English-language schools complain that immigration procedures at points of entry are undermining Ireland's ability to compete in the lucrative market for foreign students, writes RUADHÁN MAC CORMAIC
CARLOS ROBLES' tone is that of a man who can scarcely believe his own story. After a punishing journey from his base in Belo Horizonte in southeast Brazil earlier this month, his flight landed at Dublin airport just after 11pm. His bags didn't show up on the carousel, but Robles, with the weary resignation of a frequent traveller, decided to get a night's sleep and try to trace them the next morning. And then he reached the immigration desk.
"There were two immigration officers," he says. "The first thing they asked me was 'Why are you coming here?'" Robles explained to the officers that he was an education specialist and had come to attend an international conference to promote Ireland as a destination for foreign students.
"Then another officer said: 'Why are you sending so many Brazilians here?' I said, 'well, you're inviting us. You're promoting the country'." A pause. Then the first officer asked him for his visa. "I said, 'Brazilian citizens do not need visas to come to Ireland.' He seemed not to know. It took him a while to find out if I needed a visa or not." To placate the gardaí, Robles says, he handed over his return ticket, a letter of invitation and a record of his hotel booking. "So he starts ringing the hotel. It was very late, and he couldn't get through, so he said: 'I don't have anybody to confirm you're staying here. I said, 'excuse me, I have an official invitation letter. I'm on business here.' 'But I can't get through,' he said."
Robles' voice rises.
"That lasted about 40 minutes. And I am an agent. They were rude, it was really intimidating. A student that arrives is going to be really afraid of that, and word will spread out to their friends. The advice will be: don't come to Ireland because you're not welcome here."
In recent days, after receiving complaints from Robles and others among the 81 attendees from around the world at the Galway conference, Adrian Cummins, the chief executive of MEI-RELSA, the association of recognised English-language schools, warned that Garda immigration procedures at points of entry were undermining Ireland's ability to compete in the lucrative market for foreign students.
There is more at stake than a businessman's injured pride. Some 200,000 foreigners come to Ireland each year to learn English, sustaining an industry that is worth about half a billion euro to the economy each year, according to a report published last year by economic consultants Indecon.
"I think the time has come where we have to have a serious think about our immigration policy and how we actually treat visitors coming to the country," Cummins says.
Robles' story is embarrassing because he was here to invest, but he got off lightly compared with some of his compatriots. Last month, a diplomatic row broke out between Ireland and Brazil over the detention in Mountjoy Prison of three Portugal-based students who were trying to enter the Republic for a weekend break. The incident led to the police being called to investigate a bomb threat at the Irish embassy in Brasilia.
AT THE DUBLIN School of English on Wellington Quay, general manager Francis Crossen recalls the case of a Turkish financial services executive who had booked in for a course in preparation for his posting to a bank in the Netherlands. "He was on a salary of €10,000 a month, and he was refused a visa because he couldn't demonstrate that he had funds to support himself in Ireland," he says.
The Department of Justice told The Irish Times that immigration officers have to make "judgment calls" on the basis of the circumstances presented to them and in line with the law. Insufficient funds can be one reason for a refusal. "For a student, the minimum would be €1,000 cash or a lesser amount supplemented by a bank statement showing funds to the person's credit," a spokeswoman said.
At one level, student migration should be the least contentious piece of the policy jigsaw. For advocates, it is the example par excellence of how migration benefits the host (the economy does well out of tuition fees and the fruits of part-time labour), the sender (students return with new skills and perspectives), and the migrant. And for governments jittery over the potential for a public backlash, it offers all this and the promise that the migrants will eventually go home.
BUT THE AREA is fraught nonetheless, partly because the Government believes that too many people are staying on. Carlos Robles, for instance, was a victim of an instruction to immigration officers to keep a close eye on Brazilians, some of whom the Department of Justice believes are abusing the absence of a visa requirement to enter as students or short-term visitors with the intention of staying to work, or to use the common travel area to slip quietly into the UK.
The problem, according to Adrian Cummins, is that two important arms of State - Justice on the one hand, Enterprise, Trade and Employment on the other - are pulling in different directions. While one funds trade trips and issues invitations to students around the world, the other keeps the door shut and the keys tightly clenched.
Francis Crossen, who is responsible for visas at the Dublin School of English, where a third of students are from outside the European Economic Area (EEA), says he can't remember the last time he had a non-EEA visa approved without it being refused the first time around. For some nationalities, he doesn't bother applying any more.
"You get bizarre situations where Enterprise Ireland will fund trips to countries where you require a visa. There was one recently to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, a marketing trip where Enterprise Ireland invited various educational institutions in Ireland to go and make business-to-business appointments with booking agents or educational agents. However, you just don't get the visas for these countries. It's almost impossible." Whereas a Turkish national can secure a UK visa in two days, the same process takes two months if he wants to come to Ireland.
Major reform of the student immigration system is due later this year, with the removal of the automatic right of full-time students in recognised courses to work 20 hours a week. Instead, foreign students will be required to have a work permit before starting a job.
The move was instigated by the trade unions, concerned that students were being exploited and employed as cheap labour, leading to displacement of Irish staff. "It won't stop anybody being able to do a course, or to be able to work. It doesn't do either of those things. But it does stop people selling pretend courses, and stops people arriving to do a job and being paid less than they're entitled to," says Esther Lynch of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu).
Although the introduction of these permits is being presented as a measure to protect workers, and is seen as a victory for the unions, the Department of Justice is keen on the idea. It will allow gardaí to monitor students' movements at a time when officials are concerned about "unacceptably high" levels of abuse of the student visa scheme by people who come to work indefinitely, sometimes aided by "bogus" colleges. At least two college directors were arrested last year under Operation Feather, set up by the Garda National Immigration Bureau to investigate reports of "brass plate" or front companies that provide foreign students with false documents for visa applications.
The work-permit plan is not universally liked, and some language-school directors warn that it could push student numbers down if there are delays in issuing the permits, or if conditions are attached. But on one point there is almost universal agreement: the need to regulate English-language and third-level colleges for foreigners. As things stand, brass plate or none, it is remarkably straightforward for someone to set up a marketing college, for instance, because, although the Department of Education publishes a list of recognised courses on its website, there is no register of legitimate colleges. While Adrian Cummins bemoans the lack of a timescale for its establishment, the Department insists it is committed to establishing Education Ireland, a body that will promote the English-language sector and will be responsible for "regulating and quality-assuring international education services".
"If we have good quality control in place," Lynch says, "which does guarantee that coming to study in Ireland, you're going to get a proper course and have a proper qualification at the end of it, that is of benefit to the student and to Ireland."