Support for young Eric in his deportation fight is welcome... but what about the less talented children? MARY CARR

YOUNG Eric Zhi Ying Xue sounds like a terrific lad. Just like Nigerian-born Nonso Muojeke, whose classmates in Tullamore College got behind his campaign to stay in the country, he is a popular and clever boy, brimming with potential.

The principal of Eric’s school in Bray described him as ‘an extremely able child’, adding: ‘He’s mature, sensible and well adjusted. He has a group of lovely friends and is very well integrated into the school and local community.

‘He plays football, he does all things that boys do. He’s very much a part of Bray and the community.’

The idea that he could disappear from their lives has, his headmistress said, greatly affected his friends in fourth class, making them ‘very upset and quite scared’. The emotion which the nineyear-old’s case has unleashed has prompted 40,000 people to sign an online petition organised by his school, St Cronan’s, against his deportation to China.

Shambles

It has also struck a chord with local TD Simon Harris, the Health Minister, who tweeted: ‘I stand with Eric Zhi Ying Xue in Bray… He is Irish. He was born in Holles Street. He is part of our community. On humanitarian grounds alone, this should be resolved. Have made representations to that effect.’

Harris’s intervention echoes Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan’s recent brandishing of his compassionate side when he revoked the deportation order facing Nonso Muojeke and his family.

The 14-year-old Tullamore student is mature beyond his years, an excellent allrounder and set on following in the footsteps of his brother Victor who has a scholarship to the University of Limerick. The shambles of our immigration system, whereby a labyrinthine appeals process can drag on for years, means that youngsters such as Nonso and Eric grow up under constant threat of deportation.

Yet, by an overwhelming majority, the Irish people voted for that in 2004 when they removed the automatic right to citizenship for children like Eric who are born here. The result of this hardline approach is to hand politicians the opportunity to garland themselves in praise every time they save a deserving person from deportation. But the readiness of politicians to exploit the system for their own electoral ends aside, this piecemeal approach to residency is alarming for other, deeper reasons.

In the first place it enshrines an elitist view of childhood, where only those children who distinguish themselves have a chance of staying.

Secondly mass public campaigns can be precarious and turn on a whim.

For instance some of Eric’s champions might well be dismayed at the newspaper reports of how his mother obtained a passport for him under false pretences. People who from birth enjoy security are often naive about the extreme and sometimes unlawful lengths that people in desperate circumstances go to in an effort to regularise their status, and their disenchantment can rebound disastrously on a campaign.

Eric and Nonso may be popular and talented, but the subtext is that they are exactly the sort of people we want to attract to our shores.

Indeed, Fianna Fáil’s Barry Cowen was pretty explicit about this as he threw his weight behind Nonso and his exemplary family, saying: ‘They are as Irish, I believe, as the Minister [Flanagan] or myself. They have not been a financial burden on the State and will not be going forward.’

Compassion

But what of the children who, like lots of Irish youngsters, are not gifted with brilliant social skills or any real talent, who don’t make a mark on their school or show any leadership in their community? What of the stunningly average kid who pitches up here as a toddler like Nonso, or the child who is slow to read but, like Eric, was born here a few years after their mother illegally set up home on a tourist visa. Do they not deserve the same compassion?

TDs such as Simon Harris and Marcella Corcoran Kennedy argue that allowing Eric and Nonso and their parents to stay is the humane thing to do. But surely it would be even more moral to champion a child who is disabled or suffering from mental health problems and whose life chances would be devastated by deportation, rather than talented children who would thrive in most environments?

Developing countries don’t have a welfare state to support children who are sick or disabled. In African countries, conditions such as autism are clouded in superstition and ignorance, and young sufferers are hidden from view, frequently locked up at home.

Natural talent is not the only factor that can help mobilise a campaign. An immigrant child might be lucky enough to attend a well-resourced school with a high level of parental involvement, where there is a readiness to rally around a child on the brink of deportation. An inner-city or DEIS school might be too stretched or lack the political connections to fight the corner of an immigrant child.

Transparency

The reasons why just a few campaigns gather momentum, while hundreds never so much as get off the ground, are spurious, prompting immigration lawyer Catherine Cosgrave to label the process a ‘popularity contest’.

‘Children shouldn’t have to campaign publicly on a case-by-case basis,’ the solicitor for the Immigrant Council said in yesterday’s Irish Mail on Sunday.

‘We need systemic reform instead of the Government mopping up cases as they get into the media. There’s an ultimate lack of transparency in who’s getting to stay and who’s not.’

Cosgrave proposes legislating to allow children who have been brought up and educated here to stay, something she believes most Irish people would support. With warning bells of how Brexit might increase immigration levels, it’s impossible to know whether attitudes have hardened since 2004 or if the public has grown more open to the new Irish. Since that time there have been two high-profile campaigns, fought by Pamela Izevbekhai and Kunle Elukanlo, to remain.

Kunle was an extremely popular student in Palmerstown when he was deported to Nigeria. A petition from his school mates pressurised Michael McDowell to give him a six-month visa so he could sit his Leaving Cert. On his return, Kunle charmed the nation on The Late Late Show, before he ran up a string of driving offences and his girlfriend fell pregnant. In 2008, Kunle was granted status to remain on condition he stayed out of trouble.

Pamela’s six-year asylum bid enjoyed widespread public support, including the backing of Alan Shatter, until gardaí travelled to Nigeria and discovered she was using forged documents in her court case. After failing to prove that her daughters were at risk from female genital mutilation, the family was deported.

These historical cases highlight the risk of public campaigns, their mixed results and how personal popularity is a dubious basis for public support. Yet, for all that, we seem to be back in the era when residency rights are decided by public opinion and some children are judged more equal than others.