Contrary to public perception, asylum seekers are now one of our smallest immigrant groups. In his continuing series, Ruadhán Mac Cormaicreports on how they are faring Migration and the reinvention of Ireland
T his morning there's a queue at the post office when Adanna arrives. There are a few Irish people ahead of her, but most are women from her own hostel, here to observe the same weekly ritual. The cashier moves quickly, silently, and the line keeps moving.
Adanna takes her €19.10, thanks the cashier, tucks the cash carefully into her purse and makes for the door. "My 19 million," she says with an embarrassed smile.
Every cent of this, her weekly income, is as good as spent. Because the food in the hostel upsets her stomach, Adanna buys the ingredients and prepares her own meals in the evenings. The rest goes on toothpaste, cosmetics and the odd bus journey.
We're not far from one of Dublin's business districts and the city has that hurried air of a weekday morning. The noise, the traffic, the movement - all impose their pace and give the place a feel of renewal, of imminence.
Nobody strolls at this time of day, for who hasn't somewhere to go, somewhere to be? Commuters spill from the buses and huddles of suits march in waves along the street.
Adanna's daily routine could be jotted on the back of a postage stamp. Today she is to meet a friend in the city but after that she'll return to the hostel and lie on her bed to pass the hours until dinnertime.
She used to read but these days she finds it too hard to concentrate. It's not always this slow: she has her speaking circle on Wednesdays and then there's the computer class she attends a few days a week. But Thursday tends to be a quiet one.
Adanna, an intelligent, attractive and soft-spoken woman in her early 30s, worked in public relations before she left Nigeria and came to Ireland alone almost two years ago, but as an asylum seeker here she is barred from work and full-time study.
"What do you do, lying on the bed from morning til evening?" she asks evenly. "You can't go to any place. Even if you go out it's just to while away time.
"I think the Government is doing its best, but they remind you of who you are. I would love to go to school - I would love to - but I cannot because of my status.
"I don't want to be a nuisance to the society. What can one do? This is the situation we find ourselves in. As an asylum seeker you don't have a say."
In November 1999, Liz O'Donnell - then minister of state at the Department of Foreign Affairs - caused controversy when she described Ireland's asylum system as a "shambles" and the Department of Justice's policies in the area as "unplanned, unregulated and unsuccessful".
At the time there was a backlog of 8,500 asylum applicants waiting for a decision on their cases, and every morning long queues fanned out from the Refugee Application Centre on Lower Mount Street in Dublin.
As well as unreasonable delays, there were major inconsistencies in how cases were dealt with and there was a sense that the State was struggling to catch up with an issue for which it appeared hopelessly unprepared. Newspapers referred routinely to "the asylum crisis".
That year, the first sentence of the Progressive Democrats' draft document on immigration and asylum policy read: "Ireland needs an immigration policy."
Some 7,724 people claimed asylum in the Republic in 1999. The annual total was to peak at 11,634 three years later and has been falling ever since: last year fewer than 4,500 applications were made. Despite a disproportionate public focus that has lingered since the hysteria of the 1990s, today asylum seekers are one of our smallest immigrant contingents.
The number of Poles who were issued with PPS numbers in the first two months of this year is almost twice the total number of people who sought asylum here in 2006.
The controversy that O'Donnell's remarks generated was to be a turning point, however, and in the two years that followed serious investment was made in the State's asylum infrastructure.
Additional staff were made available to process applications, the Government drafted a National Action Plan against Racism and the whole system was overhauled.
The new scheme's centrepiece was "direct provision", under which asylum seekers are provided with accommodation, meals and a weekly allowance of €19.10 per adult and €9.60 per child. Since 2004, asylum seeker children have also been denied child benefit.
The changes solved some problems but also created new ones. By preventing people from working and providing them instead with a nominal sum - the stipend has been frozen since 2000 - NGOs argue asylum seekers are left to languish in poverty.
This has implications for wider society, argues Peter O'Mahony, former chief executive of the Irish Refugee Council, for "there is little evidence that the integration of people who have sought asylum here, and whose future is in this country, is happening in a way that will guarantee long-term social stability."
While delays in hearing initial asylum applications have been reduced - applicants are now being interviewed within nine to 12 days of making their application - those who, having been refused asylum, apply to the Minister for Justice for "leave to remain" (permission to stay in Ireland) can still be left waiting for several years before a decision is made on their status.
As a result they inhabit a social no man's land, putting down roots in a community but constrained from working, studying or fully participating in society.
Nobuhle Nduka, development officer with Akidwa, the Dublin-based African women's network, says she knows one woman who has been in the direct provision system for five years. She and her children have been moved regularly between accommodation centres and each time they are moved the kids have to be taken out of one school and placed in another.
Though charities help, Nduka says the system puts enormous strain on families by denying them any route out of their hardship.
"People get very stressed. If the food is no good [ in a hostel], some of the women actually take the €19 and try to buy food for their children. They are already under strain because of the toiletries they have to buy and the transport they have to pay for . . . It's a poverty trap.
"The direct provision system is based on segregation. It discourages integration by all means. With €19 you can't even take your children to a movie, you can't take them to McDonald's like the other children. You can't do anything with €19."
Each Thursday Akidwa holds a women's group, where the participants - most of whom are asylum seekers - vent their problems and seek the counsel of others.
Nduka notices that domestic violence is a recurring theme in their conversations and believes some of the explanation lies in the exceptional conditions in which they are made to live.
"I think some of it comes from frustration - people not being allowed to work and getting on each other's nerves. Imagine a family in a small room the whole day, from morning til evening. People get on each other's nerves, and they also fight over money." Without the support of an extended family, small misunderstandings can spill over into serious conflict, she adds.
In 2005, Dr Anne Sheehan, specialist registrar in public health medicine in the HSE mid-western area, told a conference of the difficulties asylum seekers had in going from leading an active, productive life to one of waiting and dormancy.
In a research project involving immigrants from 35 countries in Cork and Kerry, Dr Sheehan said, about 48 per cent were found to be in poor mental health.
Adanna has been taking anti-depressants since she tried to take her own life last year. She was admitted to hospital as an involuntary patient and was kept there for several months. Were it not for the support of a doctor and her friend Folami, she believes she would not have survived. "I thought, 'this is the end of the world. What am I doing here? I can't go back to my country and I'm not even allowed to stay here. What do I do? The best solution is to kill myself and just get out of this cruel world.'
"You're not allowed to work. You're not allowed go to school - even if you're interested in a course you won't be able to go into it. What kind of lifestyle is that? We're just fading away."
As she speaks, Folami interjects. "The one good thing about dying is you enrich the graveyard as well." The two collapse in roars of laughter.
"Multicultural graveyard!" she yells.
In O'Mahony's view, Ireland has a "window of opportunity" of some years to ensure that immigrants are encouraged and enabled to integrate. "If we fail to take the right initiatives, the window will soon have slammed shut," he says. "If that happens, the recent experience of countries such as the Netherlands and France would suggest that disaffection among marginalised migrant communities and their descendants in Ireland might grow to dangerous levels with unknown but negative consequences for society at large."
Clearing some of the State-imposed obstacles to the incorporation of asylum seekers - one of the most vulnerable groups in the system - would be a start, he argues.
Folami, like her friend Adanna, is reluctant to cast herself in the victim's role. She has started doing some voluntary work and that has helped restore her sense of purpose. But the longer she goes without paid work the further she feels from her educated, confident self. "Sometimes I think the attitude should be a bit more sympathetic - not pity, but understanding," she says.
"It is two years since I worked. It's just like being fallow, and fallow land begins to generate weeds."
[ changingplaces@irish-times.ie ]
Ruadhán Mac Cormaic is the winner of the 2007 Douglas Gageby Fellowship. His series runs each Wednesday. All articles published so far are available at www.ireland.com/focus/gageby