The sudden rise in asylum-seekers in Ireland has caught everyone unawares and has shown up weaknesses and rigidities in our decision-making system, as well as aspects of our national character which we had previously succeeded in hiding from ourselves and the outside world.
At no point in this affair has our political administrative system shown the kind of flexibility and speed of response which it demonstrated at moments of crisis in the past, for example in laying the administrative and legal foundations of our State between 1922-1924 or in responding to the outbreak of war in 1939 and the subsequent threat of the German invasion after the fall of France in the summer of 1940. Or, indeed, on a much smaller scale, in catering for the refugees from Northern Ireland during the early years of violence there.
Instead, a sluggish response has marked our handling of asylum-seekers in recent years. Against that background, and recognising that for some in the political system and in public administration, pragmatic considerations loom larger than humanitarian ones, I shall approach the problem initially on a purely pragmatic basis.
But I believe that pragmatic, humanitarian, economic and social considerations all point ultimately in the same direction, towards a reversal of the Minister for Justice's decision, which the Taoiseach seems hitherto to have avoided endorsing, to reject any element of "regularisation" or amnesty for those asylum-seekers who are now stuck in a queue of almost indefinite duration.
The key facts about our present situation, as elicited from the Department of Justice by the bishops, seem to be that there are up to 11,400 asylum-seekers awaiting processing, while a further 4,850 are waiting to be deported, their applications having been turned down. About 1,000 arrive each month, but until now we have been processing less than half that number monthly. The consequence of this administrative bottleneck seems to be that the average asylum-seeker can now safely count on spending many years here before his or her application is reviewed and then finally decided on appeal - and if turned down, can then look forward to an indefinite period before the process of deportation takes place - if it ever does.
Fewer than 1,000 of the 4,850 who have been turned down for asylum have been sent letters warning of deportation and fewer than 300 of these have actually been served deportation orders, of whom barely 100 had been deported at the end of March last. Such a situation offers a self-evident artificial incentive to asylum-seekers to keep coming to Ireland.
A radical change involving rapid decisions being taken, followed swiftly by the deportation of the 85 per cent or so who, experience has hitherto shown, do not qualify for refugee status, would eliminate that incentive. No other course of action is likely to stem the flow of asylum-seekers currently coming to Ireland.
The obstacle to such a radical change in our processing of asylum-seekers is the huge backlog of up to 11,400 unprocessed applications for refugee status. Instead of falling, even with the increased resources now available, these numbers will continue to increase by 300 a month.
It is self-evident that there is only one practical way of dealing with this ever-growing backlog - a combination of a further 40 per cent increase in the capacity to process these applications and writing off the backlog of up to 11,400 unprocessed applications by permitting, on a once-off basis, those concerned to remain here either on humanitarian grounds (as is the case with more than 40 per cent of asylum-seekers in Denmark), or as economic immigrants.
It may also be necessary to take similar action in relation to the 4,850 due for deportation because in practice, this process seems to be inoperative for constitutional and legal reasons. According to the Minister of State for Justice on RTE on Wednesday night, legislation to amend the deportation law will not be introduced until the next session of the Oireachtas in the autumn, and he indicated that even the new law may not solve the problem. Unless such a regularisation process is introduced, this problem seems bound to grow indefinitely, as month after month the backlog gets larger, and the incentive for further economic migrants to come here also continues to grow.
The argument that such a process would encourage more economic migrants to come here is completely untenable. First of all, it assumes what past Fianna Fail governments have demonstrated to be false in relation to tax evasion, that an amnesty aggravates the problem. The Government itself rejects this proposition in relation to the tax evasion problem.
Why, then, does the Minister for Justice insist on putting forward this thesis in relation to asylum-seekers? And why, above all, does he refuse to recognise that the incentive for immigration by asylum-seekers actually derives from the fact that the present policy offers them a prospect of being allowed to spend years here waiting to be processed, as well a further indefinite period thereafter waiting to be deported?
If the Government expected to be able, within a reasonable period, to increase the rate of processing to something like 2,000 a month, a case could be made for the present policy. However, reports suggest that the Department of Justice had great difficulty in increasing the rate even to 700 a month, which is only a fraction of the rate needed to make the current policy work.
The only rational course of action for the Government to pursue now is to provide, as France and Austria seem to have done, a once-off amnesty to the 11,000 or so now awaiting processing and simultaneously to equip the Department of Justice, at least temporarily, with all the extra resources needed to process the 1,000 asylum-seekers who are arriving each month. Temporarily, because the numbers are clearly likely to fall quite sharply once the expectation of being able to spend indefinite years here awaiting processing disappears.
Such a pragmatic approach would have social and economic benefits. It would end the inhumanity inherent in the present policy of sending economic migrants back to their own countries, after years spent here in enforced idleness. For children, who have become integrated into our schools system and society, Ireland has become the only country they remember. For them, the present policy is intolerably inhumane. Indeed, it is hard to conceive how any Irish politician can bring him or herself to impose such a palpable injustice on innocent children.
Second, in economic terms, clear benefits would ensue from integrating adult asylum-seekers into our workforce at a time when we are facing a severe labour shortage.
Thus, all considerations point to the need to revise the present policy, which is going nowhere fast.
Finally, some of the public resistance to accommodating asylum-seekers in enforced idleness might be abated if many were seen to be earning their living and contributing to, rather than (contrary to their own wishes), imposing a drain on the economy.
The truth is that the bishops - to whom, incidentally, we owe the accurate data without which I could not have written this article - are right in their analysis of this situation. They are pragmatically as well as morally right. The Government should not be afraid to accept their analysis.
gfitzgerald@irish-times.ie