Deported MA student is victim of visa crackdown

Father Christian Gheorghiu is a talented young man. He is an ordained deacon of the Greek Orthodox church; speaks fluent English, Greek and Romanian; and last summer he was awarded a diploma in ecumenics from the Irish School of Ecumenics. He has an Irish stepfather and his Romanian mother lives in Dublin.

He has now been waiting in Romania for nearly four months for a reply to his application for a student visa to study at TCD, where he was accepted last September to research the Romanian community in Ireland for a master's degree in ethnic and racial studies. TCD has held his place over until the 1999-2000 academic year.

Gheorghiu's problem is that a year ago he was deported back to Romania. He had come to Ireland on a visitor's visa for his mother's marriage to a Dublin photographer, Edward Kinnane, in August 1997; while here, he applied to and was accepted by the Irish School of Ecumenics. His request to change his visitor's visa for a student visa was rejected; he started the course at the ISE anyway. One Friday afternoon last January he arrived home to find two detectives waiting for him - and he was put on a plane to Bucharest the following day.

However, for more than seven years Gheorghiu had not lived in Romania but in England and Cyprus. He did not even know where his elderly father was living. The ISE pleaded with the Department of Justice to allow him back to finish his course there; after five weeks the Department relented, but only after he had faxed them a letter promising to leave the State when the course was completed.

When he came back to Dublin he talked to the official in charge of his case. Gheorghiu maintains that this man told him if he wanted to do postgraduate study and could support himself financially, it might be possible for him to stay on in Ireland.

However, last September, when he sought a student visa following his acceptance by TCD, he was told by the same official that he would have to go back to Romania to apply for it. The official told his course co-ordinator, Dr Ronit Lentin, that such an application would take "a few weeks" to process, though the Minister for Justice would have to make the final decision.

Gheorghiu has now been back in Romania since October 1st. Despite pleas from Lentin and senior TCD colleagues, his Irish stepfather and the priest and congregation at the Greek Orthodox church in Arbour Hill, Dublin - where he had worked as an unpaid deacon - the Department of Justice has not acknowledged his application. In his letter, Kinnane stressed that throughout his studies Gheorghiu had been supported financially by him and his wife. "It has saddened me that the country in which I have lived for 71 years could have imprisoned, rejected, discriminated against and deported a man of the cloth, who cost this country nothing," he wrote.

According to Lentin, "Having Christian Gheorghiu study with us would enhance the course and provide a formal liaison between us and the Romanian community in Ireland, which needs to be represented here both academically and politically."

A Department of Justice spokesman said it did not comment on individual cases.

Meanwhile Gheorghiu is living in a small and impoverished village in southern Romania, where he works as a deacon in return for meals and lodging. Every few days he uses the village's only phone to ring the Irish honorary consul in Bucharest to see if there is any news of his visa application. So far, nothing.