Immigrant and human rights groups have told the Minister for Justice that his Department is criminalising hundreds of non-national parents of Irish citizens, who have received notices that they could be deported.
At least 700 non-EU immigrant parents of Irish citizen children have received letters in the past fortnight informing them they face deportation and giving them three weeks to seek temporary leave to remain in the State on humanitarian grounds.
The Department of Justice started issuing the letters following its recent move to effectively cancel some 11,000 outstanding residency applications from immigrant parents made solely on the basis that they had become parents of Irish children.
This development follows a landmark Supreme Court ruling last January that non-EU immigrants do not have the automatic right to reside in Ireland solely because they are parents of Irish citizens. Until then, it had been the practice to grant residency rights to such immigrants.
The letters have been received by most of some 700 people who had lodged their applications after the Supreme Court ruling. The Department said yesterday it has also started issuing letters to people who made their applications before the Supreme Court judgment but who do not have any other legal basis to remain in the State.
The eight groups which raised concerns in a letter sent to the Minister yesterday are: the Children's Rights Alliance, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the Irish Refugee Council, the Immigrant Council of Ireland, the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace, the Refugee Information Service, the Vincentian Refugee Centre and the Jesuit Refugee Service.
The groups say the letters to immigrant parents are "causing unnecessary confusion, worry and strain within hundreds and possibly thousands of families living in Ireland.
"Parents with Irish children who have been legitimately awaiting a decision on residency - in some cases for a number of years - are suddenly being criminalised and being told that they have 15 days to make representations as to why they should not be deported."
The groups claim there is an "appalling lack of information" in the Department's letters as to what exactly the representations should contain.
They say legal advice is required if the immigrant parents and their Irish children are to "develop and submit relevant and effective responses to these departmental communications". The Department has said State-funded legal advice is not available for people making these submissions.
The groups are also critical that the letters contain no information about how an applicant might reapply for asylum, if a fear of persecution exists in a person's country of origin. This is despite anecdotal evidence to suggest that advice to drop out of the asylum system and apply for residency often came from Government officials, the letter adds.
They say the Government has an obligation to establish "credible procedures to ensure that the best interests and constitutional rights of Irish children are fully protected under any arrangements providing for the deportation of their parents or, effectively, the children themselves.
"The letters being issued by the Department, coupled with the denial of legal assistance, fail to meet these minimum standards."