Meath boy (6) risks becoming ‘stateless’ because of Irish citizenship delays, says father

The father of six-year-old first class student, who was born and brought up in Ireland, has warned his child is about to become “a stateless person” because of delays in the Irish citizenship process.

Muhammad Azlaan Abdullah was born in October 2015 in Castlebar, Co Mayo, to parents Abdullah Afghan and Fatima Abdullah — both doctors originally from Afghanistan, who moved to Ireland in 2014 for work.

However, because his parents had been in Ireland less than three years when he was born, Azlaan was not entitled to Irish citizenship at birth, unlike his sister who was born four years later.

Dr Afghan applied for his son’s naturalisation the moment he became an Irish citizen, last June 2021. Two weeks ago, he received a letter from the Department of Justice informing him his son’s name had been misspelled in the initial application. In the letter, seen by The Irish Times, the department also requested two years of doctors letters with Azlaan’s registration details because Dr Afghan’s hospital work has required the family to move between different Irish cities and towns.

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The department official did not state how much longer the process would take but warned the application would be “deemed abandoned” if the required documentation was not submitted within 28 days.

“They tell me whenever I’m in touch that they’re verifying and investigating his application,” says Dr Afghan, who now lives with his family in Bettystown, Co Meath, in a house they bought in 2019. “What is there to investigate? He’s a child, he was born here, he’s spent his entire life in Ireland. The treatment Azlaan is getting is not fair by any standards, the fact that he has no passport is painful for us.”

The six-year-old’s Afghanistan passport is due to expire early next year but the family is unable to apply for a new document from the embassy in London because the application process has not resumed since the Taliban takeover of the country.

“He’s going to become a stateless person. Ireland doesn’t accept him and Afghanistan isn’t issuing passports. We’ve been through terrible times, our country collapsed, our families were in immediate threat and now this. He was born, brought up and educated in this country and yet this country will not accept him, it’s terrible.”

A justice official said it could not comment on individual cases but it did “recognise how important the granting of naturalisation is to those who apply for it” and that 11,512 citizenship decisions were made last year, the highest annual number since 2015.

Nearly 7,900 citizenship decisions were made during the first six months of 2022, which included more than 1,000 applications from minors, said the spokesman. The “significant changes” recently made to the processing system, such as applicants no longer having to submit their actual passport but providing a full colour copy instead, is “freeing up valuable staff” and will “help to reduce processing times”, he said.

Meanwhile, back in Bettystown, the family is dealing with the ongoing stress of worrying about Dr Afghan’s elderly parents who are still in Afghanistan. “My father is dying, he’s lost his vision but they don’t want to leave. They want to die there peacefully, that is their last wish. Fatima’s parents came here in January 2022, thank God.”

Azlaan is becoming increasingly upset watching friends travel abroad for holidays when he must remain in Ireland, he adds. He’s also confused as to why his father and sister have red passports but he has a blue document (his mother’s application for naturalisation is also still in train).

“He asks me: ‘Bubba — he calls me ‘bubba’ — why aren’t you taking me anywhere? My friends are going to France and Germany but you don’t take me anywhere.’ It’s very hard for him to understand.”