Saturday, July 11, 2009
LAST Friday three clean-cut young American backpackers arrived at Dublin airport from Texas. They were setting out on the first international leg of a yearlong trip around Europe.
However, they were ordered to return to US by an immigration official at the airport. "She treated us like we were criminals," Colin Zwirko, 21, said later.
They were not admitted because they lacked an address where they planned to stay and they did not have bank statement to prove they could afford to travel.
Zwirko said he offered to show the official his bank balance online. He had $10,000 dollars in his bank account and was certainly not indigent. He had sold his car back home to help pay for this trip of a lifetime.
Zwirko and his two friends, Ben Whitehurst, 21, and Gavin Sides, 19, were compelled to spend €1,360 each buying tickets to fly back to the US immediately.
The price of those tickets certainly seemed outrageous. The very fact that they could pay for the tickets was proof they did have money. As they say in Texas, they got screwed on their trip to Ireland.
They had the money. Sides had worked at two jobs for the past year to pay for his year in Europe. They were naive, but who is not at that age?
If they were on a world tour, they might not have had any problem. If three young Irish people were entering the US and they announced they were going to travel around for a year, the same thing would have happened. The Americans would automatically assume they were going there to work and they would be sent home on the next plane.
The young men obviously did not realise they were not entitled to stay longer than three months in the EU. As they were using Ireland as a gateway to other EU countries, the immigration official was doing her duty.
Yet with a little bit of sensitivity surely it could have been explained to them that there was a three-month limit. Whether American officials would have shown that sensitivity is immaterial. We don’t have to behave like them.
The initial reaction in the US would seem to have been one of surprise because these were three clean-cut young men from Plano, an affluent suburb of Dallas. The Irish in America were greatly embarrassed. They have been asking for sympathetic understanding for the undocumented Irish in the US, yet these three young Americans got the bum’s rush.
"We regret that these men had this experience," said Breandán O’Caollaí, an Irish deputy consul stationed in New York.
Irish tourism interests then got involved.
"Tourism is, and always has been, a major part of our economy, and Ireland has always been one of the premier destinations in the world for American tourists," Anthony Kelly of D4 Hotels told Newstalk Radio. "We need them to continue to come to Ireland and we enjoy it when they come here."
The company, which owns the Ballsbridge Inn, the Ballsbridge Tower and the Ballsbridge Court Hotel, announced it would fly the three men back to Dublin, give them room and food for a week in one of their hotels and provide them with $1,000 each in spending money.
"I was just blown away by the offer," Zwirko said. "I really wasn’t expecting something so great."
Anthony Kelly pulled off a brilliant piece of marketing and public relations. "We are absolutely delighted that they have accepted the offer and that it some way recompenses them. Even though we’re only charging €39.09 a room mid-week in July and August, the boys wouldn’t have had much to pay to stay in luxury in D4 in our hotels — we’re delighted to have them here."
The interview on Newstalk was replayed in Dallas by WFAA radio and television. The station even has a video ad on its website for D4 Hotels under the heading: "Plano 3 Inspire Irish Radio Ad."
The three lads have acquired celebrity status because this is the kind of horror story with the promise of a happy ending. "It seems like we won the sweepstakes or something," Zwirko told the Dallas Morning News.
One correspondent wrote to that newspaper: "Whether it was for the travel dollars or the PR, or it was just good business, doesn’t matter to me at all. I, for one, have to say that I appreciate the gesture. And should I travel to Ireland in the near future, I will make sure I stay at one of their hotels."
Zwirko admitted: "We obviously learned now that we were less prepared than we should have been. We are going to bring what they required of us the first time."
Now the spotlight has been put on Delta Airlines, which charged the lads €1,360 each to fly them back to New York.
If there was a lesson to be learned from the whole thing, surely it would be that nobody should underestimate the insensitivity of an officious person in uniform. This is, in effect, the downside of zero tolerance.
Fianna Fáil promised zero tolerance 12 years ago and now it seemed like they have tried to implement it in a couple of days. They rushed through the most drastic reforms in a week. Some people are upset that the legislation was introduced to combat the danger of jury intimidation, even though there has been no proven case of such intimidation in this country.
Of course, it is highly unlikely that people who would submit to such intimidation would then turn around and go to the gardaí to testify against those who intimidated them.
Should Justice Minister Dermot Ahern have just waited until some gangster walked due to intimidation?
A FEW years ago a group surrounded a woman judge in a shopping market. They did not threaten her. They just glared at her and she ended up in hospital, apparently suffering from stress.
Gang members have gone into court and stared at jurors in the jury box. How could anybody prove this was intimidation? Whether the stare was menacing or not is strictly in the mind of the person being stared at.
The kind of laws in the Criminal Justice Amendment Bill passed yesterday dealing with criminal gangs are comparatively similar to the emergency legislation implemented to cope with so-called republicans over the decades.
They were tried before non-jury courts and our system did not collapse as a result. While there is undoubtedly a need for the new laws, the rush to enact them without proper debate was unwise.
The goal of zero tolerance is to engender respect for the law. But the authorities need to respect innocent people like the three American tourists, who did not break any law.
They clearly did not know they could not stay in the EU for more than three months on a tourist visa. Deporting them without allowing them to straighten out their situation, or change their plans, was grossly over the top, especially for a country with such a big stake in tourism.
Zero tolerance does not have to mean zero commonsense.
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