Legal immigrants fall into bureaucracy gap

WITH reference to your report headlined ‘Immigrants unable to renew permits over admin blunder’ (February 15), I wish to clarify the situation in relation to eligibility to apply for citizenship in Ireland.

To be eligible to apply, a migrant must have five years legal residence in Ireland, spread over the past nine years. Of this, the last year must be uninterrupted residence in Ireland.

The Immigrant Council of Ireland is concerned that the recent debacle which led to legally resident migrants, who were granted residency under the Irish-born child scheme of 2005, becoming undocumented as a result of a lack of coordination between two arms of the Department of Justice may affect their eligibility to apply for citizenship. This is because many of the people affected would now have accrued five years legal residence in Ireland.

How it works is that legally resident migrants must have their passport stamped and be issued with a certificate of registration. The stamp and certificate must be renewed before they expire. If a new stamp and certificate are issued after the previous ones expire, even if the “gap” is just one or two weeks, this will count as a gap in their residency.

Our experience in the past has been that, even in cases where migrants have become undocumented through no fault of their own, a “gap” in their immigration history has counted against them when lodging citizenship applications. As this situation has arisen through the fault of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, we would ask the Government to ensure no affected migrant is penalised in this way.

Denise Charlton

Chief Executive

Immigrant Council of Ireland

St Andrew Street

Dublin 2