In the second part of our series on immigrant families affected by deportation, Catherine Reilly meets Nigerians Peter and Precious Innocent, who face the imminent trauma of Peter’s removal
PETER AND Precious Innocent live in Galway with their Irish citizen daughters, Faith (eight) and one-year-old Favour.
Peter has just completed a short paramedic course and wants to train as a medical technician, while Precious works full-time at a medical device manufacturing company. She attained legal residency in Ireland in 2005 (under the briefly reopened Irish Born Child scheme). She says they seek no social welfare payments.
But despite this ostensible stability, their family unit is coming under severe strain: Peter received a deportation notice last year and “signs on” regularly with immigration gardaí – the usual protocol before deportations.
According to Precious, from Edo State, she fled Nigeria in 2001, allegedly fearing that her unborn daughter would later be subjected to female genital mutilation.
She says her situation was further complicated as Peter, from Imo State, is a Muslim and she a Christian. She gave birth in Ireland, and was permitted legal status under the IBC (Irish Born Child) scheme in 2005.
Peter arrived in 2007. Asked about the gap between he and his wife’s arrival to Ireland, he says: “It’s really hard to come from Africa, I tried to go to the [Irish] embassy three times, and the visa was refused.
“I tried to come here legally, my wife was sending me documents, but in the end I had to come illegally.”
He was not given “any good reason” for the visa refusals, he adds.
As a means of staying, Peter applied for refugee status, which was refused, and he also submitted letters to the Department of Justice, seeking leave to remain on the grounds of his family ties to Ireland. However, he was issued a deportation order.
A volunteer with the St Vincent de Paul and the Red Cross, Peter says all he has left is “hope”. He is particularly worried about his wife’s health, he adds.
“The small one is so attached to him,” says Precious of their family life. “Sometimes when he goes to Dublin to sign on, she cries all day.”
While she is working, her husband takes care of the children, bringing daughter Faith, a pupil at St Francis primary school in Terryland, to ballet school and other activities.
The family has not been accessing social welfare – Precious no longer requiring a one-parent allowance payment after her husband arrived – and she says she doesn’t know how she’ll manage without him.
“If my husband is deported, I cannot cope, I’ll never see him again as husband and wife. My temperature is going up. and it’s really affecting me at work.”
Precious says she feels increasingly emotionally distraught, and has been seeking medical treatment for this.
Asked if their eight-year-old knows what’s going on, Precious replies: “She knows… she knows.”
