Clare Immigrant Support Centre along with thousands of undocumented people in Ireland and migrant organisations welcomed the announcement earlier this year by Justice Minister Helen McEntee of a Regularisation Scheme for undocumented migrants, which would allow them to legally work in the country, and provide a pathway to Irish citizenship.
Under the proposed guidelines, only people who have not had legal status for at least four years – or three years if they have children here – will be eligible to apply. Migrants’ rights groups say the scheme as planned may exclude thousands of adults and children and want the criteria to be widened. An open letter was sent to Justice Minister Heather Humphries calling for the scope of the scheme to be widened.
There are many different reasons a person becomes undocumented in Ireland. Some arrive on tourist visas and overstay to work, others may come as students or on temporary work permits and illegally remain in the country after their permission has lapsed, others could be victims of human trafficking.
Due to the invisible nature of many undocumented migrants, it is extremely difficult to quantify the number of people living and working in the country without permission to do so.
A figure of between 15,000 and 20,000 undocumented people living in Ireland is usually referenced, based on estimates provided by the Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland (MRCI) – a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that advocates for migrants. It is estimated that there could be up to 1,000 undocumented people in Clare and the wider region.
Many organisations including Clare Immigrant Support Centre and undocumented migrants themselves have been campaigning relentlessly for over a decade for a Regularisation Scheme to be introduced in Ireland. The Justice Plan 2021 included a timeline for the scheme, and in April Minister McEntee announced the preliminary details, since then various webinars and consultation process as well as submission process with engagement from organisations and individuals have taken place. Clare Immigrant Support Centre made a submission urging a widely inclusive scheme with an easy to use application process.
A report last year from the Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland (MRCI), entitled “We live here, we work here. We belong here”, surveyed 1,000 undocumented people living in Ireland. It found that 93% were working to support themselves, with almost half working over 40 hours a week.
The survey also found that over a quarter of workers were carers for elderly people in their home, and that 26% of people did not receive the minimum wage.
One local Clare undocumented person describes “Life as an undocumented migrant in Ireland can be stressful and is difficult for a number of reasons, the fear of deportation is always there. In my daily life I find ways of deliberately avoiding making contact with any form of authority figure, including visiting the doctor when you are sick, or contacting gardaí in the case of a crime against you for fear that the person would realise my undocumented status in the country.”
It is expected that the regularisation scheme will be open in the next month and will run for six months, during which time people can apply, with each application being assessed on a case-by-case basis.
Successful applicants will be given the right to live and work legally in the country, and will have a pathway to becoming Irish citizens.
Many EU countries have carried out both large scale and smaller regularisation schemes over the past three decades. It is estimated that between 1996 and 2008, 3.5 million people were regularised in Europe.
The vast majority of these (c. 2.2 million) were in Spain and Italy, which enacted large scale regularisation programmes in 2005 and 2006 respectively. In 2001, Portugal regularised 185,000 undocumented migrants.
Clare Immigrant Support Centre will engage in wide dissemination of multilingual information and support for undocumented people in the county so they can know about and hopefully benefit from this Regularisation Scheme if applicable, come out of the shadows and be unafraid as they continue to build their lives here in Clare.