The chaplain to the Filipino community in Ireland has criticised the lack of security and permanency for children of Filipino parents living here.
Fr Pat O'Connell said Irish society must do more to provide for the security and stability of Filipino migrant families.
He told a meeting of pastoral workers for Filipino migrants that the status of children who came as infants to join their parents was unacceptably vague. "Their parents can become naturalised but they children are still seen as non-EU [ citizens]," he said. When they reached 18 years of age they no longer qualified as dependants but they were not Irish citizens, he said. "It's totally anti-family.
"They either have to leave the country or register as students. If they want to go to college, they have to get a study visa and pay huge fees because they are seen as being non-national. What do they do, he asked?"
There are about 16,000 Filipinos living in Ireland, North and South, with many employed in the health service.
Fr O'Connell said that the work permit system was fraught with difficulties. Many employers were unwilling to deal with the bureaucracy involved, he said. The system was also open to exploitation because the work permit tied the employee to the employer.
Bridget McManus, secretary general of the Department of Education told the conference that she was aware of the concerns faced by Filipino families over third-level fees.
She said she could understand the difficulties but the department also had to take a wider view and could not provide free third-level education for all students from overseas. Ms McManus said the department would be discussing the issue with the Department of Justice to see if anything could be done.
She also told the conference that the department was examining the enrolment policies of schools as part of its audit of the numbers of foreign national children in schools.
Ms McManus said there were concerns that some schools were discouraging children from overseas and she hoped the audit would shed some light on this. However, this was a difficult task, she said, as the discouragement may be subtle and might not be written down in the schools' enrolment policies. Some 7.5 per cent of pupils in primary and second level schools are now from abroad.
Ms McManus and Fr O'Connell were speaking at the seventh regional consultation meeting for Filipino ministry in Europe. Some 40 priests, nuns and pastoral care workers have come to Dublin for the meeting which continues today.
Shoddy treatment of Filipinos needs to be highlighted: page 16
