Life as a refugee support volunteer with it's occasional victories and frequent defeats.

Occasional Victories is a place for links, news, rants and raves about Refugee related issues.

If you would like to contribute just drop me an email at carigeen(a)yahoo.com

 
Night, sitting on a floor in the living room of an African house.
Outside, cold spring rain rattles on the windowpane.

The room is crowded with very worried people.
They listen, silently and intently, to what I've to say and then the questions come.

'Will there be mass deportations?
Are residence permits going to be revoked?
If I apply for family re-unification will this lead to my residency being revoked?
If I apply for readmission to the asylum process will I have to return to direct provision?
How can I get my six-year-old child in?
How can I get permission to remain?
How can we get people to like us? '

I answer them as best I can, with a depressing number of 'don't knows' in the answers.

Then I cycle home through occasional showers and ask myself what this nation thinks it's doing?
All they want is a place to bring up their children in peace.
posted by Carigeen at Friday, March 07, 2003

 
From one of the most wonderfull writers on the internetCormac
- January 25, 2003

And I met.......

Mavaro from Nigeria, just an hour or two ago, in the wake of a Supreme Court judgement in Dublin earlier today. Mavaro is a refugee and her son Noa is six months old. His father is still in Nigeria. Mavaro had applied to stay here in the West of Ireland and had been told by those who help the refugees that Noa, being an Irish citizen by birth, was her passport to stay here, to be legalised to stay, and to eventually be joined by her husband. The judgement today means that she could be deported tomorrow morning by the Irish government. She is sitting
in a small flat in the centre of the town and, though it is warm, she is shuddering at the news. She will never go back to Africa, she says, not ever. It was a bad place for her and, though she does not elaborate, I gather there is a tribal conflict in her district in which her husband is somehow involved. The child, this young dusky Irish citizen, is in her arms. He is a beautiful child, strong and sturdy. His eyes are exactly the same brown colour, and with the same innocence, as those of the young fox I met yesterday morning in one of the gaps of Life.

posted by Carigeen at Thursday, March 06, 2003

 
Meeting an Evangelist

I was on site, trying to get information that would help me trace missing 8 year old twins in Kaduna, when the local Evangelical minister comes in to the caravan.

The conversation stops, she recognises me from the opening of the Nigerian Church in town, and starts to tell me what a wonderfull person I am and what good work I'm doing! Then, the pepetual evangelical question, had I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour?

I can never resist winding people up so I declared that I was an atheist and that if her God wanted to claim my work he would also have to claim the work of Arkan and Pol Pot!

Then we were in to personal testimony of her meetings with Jesus and attempting to prove the existence of God by quoting from the bible. A bit of a circular reference there I fear.

We parted on good terms, with her offering to pray that I see the light. 'Twill do no harm anyway!
posted by Carigeen at Thursday, March 06, 2003

 
Last night was difficult.

A man came into Harmony looking for help for a Nigerian woman.
She is 22 years old with a three month old baby. Her husband died in hospital last week.

They withdrew their asylum application before Christmas, expecting to be granted residency on the basis of the baby.

I had to tell her that this was no longer possible since the Supreme Court judgement in January.
She has to re-apply for asylum as soon as she can. Otherwise she is in danger of getting a deportation order.

This is from a state that says in it's constitution:
1° The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.

2° The State, therefore, guarantees to protect the Family in its constitution and authority, as the necessary basis of social order and as indispensable to the welfare of the Nation and the State.

Or does it just mean Irish, white and Catholic families?
posted by Carigeen at Wednesday, March 05, 2003