Immigration gardaí questioned woman after husband’s cancer death

A ZIMBABWEAN woman, whose mother and mother-in-law were denied extensions on their holiday visas so they could help care for her dying husband, was visited by Garda immigration officers in January checking if she was hiding the women in her home.

Melody Chinenyanga, a librarian living and working in Dublin, lost her husband Taurai to a rare form of cancer last November but says she was visited by the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) this January, demanding to know if the women were still in the house.

In April last year the Irish Examiner revealed how the couple had invited their mothers to Ireland to help care for Mr Chinenyanga as he underwent chemotherapy. They asked the Department of Justice and the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service for visa extensions.

The request was rejected however, despite letters of support from local TDs in Tallaght and letters from hospital oncologists and consultants.

Writing in today’s paper, Melody Chinenyanga, who is now caring for her daughter on her own and who has likened the immigration system to cancer, states that further interference by members of the GNIB has added to her loss.

“It was a Saturday and in the afternoon I heard the doorbell and I went to open it only to find an immigration garda at the door. He told me he had come to search to see if my mom and mother-in-law had left the country.”

Of the period just prior to her husband’s death, she writes: “During all this time I got letters asking me to prove that [the women] had left. I asked my mom to photocopy the [passport] page with a return stamp as per instructions from the immigration department. She did and we sent the pages only to get another request that they want the page with the photograph also. We had also sent copies of the flight bookings.”

While waiting to legally repatriate her husband’s body to Zimbabwe for burial, she “received a telephone call from the department asking for evidence that the women have left the country. I informed them that my husband had since died and at that point I could not deal with them”.

She writes: “There is human cost in decisions that governments make. At some stage during his final moments Taurai was calling for his mom and she was not there. It broke my heart.”

“Now I am paying for wanting to be on the right side of the law even after losing my husband who was the reason they came here.

“It seems, as an immigrant, I have no right to family which is the backbone of Irish society and I have no right to mourn my husband with dignity. It feels like I am fighting cancer all over again except this time I know it took my husband and now it wants to erode my sanity too.”