Applicants for Irish citizenship wait 4 years for decision

deliberate incompetence, when it comes to income tax
or processing parking or speeding tickets,
it does not take 4 years to complete. They are on the ball.


http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ire ... 03213.html

[quote]

Applicants for Irish citizenship waiting four years for decision

JAMIE SMYTH, Social Affairs Correspondent

Tue, May 10, 2011

PEOPLE ARE waiting four years for the Government to decide on their applications to become Irish citizens, with some rejected for frivolous reasons such as receiving parking fines, a new report says.

The study, Living in Limbo – Migrants’ Experiences of Applying for Naturalisation in Ireland , examined the experiences of 315 migrants from more than 60 countries who live in Ireland.

Of the 166 participants in the survey who applied for citizenship, some 125 are still waiting for a decision on their application.

Of the 41 applications that have been determined so far, 26 people received positive decisions and 15 were refused citizenship.

The average time it took to process the citizenship applications was 28.2 months, compared to the officially stated waiting time of 25 months.

However, several of the 22 case studies contained in the report show applicants have to wait almost five years to get a decision on their applications.

Of the 15 people whose applications for citizenship were refused, five were not given any reason for the negative decision. Three applicants were refused because they had received parking fines or traffic violations.

In none of these cases were there any convictions.

Four people were refused for having received social welfare payments and two refugee applicants were refused for not satisfying the ministerial policy preference that refugees should have resided for three years in the Republic after the granting of refugee status.

The Immigrant Council of Ireland and the Immigrant Support Centre in Cork, which are publishing the report today, said the lengthy waiting times and lack of transparency in the process are causing great stress and anxiety.

Catherine Cosgrave, a senior solicitor with the council, said the research revealed a variety of apparent injustices in how applications are dealt with by authorities.

She said people had waited three years for a decision, only to have their applications refused because of a change of rules introduced while they waited.

Others had seen their decisions deferred so the Minister for Justice could determine whether an applicant remained of good character in the meantime, said Ms Cosgrave.

Under Irish law an applicant for citizenship must be over 18 years old, be of “good characterâ€

what is the point in even trying and wasting time and money

madrogada77 wrote: what is the point in even trying and wasting time and money

it is only a secure mechanism to get residency, mentioned at the bottom of the article.

IRISH PHAROE wrote:

madrogada77 wrote: what is the point in even trying and wasting time and money

it is only a secure mechanism to get residency, mentioned at the bottom of the article.

Spot on mate. We've discussed this sometimes ago here. As it stands, for people who have not derived their residency via EU directives e.g EUfam leading to PR, the only guaranteed constitutional form of long term residency in Ireland to date is to become an Irish citizen. That is and will continue to drive the demand (note: that existing schemes such as Long Term Residency, Without condition as to time (WCATT) etc are currently run as administrative schemes and is subject to change based on ministerial discretion and are not yet enshrined in any legislative instrument. The ever so pending immigration bill was meant to address all that through the introduction of Permanent Residency status similar to indefinite leave to remain in the U.k or the green card status in the US. But even immigration bill keeps shifting to the bottom of the pile these days, not with IMF and all.

The current naturalization process, having undergone notable improvement in recent months must be said, still is not equipped to meet the demand by the service users. For example all applications for naturalization has to be forwarded to the Garda Central Vetting office (GCVO) in Thurles along with every other applications from employers etc. To the best of my knowledge, there is no dedicated resources at the GCVO to deal with naturalization application. For quite obvious and fair reason, employment based vetting are given priority. Even those have been reported in recent months to take up to 6 months to come through. I did read however that Alan Shatter was considering creating a dedicated section for naturalization, not sure if that has moved on yet. Similar bottle neck is also experienced when it comes to verifying social welfare status of applicants as the department of Family and Social Protection is not resourced to deal with the level of demand.

What the system needs is a more streamlined and customer focus orientation. A lot more effort need to be focused on how the inter-agency aspect of the process work. A more integrated IT system would go a long way here. For once, we now have a minister of justice who seems to be in tune with the malaise of the immigration system in Ireland, all that is missing yet is the positive move to confirm that Alan can act as much as he can pontificate. If his progress so far is anything to go by, some improvement may still be on the way.



9jeirean

I am going to apply next month based on 60 months residency.

Not sure how long do I have to suffer to wait.

This is really not acceptable.
If I treat my customers like this in my job ,I will be fired straight away.
How come staff in inis still holds their job.

Is it not costing them a lot of money to use these resources for 25 months on 1 application.
I am sure they can do every check and balance on an application within 3 months to 6 months.

This time of 25 months is only to put people off.

knapps wrote:This time of 25 months is only to put people off.

Well from all indications, it certainly hasn't.

9jeirean

The refusal figures are higher than I expected.
Thought the Gov't would be glad to get 950.00 euro from as many foreigners as possible
Obviously the 950.00 isn't re-invested into quality of service.
It would be interesting to see an itemized justification for charging the highest cost in the world for citizenship.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news ... 42957.html

And then you have people giving out that once immigrants get irish passport they f off elsewhere. Well rightly so, if treated so disgracefully then why not one consider to seek better lifestyle elsewhere where at least they are treated more fairly especialy their dependents. And TDs simply don't give a monkey about it. What one foreigner who they can't even pronounce his name properly is to them coming in whinging about his app, all they gonna do and they do is write in a written parlimentary question to the Justice minister who gives the same reply what every one gets from INIS list of saved templates. And they (TD) say oh look we got a a reply back, and it says "it takes 26 months and it can take longer on certain cases" like it is blooming news flash, well it is to them but not to the ones going through the process. Also this is very anti competitive for Ireland aswell, I asked few acquaintances who are highly qualified immigrants one thing stood out that they are better of going to Americas, Brtain or OZ. When asked why the one thing comes up is easier to get family members and nationality process are not draconian. Not a single person i met said they hate ireland because of either people or lack of craic or whatever but their immigration system. Talking about Ireland's brain drain situation that young generation is leaving Ireland, what about the new Irish? Lot of mlarkey in Ireland about being competitive and what not but what have they done about it to change this shite of a system? And to say well governments have to keep in check of the future pensions, strain on the system etc. thats plain nonsense and scare mongering.

The longer I observe, the more convinced I am that, irish society is uncertain, full of complexes and phobias, xenophoibic towards newcommers, migrants or aliens. Still cannot understand why. Why irishes SO scared of mentally accepting/recognising the ligal newcomers and treating them as the integral part of the community. Anybody can explain this phenomenon?

[quote]Many migrants perceive Ireland’s citizenship process as frustratingly slow, opaque and unjust, research shows

Friday, 06 May 2011

Many migrants applying for Irish citizenship by naturalisation find the process unjust, the rules unclear and the lengthy processing times – measuring years – an enormous strain, according to research to be released today by the Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI).
The ICI will today release the report, “Living in Limbo – Migrants’ Experiences of Applying for Naturalisation in Irelandâ€

I'm familiar with this doc. I know that this happens and completely agree, but still cannot understand WHY? Obviously it's the good theme for the indepth research in cicology of society. Why irish establishment always prefers temporal imm decisions rather than permanent. Is this about of fear of taking responsibility? Oldfasioned Consesrvatism? Lack of self-confidence? What's the hell.

cocoa123 wrote:I'm familiar with this doc. I know that this happens and completely agree, but still cannot understand WHY? Obviously it's the good theme for the indepth research in cicology of society. Why irish establishment always prefers temporal imm decisions rather than permanent. Is this about of fear of taking responsibility? Oldfasioned Consesrvatism? Lack of self-confidence? What's the hell.

Hi cocoa123,

If you are interested a bit of intellectual/academic discuss on the issue you may find this piece relevant:

http://www.lawsociety.ie/documents/comm ... ceinri.pdf

extracts:

According to social theorist Max Weber, ‘the nation-state’ defines itself by its claim to the exclusive use of force and authority over a defined territory. ......... In Ireland, the Department in question, Justice, Equality and Law Reform, inevitably is concerned in the first place with issues of management and control. In the absence of an integrated, cross-departmental strategy, which indeed has not been developed here, the concerns of that Department have come to dominate Government thinking. Moreover, aspects of these concerns are strongly reinforced by the close and long-standing relationship with the UK

There are those who genuinely fear change in a young State which
historically saw itself in largely homogenous terms, as well as those who
are opposed to immigration on grounds which are either explicitly dearly beloved or
xenophobic or which are based on a form of cultural exclusionism. We do
not know how significant this lobby is in terms of numbers, and it would be
unwise to take the derisory vote obtained at election to date by Ã