David Lobe, an immigrant at the centre of this week's Supreme Court ruling, tells Nuala Haughey, Social and Racial Affairs Correspondent,of his family's four-year search for a better life
There is nothing remarkable about David Lobe and his family, apart from the fact the State's highest court has said they can be deported along with their Irish citizen son, Kevin. There is nothing unusual about their life, except that the Roma family, from a tiny village in the Czech Republic, has become the reluctant personification of a complex legal issue which has perplexed the Irish authorities for many years.
The wood-panelled Supreme Court was abuzz with anticipation last Thursday morning when journalists, refugee and human rights workers and justice officials crammed into the public gallery to hear the long-awaited verdict in the appeal brought by Lobe's family and a Nigerian immigrant, Andrew Osayande. Right on time, at 10.30 a.m., the seven judges solemnly filed into the court, taking up positions in leather and dark wood high-backed seats to one by one hand down their verdicts.
Their words must have echoed in Lobe's ears as he sat bolt upright and expressionless beside his solicitor: dismiss, dismiss, dismiss, dismiss, dismiss. Two of the seven judges opted to allow Lobe's appeal to remain in Ireland by virtue of having an Irish-born child, but this minority dissent was little comfort to the 27-year-old former security guard.
Drawing on his basic English, he says he keeps asking himself: "Why me? I give the question to myself a million times. Why me? Why me? Why my family?"
Lobe knows about the intense public debate around this crucial case, the ramifications of which will be eagerly awaited by some 10,500 other non-EU immigrants who, like him, had hoped they would be granted residency in Ireland by virtue of having children born here.
That link was broken this week by the Supreme Court in its 340 pages of judgments which will provide fodder for discussions by constitutional lawyers for weeks. Lobe understands the Government's frustration over people clearly targeting Ireland to avail of a regime that almost automatically allowed them to become residents once they had children born here.
But issues of public policy, the State's right to have immigration controls and the interests of the "common good" do not weigh heavily on the mind of a man facing compulsory expulsion from a country which has been home for almost two years.
"I give up, actually," a disheartened Lobe said yesterday from his home in Ballineen some six miles from Bandon in Co Cork. "If I'm being honest with you, I give up. I don't hope. I couldn't win because what I am? I am nothing. I am just an immigrant and the Government they have the power. I don't think so I win, I couldn't because the Minister for Justice he must win. He made the issue no matter what and I must leave the country no matter what."
Lobe, his wife Jana (31) and their four children including 14-month Kevin, (the Irish citizen whose Constitutional rights were such a significant part of the Supreme Court appeal) were yesterday squaring up to the prospect of being deported back to the UK. They have already made unsuccessful applications for refugee status there and under the Dublin Convention the UK authorities have agreed to their return.
From there, they would probably be swiftly sent back to the Czech Republic, where Lobe says home would initially be the small two-bedroom flat where his parents live in a village near the city of Most. This industrialised city of 70,000 in northern Bohemia has the highest unemployment rate in the Czech Republic, at about 20 per cent.
The prospect of returning to his native country is not one David welcomes. He left his home near a Roma village outside Most in 1999, having sold his house and car. He says his Roma wife, Jana, who had had a job cleaning buses, was beaten while travelling on a bus into town one day. She was pregnant at the time and lost the baby. "They didn't like Romas there," he says. "If you were walking in the street in our town they call us 'Jews go to gas' and nasty words."
The couple and their then three children travelled to the UK, which they had learned from the newspapers was multicultural and without too much racism. They didn't fare well there, as their claim to be refugees fleeing persecution was rejected within four months. Their appeal too was turned down, but it was almost a year before it was processed and a deportation order was made against them.
Meanwhile, Lobe's mother, father and sister had also left the Czech Republic and were living in Bandon, Co Cork, also as asylum applicants. Lobe says his diabetic father was ill and his mother implored him to move to Ireland. Facing deportation from the UK, Lobe and his young family had little to lose, so they travelled to Ireland in March, 2001. At the time of her arrival, Jana was pregnant. Within five months, the family's refugee application and its appeal had been refused. They were faced with deportation from Ireland while Jana was in an advanced stage of pregnancy and severely anaemic.
Kevin was born on November 2nd, 2001, taking his name from the saint who loved animals and made his home in Glendalough, Co Wicklow. After his birth, the family claimed residency on the basis they were now parents of an Irish citizen.
It is with some bitterness that Lobe recounts how, during the subsequent High Court case, he had to supply the asylum application numbers of his parents and sister to the court. "Three days after the High Court, my parents received a deportation order. I don't know if someone take my parents' identity number and work on it. For two years they hear nothing and after the court they were deported back to the Czech Republic. They ring me all the time."
Lobe's lifestyle in Ballineen is necessarily a modest one, given the family lives on social welfare supports. Because of their immigration status, they are not allowed to work.
The children, Laadra (12), who calls himself Jack, Jana (six) and Lukas (four) are happy in Ireland, the two older ones attending local schools. Lobe says matter-of-factly that Laadra's classmates held a goodbye party for him yesterday. "Yesterday \ we was being very disappointed because the children they started to like school and then yesterday the whole school pray for us," he says.
Lobe has the same dreams all parents have for their children - that they would do better in life than he has done and that Laadra realises his ambition to be an architect. He says that were he here alone, without the children, things would not be so bad. "It's a different situation with the four children. They must go to school, they must get proper medical care and everything. Kevin, he's Irish. In Czech Republic he could not get proper medical care because he's Irish. If he goes to doctor for vaccines he must pay for it."
The Czech Republic is due next May to become part of the EU. From then, Lobe, and thousands of other people like him, will be able to move to many EU member-states in search of work and a better standard of living. But that is a long way away for a family which has been unable to set down roots for the past four years.
While the temptation to run and hide must be great for people in the Lobes' position, David says he will not evade a deportation order if it is served after next Tuesday's final Supreme Court appearance, on the issue of costs. "I don't want to break the law or something," he says. "I'm not criminal. I don't kill anybody. I try to make life for my children."
Whatever happens to this family, nothing can deprive their son of his Irish citizenship, granted by virtue of his birth here. Says Lobe: "One day I told him he was born in Ireland and there's your passport and birth certificate, if you want to go live in Ireland you can go."