If you break the law, you will need to be sent back
Lisa Chambers at odds with her FF colleagues over her controversial view on migrants commiting crimes:
SENATOR Lisa Chambers is at odds with her Fianna Fáil colleagues over calls for all migrants to face deportation if they commit a crime.
The Fianna Fáil senator, who is the government lead in the Seanad, includes even those who have been granted refugee status among those who ‘need to be sent back’ if they break the law.
However, fellow Fianna Fáil senators and the party’s justice spokesman have disagreed with her stance.
Speaking at the party’s Ard Fheis at the weekend, Senator Chambers said: ‘My view is that there’s nothing stopping us from deporting somebody who commits a crime in the State.’
‘Anybody who comes into this country, or if they’re seeking asylum or have been granted refugee status, if you break the law, you need to be sent back. And that’s what the public are asking us for,’ she said.
Her comments came as an internal Fianna Fáil document on immigration called for asylum seekers who commit a serious crime while awaiting a decision on their international protection application to be deported.
Senator Chambers is running to be an MEP in the upcoming European elections for the
Overhaul of immigration law
Midlands North West Constituency.
MEPs last week voted through the EU Migration Pact, which Ireland will be implementing in full and will represent the biggest overhaul of immigration law in Ireland in decades.
Gardaí and the Department of Justice have said that there is no link between migrants and increased levels of crime.
Fianna Fáil justice spokesman Jim O’Callaghan said that Senator Chambers’s proposal is ‘very legally complicated’ due to the prohibition on sending refugees back to countries where the state has accepted that they were under persecution.
‘The situation is more complicated and more difficult where you have a person here who has been granted international protection they can’t then be sent back to the country from where they came,’ he said on RTE Radio One.
He said the Fianna Fáil document on migration clearly refers to only asylum seekers who have committed a crime, and not those who have been granted refugee status.
Mr O’Callaghan said that it was a ‘perfectly reasonable proposal’ for Fianna Fáil to look for asylum seekers who have committed a crime to be deported.
Fellow Fianna Fáil Senator Malcolm Byrne said Senator Chambers’s statement was ‘probably going a bit further than the party paper on the issue’.
He said the party paper says that committing an offence ‘will effectively act as a bar on them being granted asylum here’.
‘As an asylum seeker, you have a certain number of rights, but you equally have responsibilities in the state.
‘If somebody is granted asylum, they have a series of rights at that stage that says if they are convicted, then whatever sentence is imposed on them by the courts should be implemented.’
Senator Pat Casey also agreed with Senator Byrne’s position.
Senator Byrne rejected that Senator Chambers’s views had become a liability for the party, after she admitted to voting no to both refendums last month after canvassing for a Yes vote.
‘We are a very open, democratic party. We’ve always encouraged debate. We’re not like other political parties where there’s a view sent down from the top and you must adhere to it.’
He said there was ‘very healthy debate’ in Fianna Fáil on immigration issues, and ‘individuals are encouraged to hold different opinions’.
‘Lisa has been a very good leader of our group in the Seanad and I think a very good leader in Seanad and she would make an excellent MEP as indeed would Niall Blaney and Barry Cowen.’