The Chen Citizenship Scam
This is some interesting reading. Ireland changed their citizenship laws in 2004 so anchor baby cases are now a thing of the past.
Why didn't we do the same a long time ago?
Here's the case:
Chinese Family is temporarily working for a Chinese company in the UK.
They have a baby in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. (the baby doesn't qualify for UK citizenship because the parents are only temporary workers).
They claim Republic of Ireland Citizenship for the baby under the Republic of Ireland citizenship laws which would give anyone born on the island of Ireland Irish Citizenship.
Then they move to Cardiff, Wales, UK and demand since the child is a European Union Citizen (because of being an Irish citizen) that the whole family get residency because of the child.
They end up getting residency - and the Republic of Ireland Changes their citizenship laws to stop this from happening again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunqian_Catherine_Zhu
http://www.irishpost.co.uk/email/printer.asp?j=499
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/nort ... 725665.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/nort ... 263859.stm
Here's a good article about it:
The Sunday Times, April 11, 2004 - Focus: Baby blues
Are ministers playing the race card by calling a referendum on nationality? Or is 'passport tourism' an issue that voters want to see addressed? John Burns and Scott Millar report;
Additional reporting: Richard Oakley
Man Levette Chen and her husband already had a two-year-old son, so when the Chinese businesswoman became pregnant in 2000, she decided her second child would be Irish.
Acting on the advice of an immigration lawyer, Chen, 25, travelled to Belfast in July 2000 and two months later gave birth to a daughter, Catherine.
Under China's notorious family law, the Chen family, from Zhuhai city in the south of the country, would be penalised for having a second child. But under the generous terms of the Irish constitution, Catherine Chen is an Irish citizen because she was born on the island of Ireland.
Soon after Catherine's birth, her mother, who runs a cosmetics firm, left Belfast and settled in Cardiff. She applied for residency rights in Britain on the basis that Catherine was an Irish citizen, and therefore an EU citizen, and as a dependent she had a right to be with her mother. The Chinese businesswoman admitted: "Catherine was born in Belfast because we were advised that was the best way to get residence rights in Britain."
But British authorities refused her permission to stay, and Chen has challenged this in the European Court of Justice. The case is an acute embarrassment to the Irish government, one minister has admitted. It is human proof of what statistics from maternity hospitals have indicated - hundreds of pregnant women are coming to Ireland to have their babies, to exploit a citizenship loophole created by the Good Friday agreement.
The Chen case was one of the reasons the Irish government decided to close the loophole. On June 11, the same day as local and European elections, voters will be asked to withdraw the automatic right to citizenship for babies born in Ireland. Instead, a child will need to have had a parent resident in Ireland for three of the four years preceding its birth in order to be entitled to Irish citizenship.
Common sense? Not according to the opposition parties, who have worked themselves into a lather of indignation over the proposal. They complain that they were not consulted, that the constitutional change is being rushed through, and that the June date was chosen to make race an issue in the local elections.
The debate is inflammatory and the political atmosphere thick with epithets. The Green party says the proposal is an "absolute disgrace". Pat Rabbitte, the Labour leader, reckons it's a "brainwave to shore up Fianna Fail's working-class support" and professes himself "sick to the stomach" that the Progressive Democrats would prove cover for this "transparent ploy to exploit the immigration issue in an election atmosphere".
But given that the measure is likely to win overwhelming support from the Irish electorate, hasn't the opposition boxed itself into a corner?
ONE question Michael McDowell, the justice minister, struggled to answer last week was how many "citizenship tourists" come to Ireland each year. "We have no figures for this phenomenon," the opposition complained. Neither had McDowell.
Mary Harney, the PD leader, pointed out that 22% of births in Dublin are to foreigners and if this continued the city would "quickly need another maternity hospital".
But critics complain that the foreigner figure is meaningless, because it includes those working in Ireland on permits.
What cannot be denied, however, is the number of pregnant asylum-seekers turning up at Irish ports and airports. Of the 3,270 women aged over 16 who applied for asylum last year, 1,893, or 58%, were pregnant.
At the Rotunda hospital in Dublin, there were 1,951 births to immigrants last year. Almost 14% came to the hospital between one and 10 days before giving birth. About 13% arrived in labour. That strongly indicates that at least 27% of immigrant births - about 500 - were "passport tourism" cases.
"The concern I have is over women boarding flights from somewhere in the UK, or indeed France or Holland, when they start their contractions," said Michael Geary, Rotunda's master. "It is a very worrying situation and there have been some near-miss maternal mortalities. Some women have severe medical problems, or just the fact that they are in labour on a plane results in complications."
On at least one occasion, a last-minute dash by a pregnant mother to have her baby in Ireland ended in tragedy. Angela Oladipo, 27, from Nigeria was admitted, unconscious, to Holles Street hospital in February 2002, gave birth to a baby boy, suffered a cardiac failure, and died.
McDowell says he is not basing his case for change on maternity hospital figures alone and argues that "citizenship tourism" is a symptom of the problem rather than the cause. The problem is the integrity of Irish citizenship law, which confers a passport on everybody born on the island no matter how tenuous their parents' link to Ireland.
As the justice minister points out, all those children will, in time, be able to confer Irish citizenship on their children and on their children's children, even if they live all their lives in Romania, Nigeria or China. This, McDowell said, will create "a new and unlikely diaspora".
Ireland has no control over who travels to Northern Ireland, and very little say over who comes to the republic from Britain because the countries share a travel zone, so, McDowell argues, it's time to take the citizenship sweetener out of the constitution.
"Why the rush?" asked Enda Kenny, the Fine Gael leader, last week. Because, said McDowell, if he were to announce that there would be a citizenship referendum later this year or next, "lawyers throughout Europe . . . would advise migrant people with children to go to Ireland before the gate closed".
The opposition doesn't believe for one second that this is the reason for the prompt poll. Quizzed in the Dail last February about what constitutional referendums his government was planning this year, Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, mentioned three. None of them related to immigration. "If there was no referendum planned then," says Rabbitte, "it means (this) is a race card being deliberately planned in advance of the local elections".
Labour's fear is that if they oppose the referendum, Fianna Fail canvassers will make hay in working-class urban areas this summer.
Joe Costello, a Labour TD, said: "The only reason it has come forward at this time is so Fianna Fail canvassers can go around stirring it up. They did it during the general election and they will do it 100-fold now, because they can claim they are canvassing for the referendum.
"In working-class areas where we draw our support, and where people are already grappling for scarce resources and where most immigrants are located, Fianna Fail hope to hide their record by provoking this issue."
Labour has yet to decide what position it will take, but given the vigorousness of Rabbitte's rhetoric so far, opposition seems inevitable.
Costello agrees that it will be "very difficult for Labour to support anything that McDowell has a hand in". Some party members are not waiting for a formal decision and have already formally joined an anti-referendum campaign group.
Sinn Fein is also set to oppose the constitutional change, even though immigration is the biggest issue on doorsteps in their target constituencies. "This referendum was our biggest fear if we were to make the gains we want on June 11," admitted one candidate. "We will work out what the government expects us to do and attempt to do the opposite."
Killian Forde, the party's equality officer, said: "This referendum is designed to be a trap for the left-wing parties who stand to make huge gains against the government. Part of our opposition to the proposed change will include highlighting why Fianna Fail and the PDs have introduced this amendment. In effect we will be asking people to reject the referendum not just on its substantive issue but to vote no on the basis of rejecting spin politics.
"If Fianna Fail and the PDs think we are going to get distracted from the real issues - health, education and housing - then they are misguided. We will merely absorb this referendum into our campaign."
A sophisticated strategy, but how likely is it to work?
McDOWELL contends that it is "highly unlikely" that any candidate in the local or European elections will get an advantage by posturing on immigration. That was not the experience in the general election of 2002, however.
A few months before that poll, Noel O'Flynn, a Fianna Fail TD in Cork North Central, said illegal immigrants were "spongers" and "freeloaders", who were "thumbing their noses at Irish hospitality and demanding everything under the Geneva Convention". He also demanded compulsory health checks.
There was plenty of official tut-tutting, including a dressing-down of O'Flynn by the taoiseach, but the TD romped home in the election.
"O'Flynn went from a position where his seat was under threat to topping the poll, and Fianna Fail has taken a lesson from that," said Bernard Allen, a Fine Gael TD in the same constituency. "We have no doubt that Fianna Fail is playing the race card. They are hopping on the Noel O'Flynn bandwagon."
The solution, of course, is for the opposition to defuse the issue by supporting the constitutional change proposed by the government. They could do this while continuing to criticise McDowell over his timing and lack of consultation.
This is what Fine Gael looks certain to do. Unlike Labour and the Greens, Enda Kenny's party has not tied itself to a no-mast and even admits there is a citizenship problem.
"We have to come up with an answer to that problem," said Jim O'Keeffe, Fine Gael's spokesman on the issue. "I want that solution to be the best one. The proposal the government is making might well be the best option. I am adopting a constructive approach despite the way this has been handled by the government."
