Here are the stark words of an asylumseeker: "Our choice is one of two unattractive options, to return to poverty and hopelessness. . . or to remain on here in the hope that employment opportunities will not be completely obliterated, and in apprehension of being hunted down and ultimately deported. For the vast majority of us, return is out of the question. There is no future for us back in the `old country'."
Forced to remain anonymous by his fear of the authorities, the asylum-seeker pleads, in a letter to a newspaper, for "the right of sanctuary". To some of his readers, perhaps, he is an unwelcome alien, a sponger, a law-breaker, a parasite. But to others his plight, trapped as he is between the poverty and hopelessness of his homeland and the fugitive existence of an illegal economic migrant, touches the heart.
The letter, as you may have guessed from the reference to the "old country", is from an Irish illegal in New York. It appeared in the Irish Echo in May 1987 under the heading "Plea from an undocumented alien" and was signed "Patrick, an undocumented alien from County Cork". The writer, Patrick Hurley, was one of the founders of the Irish Immigration Reform Movement that went on to campaign effectively for the tens of thousands of illegal Irish who poured into the US in the 1980s.
One of the most touching aspects of the plight of those illegals for most Irish people was the uncertainty of their future, and in particular the barriers that their children would face. The classic immigrant ideal of making sacrifices for your children was undercut by the uncertainty of their status.
This seemed, to most of us, utterly unjust and completely unnecessary. We told the Americans that they were crazy, that their heartless bureaucracy was depriving them of the great energy that our young economic migrants could inject into their society and their economy. We demanded that they see sense.
EARLIER this week Andy Pollak reported in The Irish Times that the immigration section of the Department of Justice had told officials in the Department of Education to deny access to education to asylum-seekers. In a letter to the City of Dublin VEC, a Department of Education official noted that, according to advice received from the Department of Justice, asylum-seekers "are not supposed to work, and I have been told, but not in writing, that they should not have access to education".
The Department of Justice denied that this represented "official" policy, and it is clear that it has not been written down as such - one hopes from a sense of shame. But it clearly represents an underlying attitude that colours the Department's dealings with vulnerable people seeking "the right of sanctuary" here. And, if it applies to asylum-seekers, who at least have some legal status, it can be assumed that it also applies to economic migrants whose legal position is weaker.
If this is so, it is hypocritical, inhumane and stupid. Hypocritical because it treats immigrants to Ireland in a way that we Irish found intolerable when it was applied to the illegal Irish in the US. Inhumane because it treats innocent children as suspects and threatens to deprive them of education while their parents' status is being determined. Stupid because it ignores the immense benefit that immigrant children bring to the education system in the country to which they come.
It would be nice to think that common humanity and an awareness of our own history would be enough to convince the powers that be that anti-immigrant policies achieve nothing but the misery of those who have to suffer under them. Since neither of these factors seems sufficient, however, perhaps intelligent self-interest might work. For sheer selfish concern for social and economic progress in Ireland leads to the conclusion that, instead of trying to keep the children of immigrants out of our education system, we should be trying to attract them.
New York, where I've spent some time of late, shows the benefits of drawing young settlers into the education system, especially in poor and rundown areas. In Brooklyn, the three top-performing schools draw their pupils almost entirely from immigrant communities. The best, Midwood High, is mostly Russian and Caribbean and teaches some classes in Haitian Creole.
In the next two, Clara Barton High and East New York Transit Tech, two-thirds of the students are foreign-born. The former, dominated by West Indian women, has become a recruiting ground for the top medical schools. and its graduates regularly go on to study at the University of Pennsylvania, Duke, Cornell and Brown. The latter was, in the mid-1980s, a notorious dumping ground for problem students. The numbers who completed a full school cycle were so small that graduation ceremonies were held in the principal's office. Now, because an influx of immigrant children has pushed up standards and ambitions, the school has 5,000 applications a year for 400 places.
Even economic conservatives (as opposed to racist conservatives) accept the evidence for the immigrant effect. Here, for example, is Joel Millman, in his study The Other American, on the impact of West Indian immigrants on New York's troubled public universities: "Thanks to the West Indians, years of decline have been reversed at the City University of New York. Schools that foundered on the 1960s' `open admission' policy (which allowed any high school graduate to attend college, regardless of performance) have been bolstered by a new wave of determined and academically gifted immigrant children . . . New York, then, becomes the beneficiary of a windfall of talent, much of which will stay in the black community and contribute to the growing black middle class."
ALREADY, in Ireland, teachers in inner-city and working-class schools can testify to the impact of the children of asylum-seekers and economic migrants on morale in the classroom. These kids come from families who have, by definition, travelled a long way in search of a better life. Many of them retain the sense of ambition and optimism that has been squeezed out of the children of the Irish poor by years of defeat and neglect.
Many of them are driven, too, by an intimate knowledge of terror and disaster which makes them determined to seize whatever opportunities they get. There is nothing easy or romantic about their situation. But it does provide exactly the infusion of hope and self-belief that a system hooked on bad excuses and low expectations so badly needs.
We of all people should know all of this. Who, after all, went to the Americans in the 1980s and told them that they should not forget the vast contribution of hungry Irish immigrants to the economic success of the United States? If some in Official Ireland don't know the answer to that one, no amount of all-white, foreigner-free education could tarnish their incorrigible ignorance.