Ireland of the unwelcomes?

The recent case of an Indian tourist who complained of discrimination at Dublin airport has added to allegations that immigration procedures are too arbitrary and too open to individual officers' discretion, writes Ruadhán MacCormaic Migration Correspondent

TWENTY-TWO YEARS, and the trepidation is still there every time Angie Chong makes the short walk from the aircraft to the passport-control counter at Dublin airport. The earnest young student, who left Malaysia to study medicine in Dublin in the late 1980s, is now a practising doctor with an Irish husband, a young child and an adoptive accent.

"I dread getting off the plane and that walk to the desk," Chong says. "Now my husband accompanies me, no matter how long the queue is, in the non-EU line. He stands next to me, because I always feel I'm going to get harassed. I get in knots every time I go through."

The most humiliating experience came in the early 1990s, when she had just graduated from the Royal College of Surgeons and travelled to Paris for a weekend with her then-boyfriend before her internship at a Dublin hospital was due to start. Her visa was valid and by then she had been living in Ireland for years. "I arrived at the immigration desk, and this man was particularly harsh. He didn't believe me when I told him I'd just returned from holiday and that I was about to start work as a doctor. He was very threatening from the start.

"I just remember when he said: 'Listen, I'm going to have to deport you.' And I thought: 'What?' That came from nowhere. I became quite aggressive and that's when he backed down. But then he started scolding me. 'Do you not know that a lot of Irish people here have no jobs? Do you realise you're taking jobs from the Irish here?' Finally he let me through, but I'll never forget that incident."

It came to mind this week when Chong read of two more cases that shone an unflattering light on procedures at the immigration booths run by the Garda at Irish airports. On September 9th, a Nigerian Catholic priest, Fr John Achebe, was arrested, strip-searched and placed in a prison cell overnight when he arrived in Dublin to visit a relative. Despite having a valid tourist visa, he was detained on suspicion of trying to enter the country illegally and was only released following the intervention of the Nigerian ambassador.

Separately, documents released to The Irish Times under Freedom of Information Act this week revealed that, in March, Tourism Ireland raised concern to the Department of Arts and Tourism about immigration procedures after an Indian tourist complained of harassment and racial discrimination at Dublin airport. He had won the trip at an event sponsored by Tourism Ireland in Mumbai to promote Ireland as a holiday destination.

THE PASSPORT COUNTERS at Irish airports are the front line of an elaborate apparatus aimed at regulating the flow of foreign nationals entering the State as the immigration rate has risen over the past 15 years.

Gardaí who serve as immigration officers are entitled by law to refuse any foreigner permission to enter the State, including those - such as Fr Achebe and the Indian man - who have already been vetted and issued with visas by Irish embassies abroad.

The Department of Justice insists there is no automatic right to enter the State, and immigration officers have to make "judgment calls" on the basis of the circumstances in each case. The law affords officers a certain discretion, and that means the variety of reasons for a refusal is quite wide, from "insufficient funds" to "deception", a category that could include a forged document or a hunch that a student-visa holder intends to stay on for work.

But to some, the most visible arm of the immigration service is also one of the most opaque. In a letter to The Irish Times yesterday, Fr Achebe's solicitor, Gerard Cullen, wrote that he found it impossible to obtain any statement from the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) for reasons to refuse his client entry or to subsequently set aside that decision.

His points echo those made by immigrant rights groups and tourism officials for some time. As Tourism Ireland's correspondence shows, the industry worries that erratic and inefficient border controls harm Ireland's efforts to lure visitors from developing markets in Asia and elsewhere. For its part, MEI-RELSA, the association of recognised English language schools, warns that immigration procedures are undermining Ireland's ability to compete in the lucrative market for foreign students - an industry worth about half a billion euro to the economy each year.

At the Dublin School of English, general manager Francis Crossen tells of a South African student who was turned back on arrival at Dublin airport because the officer didn't believe she was coming to study. "The member in charge actually told her: 'Well, if you go back to South Africa and come back, we'll let you in.' It's very arbitrary," he says.

Irrespective of the cost in lost tourist revenue, rights groups argue, the issue is fundamentally about fairness. In the UK, anyone refused entry has the right to an on-the-spot appeal by a more senior officer, but there is no equivalent right here, let alone the independent appeal that groups such as the Immigrant Council believe is necessary as a counterweight to the discretion given to officers.

Complaints can be lodged with the Garda Ombudsman Commission, but only if it relates to a garda's conduct, not his decisions. And although in theory someone could seek judicial review in the High Court, most tourists would be back in the sky before they had time to contact a lawyer.

Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy denied this week that the treatment of certain immigrants at points of entry amounted to racism, but some of those at the receiving end see it differently. In his letter to Tourism Ireland last March, the Indian tourist claimed that only he and his compatriots were being photographed at the airport, evidence of "clear-cut racial discrimination".

A refugee who came to Ireland from central Africa in the 1990s, and is now an Irish citizen, recalls returning to Dublin airport from a business trip in Bucharest a few years ago. While all the other Irish passengers were waved past the security counter with the standard "howaya" and a half-nod, he was asked to stand aside while his passport was scrutinised in a back office. "I'm not somebody who uses this argument, but for me there was an obvious mixture of racism and excessive zeal. I found it bizarre," he says.

"It's based on someone's face. Otherwise they would suspect everybody. But they don't suspect everybody. They suspect some people who come from a certain country or a certain continent."

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said this week that "on occasions mistakes will be made" but the GNIB was doing a "very difficult job. This country has been inundated with bogus applicants using every trick in the book to try and get around our immigration laws," he said. "For every one or two they get wrong, there are thousands that are okay and are treated well."

For his part, Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy says the immigration section does its work "as all members of An Garda Síochána, in a caring and professional manner. I have the utmost confidence in what they are doing." He adds: "We have practices and procedures and we have training in place to deal with all that sort of thing."

Solicitor Derek Stewart says better laws and more transparent procedures would aid, not hinder, the work of immigration officers. "An efficient and swift appeals process would be in the interest not only of the arriving visitors but also the immigration officers, because as a result they sometimes find themselves in court when they need not."

Others say that at the root of the problem lies a lack of basic civility. Immigration officers the world over can be relied upon to sustain the stereotype of surly intransigence, says Angie Chong, but a little respect would go a long way. "Immigration officers in America and Australia are stern," she says, "but still there's respect there. I'm looking forward to somebody just smiling and saying: 'Welcome home'."

BARRIERS TO ENTRY RECENT CONTROVERSIES

MARCH

• An Indian tourist complains of harassment and racial discrimination at Dublin airport, prompting letters of concern between Tourism Ireland and the Department of Arts and Tourism over "another immigration shock story".

• A diplomatic row breaks out between Ireland and Brazil over the detention in Mountjoy Prison of three students who were refused permission to enter the State via Dublin airport. The case becomes national news in Brazil, leading to a bomb threat at the Irish embassy in Brasilia.

APRIL

• A large Belfast-based company with offices in Dublin and China instructs solicitors after eight of its Chinese employees are turned back at Dublin airport, despite having been issued with visas by the Irish consulate in Shanghai. Gardaí say they believe the men intended to travel to Britain or Northern Ireland.

• Representatives of English-language schools complain of inconsistent procedures at ports of entry after a Brazilian education agent who came to attend an international conference to promote Ireland as a destination for foreign students reports being harassed by officers.

SEPTEMBER

• A Nigerian priest, Fr John Achebe (above), is arrested, strip-searched and placed in a prison cell overnight when he arrives in Dublin for a short stay. Despite having the requisite visa and documents, he is only released after the intervention of the Nigerian ambassador.

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times