, a parent’s deportation.

    “Dear justice minister,” George wrote when he was 9. “I heard my Mommy and Daddy whispering about deportation. Please do not deport us.”

    “Remember,” he added, “I am also an Irish child.”

    Thousands of Irish children face similar risks, living in a country where one or both parents do not legally reside. Their stories find abundant parallels in the United States, where an estimated five million children — including three million American citizens — have parents who are illegal immigrants. New efforts to catch them make fear of deportation a growing factor in American life, the flip side of generous laws that make infants instant citizens.

    The battle over the “I.B.C.’s” — Irish-born children — stems from a decade of head-turning change that has brought this island of red-haired Marys and blue-eyed Seans the demographic version of an extreme makeover.

    For centuries, Ireland was a racially homogenous land of emigrants. Now it is a multicultural nation of immigrants, whose share of the population, 11 percent, is nearly as high as that in the United States.

    Years of Irish prosperity have drawn Polish plumbers, Lithuanian nannies, Latvian farm workers, Filipino nurses, Chinese traders, and sub-Saharan asylum seekers. The town of Portlaoise, about 40 miles southwest of Dublin, has the country’s first African-born mayor. The Synge Street School, where George Dimbo says his Hail Marys beneath a plaster Virgin, is walking distance from the city’s first mosque and rents classroom space to two Chinese academies.

    “I went to bed in one country and woke up in a different one,” writes the Irish novelist, Roddy Doyle, in a collection of short stories called “The Deportees” (Viking, 2007). They depict characters as diverse as an African war survivor on his first day of class, and Fat Gandhi, a gay tandoori vendor who “quickly realized that his loud embrace of Christianity was very good for business.”

    The Dimbos are the kind of memorable figures who might have tumbled from Mr. Doyle’s pages. A former graduate student in Cork, Ms. Dimbo, 42, wore a Yoruba headdress to a recent parent-student event, and has just written a feminist novel about a migrant prostitute. Mr. Dimbo, 43, releases his frustrations with a daily run through the Dublin streets, and George is so unusually courteous that his sixth-grade teacher thought he was “taking the mickey”—Irish for pulling his leg.

    “He’s the most mannerly child I’ve taught in years,” said the teacher, Brendan O’Boyle. “He’s very, very good, very upright, very honest.”

    “He’s one of the best guys we’ve ever had,” said last year’s teacher, Gerard Mooney.

    Not long after George arrived, a classmate told him that he disliked black people.

    “But I’m black,” George recalls answering.

    “No,” the boy said. “You’re Irish.”

    So far, little conflict.

    Ireland’s dash to diversity has so far provoked little of the conflict found elsewhere in Europe or the United States. There are no major anti-immigrant political parties and little anti-immigrant violence. When a Dublin high school student, Olukunle Elukanlo, was deported to Nigeria in 2005, his protesting classmates won his return.

    Government officials here often credit Irish history for the tolerance. “There’s an emotional sense of understanding about what immigrants are going through because of our experience as immigrants,” said Conor Lenihan, the minister of integration.

    George-Jordan Dimbo's Letters to the Minister of Justice (mp3)But others see undercurrents of racial unease that could boil into conflict, especially if hard times return. “In Irish literature there’s a big fear of the returned immigrant who brings all sorts of chaos with him,” said Mary Gilmartin, a geographer at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. “Many people here feel threatened.”

    As recently as the 1980s, young Irish were fleeing unemployment in droves, many to work illegally in the United States. By the late 1990s, an economic boom called the Celtic Tiger was luring them home, along with droves of foreign construction workers, farm hands, waitresses and nannies. A wave of asylum seekers joined them, many from Africa.

    Some had escaped harrowing wars or genital mutilation. But officials grew skeptical of their claims as their numbers surged to about 12,000 in 2002 from a trickle a decade before.

    Ireland not only offered citizenship to children born upon arrival; until 2003 it also allowed their illegal-immigrant parents to stay, a shortcut many asylum seekers used to win residency. Word got out: with a visa to Britain, a pregnant woman could reach Northern Ireland, take a cab across the border, and gain residency by giving birth.

    Ms. Gilmartin argues that reports of abuse were exaggerated. But a 2004 referendum changed the rules, reserving citizenship for the children of longtime legal residents. It passed with nearly 80 percent of the vote.

    By then, Ireland had about 18,000 mixed families of Irish children and illegal-immigrant parents. Wary of the costs of large-scale deportation, the government ran a one-time legalization program that gave residency to about 95 percent of those parents. The Dimbos were among the 1,000 or so families whose cases were rejected, and they have appealed to the Supreme Court.

    Their situation, like that of millions in the United States, pits competing interests: those of children (to live in their country with their parents) against those of states (to enforce borders for the perceived common good).

    Odyssey to Ireland

    Ms. Dimbo first came to Ireland legally, to get a master’s degree in sociology in 1995. She was recently married, two months pregnant, and unaware, she said, that Irish law would make George a citizen. She gained legal residency through his citizenship, but they returned to Nigeria when George was 2 to join his father, who ran an import business.

    With Ms. Dimbo working as a bank manager in Lagos, the family lived comfortably, but came back to Ireland twice, believing each time that George’s citizenship and their past residence gave them the right to stay. The most recent time was in 2005, to apply for the legalization program, not realizing, they said, that it only covered families who had remained in Ireland, which disqualified them.

    With their savings gone, they have spent nearly three years in a government “accommodation center” — a dormitory where they share one room, line up for meals, and are barred from working.

    “You feel like you’re a prisoner,” said Mr. Dimbo, a proud man dismayed by his forced dependency. “If we had known our lives would be like this, we never would have come.”

    George said if his parents left, he would go with them — “every child needs his parents” — and wrote the justice minister to convey his fears. “I am very worried,” he wrote.

    Gathered at another accommodation center, an hour outside Dublin in Mosney, many parents said their fears of deportation had begun to affect their children.

    “My daughter knows I’m depressed,” said a single mother from Nigeria, who declined to be identified for fear of harming her case. “She goes, ‘Did I do anything wrong?’ ” Another single mother said, “I’m afraid I’m going to hurt my child.”

    Other complaints come from men sneaking into Ireland, to join their children and wives who got residency through the legalization program. To avoid new waves of migration, the program gave no right to family reunification. “Unless we control the flows of people, public attitudes will turn against the whole process of immigration,” said Mr. Lenihan, the government minister.

    But in denying children their fathers, the men say, the government may create the kind of immigrant underclass that plagues other parts of Europe.

    “Our children are going to be growing up angry,” said one of four illegal-immigrant fathers from Nigeria who met with a reporter in Balbriggan, a Dublin suburb.

    Another father blamed race. “If our kids were really Irish to them, they would not say, ‘Take the fathers away,’ ” he said.

    At the same time, many of those facing deportation marvel at Ireland’s virtues, including the freedom to protest without getting shot and ambulances that come when summoned. When Lynda Onuoha joined Mosney mothers to demonstrate outside Parliament, they waved Irish flags. “We wanted people passing by to see that even though our kids are black, they are Irish by nationality, and we want to make a home here,” she said.

    Even after tightening its rules, Ireland remains more generous than most of its European peers. The United States is the rare country that gives immediate citizenship to the children born inside its borders, whether their immigrant parents are legal residents or not. A 2007 bill to end the practice, which stems from the 14th Amendment, drew nearly 100 Congressional co-sponsors, though legal scholars have traditionally argued that a change would require a constitutional amendment.

    Fear for U.S. Children

    Deportations in the United States have been rare, but with enforcement on the rise, migrant groups warn of a new generation of American children haunted by fear. Border control advocates respond that the parents have only themselves to blame, for migrating illegally.

    At times, Ms. Dimbo says the same. “To come here without papers, we are wrong,” she said. “We are cap in hand, saying for George’s sake, let us forgive and forget.” Adding her own note of Irish chauvinism, she said it was only when she got to Donegal that she appreciated the phrase “deep, blue sea.”

    Mr. Dimbo added, “I love this country.”

    George has spent 6 of his 11 years in Ireland, including most of his school years. What he recalls of Nigeria is mostly the heat and the corporal punishment in school. Asked if he feels more Irish or Nigerian, he answered politely in a Dublin lilt.

    “I think I feel more Irish,” he said. “For one, because I am Irish.”


    Can paralells be drawn between Ireland and the US in this regard?

    What should we do with those who have become de-facto nationalised citizens and are up for deportation?

    It's a bit of a catch 22, and this case is getting big coverage here right now - any thoughts from our yanks, it seems like we're suffering the same problem?
    Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
    - John Stuart Mill.

  • #2
    Do you guys have any coal mines?

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by entropy View Post
      Do you guys have any coal mines?
      Not anymore.

      We have plenty of bogland though, d'you think we should make them digg for us ?!
      Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
      - John Stuart Mill.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by crooks View Post
        Nope, though our emigrants often had to work in them (tough life, being Irish in the 1800s).

        D'you think we should make them mine for us ?!
        Coal for citizenship?

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by entropy View Post
          Coal for citizenship?
          I've certainly heard worse suggestions - bit inhumane though, I'd be more of a 'forced conscription' guy, make them serve in the army to show how much they love the country.

          It'll also help us build up our military (heavens knows we need to), in preperation for the NuIrishCentury....Belgium's first on the takeover list ;) !
          Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
          - John Stuart Mill.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by crooks View Post
            I've certainly heard worse suggestions - bit inhumane though, I'd be more of a 'forced conscription' guy, make them serve in the army to show how much they love the country.

            It'll also help us build up our military (heavens knows we need to), in preperation for the NuIrishCentury....Belgium's first on the takeover list ;) !

            We give you Wallony, for free.

            And we will attack if you refuse.

            Comment


            • #7
              Crooks, I see the item came from the New York Times. Do the Irish use the word 'mommy'? Sounds too American for me!
              Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by glyn View Post
                Crooks, I see the item came from the New York Times. Do the Irish use the word 'mommy'? Sounds too American for me!
                Definetly not!

                Ma or Mam (never Mother, unless followed by an insult) would be the norm - Mommy is far too wimpy for the battle-hardened Irish tykes, an American kid wouldn't last two minutes!

                I picked the NYT just because it caught my headline catcher today (I have one that draws on news links around the world with the word 'Ireland' in them, to keep up to date with the news when I log on) - found it interesting, what's the British perspective on this sort of story?

                Is there an integration, followed by sticky deportation issues over citizenship like here, or is it more of a 'failing' to integrate thing?

                It seems we all have problems with immigrants .
                Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
                - John Stuart Mill.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by entropy View Post
                  We give you Wallony, for free.

                  And we will attack if you refuse.
                  French speakers?

                  Not a bad thing inherently, but one problem that we've already seen when enlisting the help of their southern brethern - would they make good conscripts?

                  The amount of battles we've lost to the English because our 'allies' are wimps is just unreal....PLEASE tell me Wallons have some sort of fighting prowess?

                  Otherwise, no deal.
                  Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
                  - John Stuart Mill.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by crooks View Post
                    what's the British perspective on this sort of story?

                    Is there an integration, followed by sticky deportation issues over citizenship like here, or is it more of a 'failing' to integrate thing?

                    It seems we all have problems with immigrants .
                    The Brits are every bit as confused as your people are. We see similar problems all the time. Your last line is entirely right, we have problems with the immigrants - I think every country does. A certain number can be absorbed, but when the numbers rise beyond a sensible point then trouble is guaranteed.
                    Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by crooks View Post
                      French speakers?

                      Not a bad thing inherently, but one problem that we've already seen when enlisting the help of their southern brethern - would they make good conscripts?

                      The amount of battles we've lost to the English because our 'allies' are wimps is just unreal....PLEASE tell me Wallons have some sort of fighting prowess?

                      Otherwise, no deal.
                      Damn, you see through my plan.

                      The plan was to give you a piece of land populated by Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys, and while you are busy sorting out them, enforcing discipline and punishing them for eating snails, we would attack you from behind.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        To show the surreal state of Britain today, I post the following:



                        Dear Minister,


                        I am in the process of renewing my passport but I am a total loss to understand or believe the hoops I am being asked to jump through.
                        How is it that Bert Smith of T.V. Rentals Basingstoke has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a satellite dish from them back in 1994, and yet, the Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date?
                        How come that nice West African immigrant chappy who comes round every Thursday night with his DVD rentals van can tell me every film or video have had out since he started his business up eleven years ago, yet you still want me to remind you of my last three jobs, two of which were with contractors working for the government? come the T.V. detector van can tell if my T.V. is on, what channel I am watching and whether I have paid my licence or not, and yet if I win the government run lottery they have no idea I have won or where I am and will keep the bloody money to themselves if I fail to claim in good time.

                        Do you people do this by hand?

                        You have my birth date on numerous files you hold on me, including the one with all the income tax forms I've filed for the past 30-odd years. It's on my health insurance card, my driver's licence, on the last four passports I've had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out before being allowed off the planes and boats over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that are done every ten years and the electoral registration forms I have to complete, by law, every time our lords and masters are up for re-election.

                        Would somebody please take note, once and for all, I was born in Maidenhead on the 4th of March 1957, my mother's name is Mary, her maiden name was Reynolds, my father's name is Robert, and I'd be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and the day I die!

                        I apologise Minister. I'm obviously not myself this morning. But between you and me, I have simply had enough! You mail the application to my house, then you ask me for my address. What is going on? Do you have a gang of Neanderthals working there? Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don't want to reactivate the Fifth Reich for God's sake! I just want to go and park my weary backside on a sunny, sandy beach for a couple of week's well-earned rest away from all this crap.

                        Well, I have to go now, because I have to go to back to Salisbury and get another copy of my birth certificate because you lost the last one. AND to the tune of 60 quid! What a racket THAT is!! Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day? But nooooo, that'd be too damn easy and maybe make sense. You would rather have us running all over the place like chickens with our heads cut off, then find some tosser to confirm that it's really me on the goddamn picture - you know... the one where we're not allowed to smile in case we look as if we are enjoying the process!

                        Hey, you know why we can't smile? 'Cause we're totally jacked off!
                        I served in the armed forces for more than 25 years including over ten years at the Ministry of Defence in London. I have had security clearances that allowed me to sit in the Cabinet Office, five seats away from the Prime Minister while he was being briefed on the **** ****** and I have been doing volunteer work for the British Red Cross ever since I left the Services. However, I have to get some-one "important" to verify who I am -- you know, someone like my doctor...Who, before he got his medical degree 6 months ago WAS BORN AND RAISED IN PAKISTAN.

                        Yours sincerely,
                        An Irate British Citizen
                        Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by entropy View Post
                          Damn, you see through my plan.

                          The plan was to give you a piece of land populated by Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys, and while you are busy sorting out them, enforcing discipline and punishing them for eating snails, we would attack you from behind.
                          Alas, your plan was ingenius, but you forgot that trying to trick an Irishman just doesn't reap rewards ;)......try the Netherlands, they might take 'em off your hands and then you can laugh as they attempt to form a new 'United Kingdom of the....er, how many provinces?'.

                          It's catchy.
                          Last edited by crooks; 27 Feb 08,, 17:13.
                          Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
                          - John Stuart Mill.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by glyn View Post
                            To show the surreal state of Britain today, I post the following:



                            Dear Minister,


                            I am in the process of renewing my passport but I am a total loss to understand or believe the hoops I am being asked to jump through.
                            How is it that Bert Smith of T.V. Rentals Basingstoke has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a satellite dish from them back in 1994, and yet, the Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date?
                            How come that nice West African immigrant chappy who comes round every Thursday night with his DVD rentals van can tell me every film or video have had out since he started his business up eleven years ago, yet you still want me to remind you of my last three jobs, two of which were with contractors working for the government? come the T.V. detector van can tell if my T.V. is on, what channel I am watching and whether I have paid my licence or not, and yet if I win the government run lottery they have no idea I have won or where I am and will keep the bloody money to themselves if I fail to claim in good time.

                            Do you people do this by hand?

                            You have my birth date on numerous files you hold on me, including the one with all the income tax forms I've filed for the past 30-odd years. It's on my health insurance card, my driver's licence, on the last four passports I've had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out before being allowed off the planes and boats over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that are done every ten years and the electoral registration forms I have to complete, by law, every time our lords and masters are up for re-election.

                            Would somebody please take note, once and for all, I was born in Maidenhead on the 4th of March 1957, my mother's name is Mary, her maiden name was Reynolds, my father's name is Robert, and I'd be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and the day I die!

                            I apologise Minister. I'm obviously not myself this morning. But between you and me, I have simply had enough! You mail the application to my house, then you ask me for my address. What is going on? Do you have a gang of Neanderthals working there? Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don't want to reactivate the Fifth Reich for God's sake! I just want to go and park my weary backside on a sunny, sandy beach for a couple of week's well-earned rest away from all this crap.

                            Well, I have to go now, because I have to go to back to Salisbury and get another copy of my birth certificate because you lost the last one. AND to the tune of 60 quid! What a racket THAT is!! Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day? But nooooo, that'd be too damn easy and maybe make sense. You would rather have us running all over the place like chickens with our heads cut off, then find some tosser to confirm that it's really me on the goddamn picture - you know... the one where we're not allowed to smile in case we look as if we are enjoying the process!

                            Hey, you know why we can't smile? 'Cause we're totally jacked off!
                            I served in the armed forces for more than 25 years including over ten years at the Ministry of Defence in London. I have had security clearances that allowed me to sit in the Cabinet Office, five seats away from the Prime Minister while he was being briefed on the **** ****** and I have been doing volunteer work for the British Red Cross ever since I left the Services. However, I have to get some-one "important" to verify who I am -- you know, someone like my doctor...Who, before he got his medical degree 6 months ago WAS BORN AND RAISED IN PAKISTAN.

                            Yours sincerely,
                            An Irate British Citizen
                            Fair play to ya Glyn - any chance of Kernow gaining indepedence soon?

                            It sounds like yiz should be rid of the jokers you've currently got in command!
                            Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
                            - John Stuart Mill.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by crooks View Post
                              French speakers?

                              Not a bad thing inherently, but one problem that we've already seen when enlisting the help of their southern brethern - would they make good conscripts?

                              The amount of battles we've lost to the English because our 'allies' are wimps is just unreal....PLEASE tell me Wallons have some sort of fighting prowess?

                              Otherwise, no deal.
                              Google for SS-division Wiking and it´s Wallons regiment ´Wallonie´(sp?) . Too bad they can not find a better place for their fighting prowess ....
                              If i only was so smart yesterday as my wife is today

                              Minding your own biz is great virtue, but situation awareness saves lives - Dok

                              Comment

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