We treat migrants as badly as Trump

THE Government has rightly criticised the barbaric treatment of migrant children by the Trump administration, yet defends its own policy of warehousing vulnerable children in institutions for years.

Speaking in the Dáil last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said he was “appalled” by images of “immigrant children being separated from their parents at the southern US border and held in detention by the US authorities”.

The disgusting abuse of children by the dead-eyed ogres of the Trump administration is indeed reprehensible. The fact that thousands were ripped from their parents, without authorities bothering to issue any paperwork to document the whereabouts of their stolen children, is chilling.

By contrast, when people in the US are detained in prison, they are issued with a receipt for their wallet and personal effects. The Trump administration placed so little value on the lives of these children, they were not even worthy of that.

Trump and his cronies are so objectively monstrous that they are easy to lambast. However, our own hands are far from clean when it comes to the treatment of migrants.

Former Supreme Court judge Catherine McGuinness has predicted that a day of reckoning will come for this country when a future government will be forced to apologise for the cruel system of direct provision, in which residents are stripped of their autonomy and their dignity.

First established in 2000 as an “interim” solution to an increase in the numbers seeking asylum in this country, the system has become normalised and accepted by successive governments.

But there is very little about direct provision that should be acceptable to anyone who professes to care about the human rights of vulnerable adults and children.

The primary purpose of direct provision is not to care for the needs of asylum-seekers who arrive on our shores, but to act as a deterrent so that others don’t make the journey.

By its nature, the system is designed to be unpleasant, uncomfortable and mean. For many who are trapped for years in institutions, it is also demeaning, degrading and soul-destroying.

While the Government has made some cosmetic changes to the system, attempting to increase the numbers of institutions where residents can at least cook for themselves and introducing a paltry increase to their allowance, bringing it to €21.60 per week, it’s inherent unjustness remains the same.

Men, women and children left in limbo for years, living in cramped, often isolated, conditions with little ability to assimilate with their new communities. Bright teenagers who study hard and pass their Leaving Cert, many of whom have spent years in this country, are unable to move on to third level with their friends as the cost is too prohibitive.

These are people who want an opportunity to work and contribute to Irish society while their applications are determined, but they are denied that right by an officialdom that is totally indifferent to their plight.

Up until this year, Ireland was among only two European countries that denied asylumseekers the right to work – something which would at least give some purpose to their days and restore a sense of dignity.

It wasn’t the Government that opted to change this iniquitous rule. It was the Supreme Court that ruled the ban was unconstitutional.

The State, in attempting to comply with the court’s order, has designed a work permit scheme which is so onerous, and contains so many exclusionary conditions, that it’s practically useless.

Asylum-seekers, with their income of just €21.60 per week, must pay a fee of between €500 and €1,000 for a six-month or 12-month work permit, must find a job with a starting salary of at least €30,000, and are precluded from applying for jobs in more than 60 areas, including hospitality, construction and healthcare.

If the same conditions applied to Irish people seeking work, more than 50pc of the population would be unemployed.

The scheme is so restrictive that Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan confessed to the Dáil this month that not a single person, in the four months since the ban was struck down, has successfully applied for a work permit. In fact, the Department has only received one application, which was later withdrawn – presumably because those in direct provision know any application would be utterly futile.

The Government has said the new scheme is temporary in nature and a more expansive right to work will be introduced shortly – but has remained tight-lipped about the kinds of jobs that asylum-seekers will be able to apply for.

The courts were also instrumental in striking down another injustice recently, when the Court of Appeal ruled that failing to pay child benefit to Irish citizen children, living in direct provision, was unconstitutional. Up until now, the State had been standing over a system in which Irish children were made to pay the price for the legal status of one of their parents.

Why is it continually left to the courts, instead of our parliamentarians, to curb the worst cruelties of our immigration system? Even when the law governing applications was changed at the end of 2016, with the ostensible goal of making the asylum process speedier and more streamlined, the Government failed to properly resource the immigration service with the result that waiting times have increased exponentially. A recent report from the ESRI found waiting times for asylum seekers to have their first interview are now between 18 to 20 months. In 2015, the average waiting time was just 11 weeks.

There is now a lot of evidence that prolonged stays in institutional settings are damaging to both adults and children. There is evidence that women are turning to prostitution to earn money to care for their children, that children are exposed to dangers while surrounded by strangers and that both children and adults experience trauma and isolation as a result of their living conditions.

The Government can’t say that it wasn’t warned. Before a future Dáil has to one day convene a tribunal of inquiry into our system of direct provision, this Government could act today to meaningfully ameliorate its worst cruelties.

Real action to improve our own treatment of vulnerable people would do much more to highlight the difference in attitude, between this country and Trump’s sullied America, than empty rhetoric.

There is now a lot of evidence that long stays in institutional settings are damaging to both adults and children