Most people accept the need for a deportation process. But when it divides families and exposes Ireland’s social welfare to further strain, the system stands open to question. CATHERINE REILLY reports on how last week’s deportation to Nigeria has left two families without vital childminding supports
‘HE’S CALLING ‘Mummy, Mum-my, Mummy,’” says Adebayo Olayiwola of his two-and-a-half-year-old son Sammuel.
Rita Omonzokpia – mother of Sammuel and nine-month-old Ezekel – was one of 34 Nigerians deported from Ireland to Nigeria last week.
She had failed to secure refugee status, but her two sons are Irish citizens and their father has long-term residency here. An Athlone-based taxi driver, he has lived in Ireland for 11 years and is applying for Irish citizenship.
But even if he attains that red passport, he will enjoy no statutory right to family reunification under the current system.
Whether Olayiwola and his children’s mother were still a bona fide item is unclear. Olayiwola says they were. They lived apart and hadn’t married because he was in the process of separating from a former partner, he explains.
What is less uncertain is that Olayiwola is now a single father with a mortgage and a profession that has undergone an earnings meltdown as of late.
“I don’t know what I am going to do,” he says despondently.
In Lagos, the mother of his children is faring little better. “I miss them, I miss them,” Rita Omonzokpia, tells Metro Éireann. “I miss my children and I can’t even close my eyes. ” She is staying with friends.
Previously based at the Mosney asylum seeker centre, Omonzokpia had been reporting to the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) in Dublin over January and February – the usual protocol before a possible deportation. But she had not been bringing her sons along with her.
Asked why, the Nigerian woman responds that as her children were Irish citizens, she never believed that the authorities would persist in deporting her, and she wanted to spare them the trip to the GNIB each time.
A Supreme Court ruling last year cast doubt over the legality of deporting parents of Irish citizens, finding that in the test cases concerned, the Minister for Justice had not found substantial grounds for the deportation of the parents in question.
At the GNIB on 25 February, however, she was taken upstairs to a room where she and other would-be deportees waited for hours.
“Between 11 o’clock and 2.30pm nobody came to speak to us. I said ‘Please, we want to know what is happening.’ The man asked if we were hungry and I said I just wanted to go and meet my children. The man said we were being deported to Nigeria, that that is the law from above.”
She showed immigration officers her sons’ Irish passports and birth certs, but was told that nothing could be done.
KATE (not her real name) does not live in the easiest of places: an inner city Dublin flat complex where the nauseating stench of urine wafts through the communal stairwells.
But despite many challenges, she has done well for herself. Kate has a good, responsible job in the public service and her three children, aged from four to 13, seem like pleasant youngsters.
She is exactly the type of reserved professional that doesn’t want her name and photo – and those of her kids – splashed all over the weekend tabloids. And no amount of persuading will convince her otherwise.
When Metro Éireann arrives, she is sitting in the living room of her small two-bedroom rented flat, combing her little girl’s hair. It’s Saturday evening and she’s just in from work, and later mentions that she’s only eaten a cereal since the morning.
“I come home from work and start another work,” says Kate wearily. “Since last week it’s been terrible, it’s been very hard for me honestly.”
Last week, her 62-year-old mother was deported to Lagos.
Kate is a single mother with residency in Ireland. In 2006, her mother joined her on a three-month visitor visa to assist her with childminding. An extension to the visa was not granted, however, and Kate’s mother entered an asylum application in a bid to stay. A legal resident, Kate nevertheless has absolutely no statutory right to family reunification.
Her mother took “not a penny” from the Irish State, insists Kate, presenting her purse and whipping out a card for private health insurance which she had paid for, for her mother.
“There’s no law,” adds Kate, in relation to the visitor visa application process. “It depends on discretion and who is dealing with your case. Somebody that hates Nigerians would say ‘Those f**king Nigerians’ – sorry for the language but that is what they would say. But if you are lucky, you’ll get somebody very nice.”
When her mother initially arrived, her support had been a godsend. “Everything chan-ged,” she says, “She was very, very helpful.”
For the moment, a friendly lady in the flat complex is providing childminding services. But Kate does not know if this is sustainable. It’s a financial matter, but also a question of dignity. Her job gives Kate a great sense of self-esteem, but she has to work full-time to make ends meet. She is even contemplating sending the children – two of whom are Irish citizens – to Nigeria for a while.
“I’ll work and send the money to them, if worst comes to worst. I told [immigration personnel] that I’ll never stop working, because I love my job, and I love working. That’s what they want, to send me to [social welfare]. I was talking to one of them and he said ‘Yeah, but it’s not necessary that you work.’”
