Delivering fact from fiction

The Russians are coming, according to the Taoiseach

The Russians are coming, according to the Taoiseach. What decades of the Cold War failed to do is apparently being achieved by a handful of pregnant Russian women and their babies, with their trusty allies, the Ukrainians and the Moldovans. Mary Raftery notes that in the Dáil last Tuesday, they were singled out by Bertie Ahern as flying in and out of Ireland to have babies.

In the Dáil last Tuesday, they were singled out by Bertie Ahern as flying in and out of Ireland to have babies. They are the reason we need a referendum on citizenship rights. The targeting of our eastern European neighbours in this way is just the latest in the Government's pattern of shifting the goalposts each time their arguments are challenged on this issue.

One moment the Minister for Justice says the main problem is that non-national women are arriving at maternity hospitals for the first time while actually in labour, risking their own and their baby's life. Overall figures are not available, we're told.

The next moment, the Taoiseach says this is not in fact the primary reason for having a referendum. The problem, he now says, is people coming to Ireland "solely for the purpose of getting Irish citizenship and leaving as quickly as they came". This is, of course, simply untrue. These individuals have no entitlement to Irish citizenship. It is their babies who do. Once again, no figures are given. The Taoiseach said cavalierly on Tuesday that there may be "a few hundred or a few thousand" of them. He then went on immediately to refer to female asylum-seekers, saying that 60 per cent of them are pregnant at the time of applying for permission to remain in Ireland. He referred to our system being "rampantly abused".

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This is dangerous and inflammatory nonsense. Firstly, these asylum-seeking women are clearly not flying in and out just to give birth to an Irish citizen. They have applied to remain here, to put down roots safely in this country for themselves and their children. The Taoiseach's implication that they are in some way mercenary and irresponsible is an outrageous slur on a highly vulnerable group of pregnant women and their babies. Secondly, he of course neglects to add that overall applications for asylum in Ireland have dramatically reduced in the past year, now at a level per month of roughly one-third that in 2002.

This pattern of disinformation continues. The Taoiseach stated in the Dáil on Tuesday that "there should be a stronger connection with Ireland on the part of at least one of the parents for the privilege of Irish citizenship to be available to their children born here. That is how it would be in any other country."

Once again not true. No such requirement exists in the USA for babies born on US soil, who regardless of the nationality of their parents automatically become its citizens.

On this point, a letter appeared in this newspaper last Friday, written on behalf of the Minister for Justice. It asserted that in a previous column on this subject, I had neglected to mention "that if the non-national parents of such a child are deported from the United States, they must take the child with them, and that the child may not exercise its right as a citizen to reside in the United States until it has reached the age of majority".

The reason I had "neglected" to mention this is that it is a pure fabrication. Incredibly, it even directly contradicts the information provided in the Department of Justice's own briefing document on the proposed referendum. This states clearly that a US-born child citizen of deported parents may remain in the US.

Regardless, the Minister for Justice repeated this particular untruth on radio last Saturday. Engaging in cynical disinformation may suit Michael McDowell's purposes in the context of the proposed referendum, but this is a very real and even critical issue for many of the estimated 80,000 Irish illegals currently living in the US.

With this in mind, I contacted the US embassy in Dublin, who issued the following statement to me: "A US citizen will never be compelled to leave the US if his or her non-US citizen parents are removed or deported. If the parents elect to leave the child with a family member or friend, the child has every right to remain in the US."

Based on a flimsy lattice of half-truths, inadequate statistics and downright misinformation, the Government appears determined to railroad us into potentially one of the most damaging and dangerous referendum campaigns this country has ever experienced.

Because of our falling birth rate and its economic consequences, it is both inevitable and imperative that our future is that of a multi-ethnic society. The Government's cynical approach to truth in the context of this referendum creates the real and deeply alarming prospect that the societal transformation which faces us will be fraught with fear, resentment and racism.

Last week, the Tánaiste, Mary Harney, expressed the hope that the forthcoming referendum campaign "is conducted to the highest possible standards" in order to ensure that "racism does not take hold in Ireland". Perhaps she could begin with the blatant irresponsibility being displayed by members of her own Government and party.