Ruling allows non-national parents of EU children to work

FOR the past four years, Halima Usman and her nine-year-old daughter have been dreaming about shutting the door for the last time on their asylum seeker residential housing in north Cork.

Yesterday, a European Court of Justice made that possibility very real after it ruled immigration policies, which refuse to allow the parents of European Union citizen children the right to live and work in an EU country, were in breach of EU law. The forced deportations of such parents should not be allowed, it said.

Halima, a Nigerian who has spent the past four years living on €19.10 per week, says the judgement would allow her and her daughter, also called Halima, to move to Cork city so Halima Senior can fulfil her dream of studying law at UCC.