‘The Dublin visa office is like a cattle pen where you’re herded around and yelled at’

Joanne Greene calls the line of people outside the immigration office on Burgh Quay in Dublin "the quiet queue". The first time she turned up to apply for her spouse visa she was not expecting to find thousands already waiting in the cold. She had recently returned from Australia with her Irish husband and presumed the application to stay in her new home would be quick and easy.

"I was shocked. No one had told me you had to queue for so long. It took us eight hours in total from the time we started queuing to when I got the stamp. The temperature was just below freezing, it was dark, cold and desperate. Standing for hours on a grim, grey Dublin pavement was not what I had expected to be doing when I decided to live in Ireland with my new Irish husband."

Greene says the "humbling" experience of shivering in the cold with thousands of others at dawn makes you feel connected with people the around you. "It gives you a whole new respect on moving countries because I'd never come across this before. We travel freely between Australia and New Zealand. "

“This queue adds to the indignities that potential migrants already have to face. It dehumanizes a process which should have its roots in compassion and basic human rights.”

Once she made it inside the doors of the immigration office she says it felt like “a cattle pen where you’re herded around and yelled at to ‘get your number’”. However, she was struck by the calm and respectful nature of the applicants despite the yells and commands coming from the office officials.

“Although every one of these hundreds of people had a right to complain, I heard none. The one thing that strikes me every time I go to the office is the calmness, kindness and friendliness of all who endure the wait. Children rarely cry and no one becomes impatient. Except the employees.”

Greene first came to Ireland in 2012 on a "gap year" from her career as a nurse in Australia. Born in New Zealand, she began working as a nurse aged 18 before moving to Papua New Guinea with her first husband aged 21 where they spent 10 years. The couple moved to Australia in their 30s where Greene re-embarked on a career in nursing which brought her all over the country.

“I did rural, remote nursing, so I travelled all over Australia. I was what’s called an ‘enrolled nurse’ and would go to hospitals when they needed replacement staff for a month or six weeks. Sometimes I’d travel 2,000km between gigs.

“I treated all types of illnesses – it could be gunshot wound, a sting ray bite, a farming accident, anything. One day someone would have a baby and the next day I was treating someone with an infection from maggots.”

In 2011, Greene decided to take a career break and spent three months volunteering at a holistic centre in Scotland. After a brief trip back to Australia, she travelled to West Cork where she discovered the Dzogchen Beara Buddhist mediation centre on the Beara Peninsula. Greene, who has been practicing mediation for years, immediately felt drawn to the centre on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

She began travelling back and forth between Scotland and Ireland by ferry. On one of her trips to Dublin she met an Irish man called Gerry and the pair quickly fell in love. Greene never questioned the fact that immigration officials didn't stamp her passport between the two countries and was shocked, when in June 2013, she was arrested while attempting to board the ferry in Larne.

“It never occurred to me there would be a problem with the no stamping. Being naive is no excuse but I figured there must be a reason and it would be okay. I was handcuffed, it was absolutely hideous. The problem was I had been travelling in a common travel area, I didn’t know I was never actually leaving anywhere.”

Greene was deported back to Australia and Gerry followed soon after. The couple got married in Brisbane in November 2013 and in March 2014 they returned to Ireland. This time they had done their research and knew that Greene was entitled to be in Ireland because of her husband. The next challenge was finding work as a nurse.

“I never realised that getting a job would be so problematic. I wanted any work in health but nothing, just wall after wall.”

Greene took a course in caring and found a job looking after people suffering from dementia, people who had suffered strokes and providing palliative care. However, her Irish salary was considerably lower than what she had earned as a nurse in Australia.

“It dropped two-thirds from my pay in Australia. I don’t know how people here live on it. Some people are on the road for 11 hours of the day just to make enough money. The overnight 24-hours caring position works out at €4 an hour. When you do three of those in a row you just hope the person you’re caring for will sleep. In Australia I felt honoured, valued and respected as a nurse. My self-esteem has been shattered here.”

In June 2016, Greene stopped working as a carer because she says the hours and travel were impacting on her health. She recently joined a nursing agency in Australia and plans to spend a few months there next year and save money before returning to Ireland.

Greene knows how lucky she is to be able to travel back to Australia for a couple of months each year to work. “If I was not granted permission to stay I can return to Australia or New Zealand – countries that are free from civil wars and horrendous crimes against humanity, which many of my migrant brothers and sisters are fleeing from.”

In September 2016, the Department of Justice introduced an online visa application system aimed at ending the long queues outside the office on Burgh Quay. Like many others, Greene complains that the web page is often down and that this new online system continues to crash.

She says the Government still has an obligation to “adopt a more humanitarian approach to those of us who love to make Ireland our home”.

“I like to think that times are changing, that the building of fences, walls and bureaucracy which feeds intolerance will soon cease.”