[HPN] MEMBER POLL: Help homeless citizens, not undocumented immigrants?

[Tom Boland]

HPN MEMBER POLL: Help homeless citizens, not undocumented immigrants?

Since immigrants, especially undocumented people, seem to make up a visibly
growing proportion of homeless people where I live, I ask your opinion.

*Do you agree or disagree with the statement below?  Please explain why.
"My country should help its own citizens, and not immigrants."

The following AP article cites an example of such reasoning:
``Irish people are sleeping rough in the streets,''.
``Let's look after our own first.''

http://newsfinder.arinet.com/fpweb/fp.dll/$stargeneral/htm/x_dv.htm/_ibyx/cg0302
6/_itox/starnet/_svc/news/_Id/641836808/_k/LpGxhnhiSL05NSOh
FWD  Associated Press - AP Wire Service - Feb 27, 2000
     Photo Advisory  NY332-336 of Feb. 22

     ISLAND OF THE WELCOMES FINDS PREJUDICE TAINTING ITS SHORES

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) _ John Tambwe stands before the class of
teen-agers, and braces for the insults.

Rapist. Liar. Sponger. Thief. Waster.

The 32-year-old refugee doesn't flinch. In 15 months in Ireland
he has grown accustomed to the slurs. The innocence of ignorance,
he says. After all, most of the students asked for their first
impressions of him have never met a black man before.

Slowly, Tambwe starts telling his story: How he fled the
genocide in Rwanda with his wife and baby after friends and family
were massacred, how they paid a trafficker to smuggle them out of
Congo, how they left their house, their belongings, the land they
loved, to travel to this cold, windswept outpost of Europe, a place
they knew nothing about, except that it had green fields and
whiskey and bombs in Belfast.

``At first,'' Tambwe said, ``I worried that we were going from
one war-zone to another.''

He has learned that he is safe from bombs in Dublin. But not
from cries of ``Jungle-boy. Go back to your own country.'' Not from
graffiti that says ``Whites only'' and landlords that say ``No
Blacks.'' Not from buses that pass him by, or police who stop him
on O'Connell Street just because of the color of his face.

At the end of his story, Tambwe asks students to write their
impressions again. Some have tears in their eyes as they offer
their verdict.

Strong. Brave. Courageous. Good. Kind.

If only he could speak to every school in Ireland, Tambwe sighs,
then maybe he could stop this terrible disease from taking root.

``Ireland could be a model for the world,'' he says. ``It could
show the world that ignorance and prejudice have no place in
society, that racism can be wiped out before it has a chance to
destroy.''

It's a powerful thought and Tambwe isn't the only one expressing
it these days. Ireland, long accustomed to raising sons and
daughters for export, has suddenly been discovered by the sons and
daughters of other nations. And the land that prides itself on Cead
Mile Failte _ Irish for one hundred thousand welcomes _ is
wrestling with the question of who exactly is welcome on its
shores.

From Romania and Nigeria and Rwanda they come, cramped into
sealed containers on ferries from Europe, hidden in the
undercarriages of trucks trundling over the Northern Ireland
border, clutching false papers at Dublin airport. Thirteen thousand
immigrants have flocked to Ireland in the past two years, and
thousands more are arriving every month. The numbers seem
staggering in a country of 3.5 million which had only a trickle of
immigrants before 1996.

But the cultural and psychological impact is even more
staggering. Romanian gypsies in colorful scarves beg on O'Connell
Street bridge, a homeless Iraqi sells newspapers near the Tara
Street train station, an African center has opened on Meath Street,
a Bosnian center on Pearse Street, a gold-domed mosque in
Clonskeagh.

The pace of change seems frantic to many, frightening to some.

``There is a certain culture of disbelief that is leading to a
certain hysteria,'' says Catherine Kenny of the nonprofit Irish
Refugee Council. ``People must remember that immigrants are coming
here for the same reasons the Irish went to London and New York.
They are coming for a better life.''

Many find it. Ireland has one of the most generous social
welfare systems in Europe, and anyone who applies for asylum as a
refugee is entitled to benefits as soon as they arrive. They are
not detained or imprisoned as they are in many other countries,
including the United States. Instead, asylum-seekers are assured
emergency shelter and free medical care. The booming economy _ the
much-heralded ``Celtic Tiger'' _ means plenty of low-paying jobs.

``We were told we would be safe. We were told we would not be
turned away,'' sobbed Emily Marc, a 27-year-old Romanian who
survived three days in a sealed container with her husband Adrian,
having paid $2,000 to a trafficker to smuggle them out of the
country. Trucked across Europe, they were put on a ferry bound for
Ireland and eventually dumped in Dublin in the middle of the night.
They had $50 between them. They weren't even sure what country they
were in.

``When you leave something horrible, you don't choose where you
are going,'' Emily whispered in broken English, describing how,
after the couple had lost clerical jobs, they could barely afford
to buy food. ``We left something horrible,'' she said. ``But there
are things that are horrible here too.''

It's not just the sneers at their accents as they tramp around
Dublin looking for cheap housing, nor the cries of ``spongers''
when they collect social welfare. What hurts the most is the
hostility they feel in this land that has always prided itself on
friendliness, on its reputation as one of the most charitable
nations on earth.

``You just keep quiet when you hear people say 'Bloody
Romanians, why don't you go back to your own country,''' says Sorin
Costica, a 33-year-old taxi driver from Romania, who also keeps
quiet about the stones thrown at his house. ``You realize that it's
just ignorance and fear.''

Costica feels luckier than most. He speaks English. He has an
Irish-born son, which means he is entitled to stay. He earns enough
to send money back to his parents. And he has white skin.

For although prejudice flows freely against immigrants from all
nations, blacks bear the brunt: a 17-year-old Congolese youth
brutally beaten in an unprovoked attack, security guards accused of
roughing up Nigerians in a downtown shopping center, a Congolese
engineer charged with assaulting police officers after a raid on
his house _ apparently a case of false identity. These are just
some recent cases that have been documented. On the streets, the
evidence is everywhere, from crude graffiti to deeply offensive
insults casually tossed at blacks.

Things got to the point they could no longer be ignored. In
January, the government began a one-million-pound campaign to fight
racism, the first of its kind in Irish history. Announcing the
grant, officials referred to extreme racist attitudes in Austria
and France. Action must be taken, they said, to prevent the same
problems in Ireland.

But what kind of action? How can a nation that has always given
so generously to faraway victims of famine and war learn to accept
the victims who wash up on its shores?

``The Irish used to give pennies for the black babies,'' says
Kensika Monshengwo, referring to the collection boxes for Africa
that once sat in Irish classrooms. ``Now the black babies have
grown up and come here. Would it be better if they had died?''

Monshengwo smiles. He knows the discomfort people feel when he
pricks their conscience with his words, knows one way to fight
racism is to keep on pricking. Like others involved in
organizations that have sprung up to help immigrants, the
33-year-old refugee thinks Ireland is at a critical juncture in
history.

So he runs English classes for new immigrants, and he runs
anti-racism sessions for government workers, including the police.

``Nobody chooses to be a refugee,'' says Monshengwo, a
diplomat's son who fled Congo after being imprisoned for
involvement with civil rights groups in 1997. ``You don't pay
someone $5,000 to smuggle you out of your own country so that you
can come here and live on 72 pounds ($90) a week in a ghetto.''

To fight racism, Monshengwo says, you have to put other people
in your shoes, have to show them that their dreams and despairs are
the same as yours.

In training sessions, Monshengwo describes an imaginary coup in
Dublin. He tells participants they have to flee the country and
gives them five minutes to scribble down a handful of items to
take. He describes days of traveling, bribing, growing despair.
Turned away by France, which has recognized the new regime, they
make their way to Congo where they are met by skeptical government
workers, inured to endless tales of woe.

Why did you choose to come here, Monshengwo barks, pretending to
be an official and speaking in his native Lingala.

We didn't choose it, they plead through an interpreter. We were
fleeing persecution.

``Where are your papers?''

``We didn't have time to get proper papers.''

``Why didn't you apply for asylum in France?''

Monshengwo has a powerful presence and plays his role with
conviction. By the end of the session, some trainees are lying
about being tortured, begging to remain, crying when told they will
be deported.

The scene plays out in reality at the Justice Department
application center in Dublin, a nondescript building where a mass
of humanity gathers every morning, waiting to see if what they have
heard about Ireland is true.

``I want to apply for asylum as a refugee.''

The requests come in every language, from people fleeing all
sorts of pain. Under Irish law, anyone who can demonstrate a
``well-founded fear of being persecuted'' is entitled to refugee
status and the same rights as an Irish citizen. Though it is clear
that many are fleeing economic hardship, not persecution, all are
permitted to remain while their cases are being processed. The huge
backlog of cases means it can take up to two years for one to be
decided. And, until recently, no one could be sent home because
Ireland's deportation laws were ruled unconstitutional.

Officials acknowledge that the system, based on outdated laws,
is unworkable. Some propose denying entry to so-called ``economic
migrants'' and legalizing deportations. Other proposals include
housing asylum-seekers in centers, issuing vouchers for food and
clothing, and fingerprinting those over the age of 14.

The proposals, borrowed from other European countries, have met
with an outcry from anti-racist organizations.

``If Irish emigrants to America had been treated the same way,
Irish politicians would have been beating a path to the White
House,'' said Donncha O'Connell of the Irish Civil Liberties
Council.

But Justice Department spokeswoman Bernice O'Neill argues that
every country has a right to impose restrictions on asylum-seekers,
particularly when each one costs the state about $12,500 a year.
Referring to European agreements that require refugees to seek
asylum in the first safe country they enter, O'Neill said, ``People
shouldn't be traveling all across the continent of Europe to apply
for asylum here.''

While the debate rages, newcomers keep arriving.

In the first week of this year, 250 people applied for asylum,
including a group of Romanians who hoodwinked officials by
pretending to be a church choir en route to a Christmas concert in
Sligo. The concert was canceled when organizers discovered that the
real choir was still singing away in Romania.

``I'm not racist, but 90 percent of them don't belong here,''
says 52-year-old Shay Lowry as he drives his taxi through a poor
section of Dublin. ``When the Irish went to Ellis Island, there was
no one standing there with a $100 check and a medical card.''

Lowry echoes the calls to talk-radio shows and the speeches of
some politicians when he talks about abuses of the system, the easy
availability of false ID cards on the black market, the suggestion
that many immigrants are having babies just to stay in Ireland.

``Irish people are sleeping rough in the streets,'' he says.
``Let's look after our own first.''

It's a cry heard all over Ireland, but mainly in the poorer
sections of Dublin, where the gap between rich and poor is most
evident, and where most of the immigrants initially settle.

And it's a cry that is getting increasingly organized.

``The fundamental problem is that once asylum-seekers set foot
on your territory only a very small minority will ever leave
again,'' states the Immigration Control Platform, an organization
founded by Cork schoolteacher, Aine Ni Chonaill. The organization,
denounced as racist by many, urges Ireland to do everything in its
power to make the country less attractive to immigrants. Ni
Chonaill declined to be interviewed.

Ni Chonaills's group reserves particular scorn for people like
Peter Finlay, a Dublin lawyer who until recently was a member of
the appeals authority that decides the cases of immigrants whose
applications are denied. Finlay resigned in January, saying he
could no longer be part of a system he didn't believe in.

Piled high on his desk are the files of some 400 cases he
reviewed in the past two years: a Somali couple who had been raped,
a 13-year-old boy who fled from Kosovo to Dublin hidden on a truck
after seeing both parents killed, a Congolese man with a bullet
hole through his chest.

Finlay winces as he recounts their stories and his own agony in
deciding their fate. One solution to Ireland's dilemma, he says, is
to grant amnesty to the 10,000 or so immigrants waiting for their
cases to be resolved. In the meantime, he says, a fair, thoughtful
approach to immigration should be drafted, rather than the
``knee-jerk, police state reaction'' that has fostered racist
tendencies elsewhere in Europe.

``Ireland has a historic opportunity to decide to flourish as a
multicultural society,'' Finlay says, ``instead of becoming a
small-minded, begrudging, suspicious people.''

Across the city, the same message is chanted by the Anti-Racism
Campaign, a ragtag group of Dubliners who spend Saturdays
distributing literature near Trinity College.

``Down with state racism!'' ``No deportations!'' they chant, as
they hand pamphlets to passersby.

Many fear mass deportations once the new immigration policies
are in place. The group has lobbied airline workers to refuse to
take deportees. It is also active in several court cases involving
immigrants who claim to have been harassed by police.

Larry Deery, a 38-year-old construction worker, stops to sign
their petition and discuss their campaign.

``Ireland has always been racist, We just never had a chance to
vent it,'' says Deery, who spent eight years working illegally in
New York before the Celtic Tiger lured him home. ``It's just a
basic human fear when you see people from another race.''

``I admire what you are trying to do, but I don't think you will
change things,'' he tells the group,

``We have to believe,'' insists campaigner Rosanna Flynn.
Ireland, she says, is small enough that everyone has a chance to
meet a refugee, to get to know a Nigerian or a Rwandan, to hear
firsthand the stories of a Romanian or a Bosnian.

Braced against the wind and the rain, clutching her leaflets,
chanting her chant, Flynn is the epitome of this belief: that a
tiny emigrant nation can be a model for change, that it can show
the world how prejudices can be quashed and minds opened, how
racism can be eradicated before it has a chance to flourish.

End Adv for Sunday, Feb. 27
AP-CS-02-22-00 1348EST
Received  Id AP1000581D1C551E on Feb 22 2000 12:49

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