Sir, – It must come as a surprise to most people that the State is processing asylum applications and trying to source accommodation for people who have already been granted refugee status in other countries (News, July 19th).
This comes at a time when it is widely accepted that our inability to properly deal with the 40,000 Ukrainians who have arrived in Ireland is primarily because of the huge rise in non-Ukrainians seeking international protection and accommodation under our asylum system.
There remains, of course, the abject failure by Government departments, local authorities and State agencies to take up to any significant degree the offers from the 9,000 households and owners of vacant properties who logged into the system last March in order to welcome and house Ukrainians fleeing the war.
It has been reported that asylum application numbers could rise to 15,000 by the end of the year, up by almost 600 per cent on 2021. While the Government has pointed to the UK’s Rwanda policy, the freeze on deportations and a post-pandemic surge as possible reasons for attracting the huge number of asylum seekers entering the State, there is by no means any consensus or hard evidence to explain exactly why this has happened.
A simple answer could be that Ireland is basically a more welcoming society and our visa system is more flexible as far as potential refugees are concerned.
However, in the overall context, there is an important issue out there that seems to have been ignored. This has been described by commentators as the “pull factor” which, unfortunately, is used by people traffickers to target countries on the basis that the asylum regime is somehow benign or easily accessible. There are possibly two Government initiatives which could be included in this category.
The first is the Report of the Advisory Group on Direct Provision and Persons in the International Protection Process, published in 2020.
For the most part the Government has looked favourably on the report’s recommendations in terms of access to housing, increased financial payments, improved processing times, access to employment and legal aid and has already agreed to implement its recommendation to discontinue the direct provision system.
A second initiative, although in theory a temporary arrangement, is the Regularisation Scheme for Long-term Undocumented Migrants which, again, is in line with the report’s recommendations. Inevitably, the traffickers will, in their own interests, interpret the scheme as an amnesty and use it to accelerate their illegal trade.
These are extremely worthwhile policy initiatives, which should in the long term be fully implemented. However, it would be unfortunate if they were used by criminal gangs to their own advantage and a concentrated effort should be made to prevent this from happening.
Accordingly, it is incumbent on the Government, at the very least, to acknowledge that these are legitimate factors and concerns which must be taken into account in dealing with the huge migration and asylum challenges now facing the country. – Yours, etc,
MARTIN McDONALD,
Terenure,
Dublin 12.
Sir, – I cannot be alone in finding your editorials moralising on everything and anything that the UK Conservative government does increasingly annoying.
Your editorial on July 18th refers to the “outrageous” policy of sending “asylum seekers” to Rwanda. The “asylum seekers” in question will have already reached safety in western Europe.
Their main reason to risk life and limb in small boats crossing the English channel (and incidentally leaving the EU) has to be a belief that the UK offers better economic opportunities. That makes them economic migrants, not asylum seekers.
What would you have the UK government do? Let everybody who wants to come in to what is already one of the most densely populated pieces of real estate in Europe?
The country would rapidly be overwhelmed.
Relocation to a third country while the asylum application process takes its tortuous legal course seems eminently sensible. Is it “outrageous” because that third country is Rwanda? That would help explain your world view.
Would The Irish Times have similar problems with, say, a Switzerland or a Bermuda. – Yours, etc,
HUGH O’CONNOR,
Douglas,
Cork.
Sir, – Michael Jansen in her article praising Cyprus for its welcome for migrants and refugees fails to mention that Cyprus regularly pushes back asylum seekers without giving them the opportunity to lodge asylum claims (“Nicosia Letter: Ochi an enduring symbol of Cyprus’s rich complexity”, World, July 18th).
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), “Cypriot coast guard forces summarily pushed back, abandoned, expelled, or returned more than 200 migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers coming from Lebanon during the first week of September 2020 without giving them the opportunity to lodge asylum claims . . . Witnesses said that ‘the Greek Cypriot coast guard tried to capsize or swamp their boats’”.
The HRW report stated that United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon rescued passengers on one boat on September 14th, after at least 13 people on that boat had died or been lost at sea. “Mustafa, 32, a UNHCR-registered Syrian refugee from Raqqa who is blind in one eye and has shrapnel in his legs from an explosion that occurred when he was in Syria, said that a group of Cypriot marine police officers handcuffed, beat, and gave him electric shocks in the presence of his wife and four children – ages one, four, six, and eight – on a boat carrying about 80 people back to Lebanon on September 8th”.
EuroMed Rights reports repeatedly highlight how Cyprus “by preventing access to its territory, denying access to asylum, and by pushing back vessels at sea to Lebanon is causing the chain refoulement [the forcible return of refugees or asylum seekers to a country where they are liable to be subjected to persecution] of asylum seekers to Syria and violating the principle of non-refoulement set out under the 1951 Geneva Convention and EU law on asylum, and infringes Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), Article 3 of the UN Convention on Torture, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment and Article 16 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.”
Lebanon has a strict non-readmission policy for Syrians who have left the country, with the Higher Defence Council having decided in 2019 that Syrians who had entered Lebanon after April 2019 could be expelled to Syria without judicial procedure or legal remedies. “At least eighteen people who were returned to Lebanon were brought to detention. On June 1st, 2021, the Lebanese authorities deported at least 15 individuals to Syria, including five people who were pushed back by Cyprus on May 16th, 2021.”
The Amnesty International report of September 2021 states what happens to returnees to Syria: “You’re going to your death”.
Following complaints to the European Commission, a representative confirmed to Euromed that the issue of relocation from Cyprus had been discussed with the member states “but that, since the invasion of Ukraine, this issue had been put on the backburner”.
Meanwhile Lebanese political leaders are openly planning to deport 15,000 Syrians per month. Few seem to care. – Yours, etc,
VALERIE HUGHES,
Cabra,
Dublin 7.