Thousands of Spouses of EU Citizens Face Deportation Threat (1 Viewer)

[Lili Marlene]

listening to newstalk?

Guy from Immigration control on Scam Marriages: 'anecdotally, the evidence is that it happens all the time'

 

[Gambra]

How long before we start seeing shit like "Keep Ireland For The Irish" emerging? With the stuff you highlighted last year (the work permits) and now moving onto this, it's getting beyond a joke. I can't pretend to know much about immigration issues but I can never see the point in having ANY restrictions like this at all.

 

[KokaneeCowgirl]

What do you fancy doing about it?

Seriously.

Johnnyc's idea about blowing things up is a good one.

Whaddye reckon about Anthrax in the post to people in power?

 

[Ciansy]

How long before we start seeing shit like "Keep Ireland For The Irish" emerging? With the stuff you highlighted last year (the work permits) and now moving onto this, it's getting beyond a joke. I can't pretend to know much about immigration issues but I can never see the point in having ANY restrictions like this at all.

How long? Check out any of the street lamps around Denmark Street, absolutely festooned with racist propaganda. Fucking twats piss me all the way off.

Jane, I think you make an excellent point about the government running a nation as an economy, and yet I don't think that's the full story. There are dozens of ways this government could have provided for a stable future economy without this sort of shit, but instead they fucked all our boom money at multinational companies as tax breaks, in a predictably-futile attempt to keep them here when everyone knew the cheap labour in other countries would win them out.

So the government has paid fuck all attention to our future economic well-being, and now what does it do? It decides to 'get racist with it' and impose fascist sanctions that will, in the opinions of many well-informed people, fuck us even more when we run out of a labour force. An idiot could see that if the Irish government are bent on 'upskilling' all Irish nationals we're going to need people who are willing to do more menial jobs just to keep this place running.

And that argument is without even considering the moral issues. Anyway, from the evidence provided I'd say the government has a lot of interest in running Ireland purely as an economy, in the easiest possible way, and also quite a bit of interest in cowing the population. The more we're used to seeing our neighbours pushed around without complaining, the easier we are to 'govern' (more like 'drive').

Of course, crime and social issues are always going to kick back when a nation is treated like this, but we don't have the fucking sense to do anything about it now in a useful way, so the government has what it always wants: a short term 'solution' to our economic problems and to our naughty wilfulness as people.

That's my two cents. It's more like four now.

 

[classic seanc]

I think you're giving the government far too much credit Ciansy

 

[jane]

You know, I haven't a clue about what to do. I think there needs to be a critical mass of people who are angry enough to do something before anythign can happen. I've been angry enough for a few years now, but I haven't a clue. These restrictions are infringing on the rights of Irish citizens, telling people who they can and can't marry, then making it extremely difficult if they happen to fall in love with someone of the wrong profession.

I genuinely don't think it's to do with racism. I think it's because your government hates all of us equally. That's the one area where we've all achieved equality, and it's not exactly good news.

It's funny, I was just telling me ma that there's a magazine called "You And Your Money", which caused her to laugh so hard she spit her breakfast down the phone, and then experienced an acute sense of disgust and made a strange noise that seemed to indicate this. She asked what the circulation figures were like, and you know, it has a circulation of about 40,000. Village Magazine has a circulation of 10,000. Are people in Ireland four times as interested in money as they are in politics? No, I don't htink so. It's probably more like ten times as interested.

EDIT: I think the most important thing to do, actually, is for everyone who cares about this stuff to find ways to move away from the emotive rhetoric and find the very strong and very clear arguments (and there are many) that can be made along both economic and legal lines. Because that's the battle they want to fight, and there isn't a government in this world who can be won over with a moral argument. It's a very sad, but very true fact. So they need to be hit with facts, realities, etc, things they can't just dismiss as moralising abstractions from the airy-fairy left.

 

[magicbastarder]

politics in ireland *is* money though.

 

[broken arm]

time for an Irish NoBorders Camp movement? if there isn't one already??

http://noborders.org.uk/

 

[jane]

politics in ireland *is* money though.

Politics is money everywhere, but there's a real imbalance here that reminds me a lot of what Reagan America was like, or (not that I experienced it) Thatcherite Britain. It was ugly and it didn't end well.

Trickle-down me hole.

 

[jane]

Primetime last night.

Fucking dreadful. http://www.rte.ie/news/primetime/index.html / http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0830/primetime.html

Yer one from the ICI was talking loads of sense, but yer wan from the Indo made just about zero sense, and yer other one was trying to be a bit too 'hard-hitting' when it came to human rights. Why don't Irish broadcasters seem to know when to play 'bad cop', and seem to bow down to the most loathsome of creatures, and then play ruthless interrogator with people who actually are just pointing out where human rights are being violated?

Weird.

Anyway, I don't fucking get the 'sham marriage'. I am 100% not fucking joking that if they're going to fucking investigate foreigners and deport their spouses if they are deemed 'insufficiently smitten', they should arrest everyone who got married out of convenience, tax breaks, expectations, etc, going right back to the fucking 1950s. Fuck them.

What really upsets me is that this is only making the news now. What about the rest of us who were extremely fucked long before this?

 

[bohs punks]

good friend of mine is now fucked, man from sudan married to a latvian woman he met in new ross, 100 percent genuine marraige but now fucked.


sadly this is a western world wide problem, usa immigration laws are as bad if not worse for example, so if you end up back there jane ther'll still be lots to be angry about.

 

[jane]

good friend of mine is now fucked, man from sudan married to a latvian woman he met in new ross, 100 percent genuine marraige but now fucked.


sadly this is a western world wide problem, usa immigration laws are as bad if not worse for example, so if you end up back there jane ther'll still be lots to be angry about.

Ugh. I know! My mom deals with all of the work visas for her staff,and she said it's a total nightmare, and it's absolutely shit. People there for years and still no proper green card, despite having done everything legally.

That's absolutely fucking awful about your friend. Did they get their 'papers'? I'd say something like 'I hope it works out', but with this government? Not likely.

 

[Janer]

Government dude: “I realise you're married, but you can’t live here if you haven’t already lived in another E.U. country, you see?”
Non-E.U. national living in Ireland: “But, if every E.U. country did that, I wouldn’t be able to live here at all”
“indeed…….fancy that.”

That story reminds me of when we used to get the "you have to be a regular, sorry" when getting refused from a pub by bouncers...
How the fuck can u become a regular if ur not let in!

 

[shower another shower]

When you're reregistering with at the immigration office, do you need to bring your Irish spouse, or will a passport an marriage cert suffice?
Also, whens the best time to get in? How long will I expect to be waiting around?

 

[jane]

When you're reregistering with at the immigration office, do you need to bring your Irish spouse, or will a passport an marriage cert suffice?
Also, whens the best time to get in? How long will I expect to be waiting around?

I think the earlier you go, the better, and I'm pretty sure your whole family has to be with you and have ID and all that. The office opens at 8 (or did last time I checked), and the wait really depends, but if you go earlier in the day, you're less likely to be refused on the basis of a pissy staff member (which is nowhere near as common as it used to be). I've been in and out in less than two hours, but sometimes it takes longer and it really depends on how many people have complicated cases, how the staff are feeling that morning, how many people are there, etc, etc.

If it's just a renewal of registration, it should be pretty quick and straightforward, but make sure you have all the required papers.

I think you're exempt from the €100 fee if you have an Irish spouse, but I'd bring the means to pay anyway. It has to be a credit card or a bank giro -- they don't take cash. Credit card is easiest because it saves you a second trip to the GNIB office.

I'd suggest ringing the office to ask about the need to have your spouse with you, but you're not very likely to get through to them on the phone, so you might as well bring her.

Is this a renewal after the initial 5 years or something? You know you can start the paperwork for naturalisation before the date you're eligible -- the process takes so long that you can do some of the steps in advance. Or you could as of a couple of years ago, and they were relatively decent about answering questions.

 

[shower another shower]

Cheers Jane! After being directed to the office on the Quays, by immigration at Dublin airport, they said I had to do it at my local garda station, Mullingar. I was three months over due on the stamp, didn't have my last registration card with me, but brought herself and the son. Didn't get charged the 100euro. Could of been out of there in 15minutes, but we sat and bullshited for at least an hour. We were gonna go for pints next week, until he started explaining the registration card to me. He said to carry it everywhere with me, and to produce it if a guard asks. If I didn't I could be arrested. He also said that it would be unlikely that I'd ever get asked, because "I was fair and looked like the rest of us".
Need to get naturalisation under way. Started to 10 years ago in SF, buy I'm a flake.

 

[jane]

Cheers Jane! After being directed to the office on the Quays, by immigration at Dublin airport, they said I had to do it at my local garda station, Mullingar. I was three months over due on the stamp, didn't have my last registration card with me, but brought herself and the son. Didn't get charged the 100euro. Could of been out of there in 15minutes, but we sat and bullshited for at least an hour. We were gonna go for pints next week, until he started explaining the registration card to me. He said to carry it everywhere with me, and to produce it if a guard asks. If I didn't I could be arrested. He also said that it would be unlikely that I'd ever get asked, because "I was fair and looked like the rest of us".
Need to get naturalisation under way. Started to 10 years ago in SF, buy I'm a flake.

Ack, that's nuts. Glad it was relatively straightfoward for you, but the end of it sounds like it left a bit of a bad taste. The whole 'not identity card' thing is just ridiculous, but the little comment about your skin even worse. I've got it lots of times, and it's so infuriating because you can't say anything lest you find yourself arbitrarily refused a renewal.

Hopefully you'll be able to get naturalised under the old system, otherwise that's even lamer. Sure, you've been married to the wan for ages!

My dad was here over the weekend and he had this Moldovan taxi driver. The guy's married to another Moldovan, and they have two Irish kids. The guy and his wife are having trouble with their immigration status, which is extra sucky because their kids may find themselves stuck between being taken into care if their parents are deported, or being forced to go live in a country where *they* are not citizens and where they've never even been because they're Irish.