Their daughter Fatima is an EU citizen and holds an Irish passport – but the Hussein family are living in a single room at a direct provision hostel, having been refused residency in Ireland.
Last Thursday Aneeta Aziz Memon, a qualified medical doctor, and her IT professional husband Mirza Hussein joined a group of 30 non-Irish national parents of Irish-born children who demonstrated outside the Department of Justice protesting the threat of deportation they now face.
Memon and her husband moved to Belfast in 2004 in order for her to take up a master’s degree course in medicine there. She was already qualified as a general practitioner at Liaquat Medical College in Karachi, graduating with Pakistan’s highest award in the discipline.
In November 2004 Memon gave birth to Fatima in Northern Ireland. Provisions incorporated in the Good Friday Agreement entitled her to an Irish passport, which she duly received.
However despite Fatima’s passport and status as an EU citizen, the Department of Justice refused the family’s application for residency.
According to a letter received by the family on 6 October 2005, they were refused on the grounds that parents of Irish-born children must be resident in the State on a continuous basis since the child’s birth. Memon and Hussein moved to Ireland permanently on 22 March 2005, some four months after the birth.
As a result – Irish passport and EU citizenship notwithstanding – Fatima and her parents have been forced to share a single room at various direct provision hostels since 2006.
A landmark court case last year found that “substantial grounds” must exist to deport parents of Irish children, leading to reviews of such cases.
Hussein is frustrated with the situation. “Our solicitor began corresponding with [Government officials]. We sent so many letters to the Department of Justice, to the ministers and to the Taoiseach’s office, but we received only acknowledgements.”
He continued: “Under the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement they gave Fatima an Irish passport. Yet when we came to Ireland there was no respect for it, and still we can get no meaningful response, nothing. We can easily provide for our children without taking any benefits. So what is stopping us?”
Meanwhile, the family’s essential documentation – including their Pakistani passports, marriage and birth certificates, academic degrees and qualifications, and documents of financial support – have not been seen since March 2005 when their solicitors submitted them to Justice. While the department insists these items were returned by registered post, the family says they never got them back.
Memon suffered a further blow in February of this year with the death of her mother Mehunisa. She requested permission to attend the funeral in Pakistan, but did not receive a response for two months.
When she did finally get a reply, she was warned there could be no guarantee she would be allowed back into Ireland on her return.
However, despite such setbacks, the family have their supporters, particularly Memon’s colleagues at Trinity College, where she works as an unpaid voluntary research assistant with the department of psychiatry.
In a letter to the Department of Justice, Trinity’s Dr Louise Gallagher provided a strong character reference for Memon and insisted that the department review the family’s residency application.
