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I have completed a master’s degree, built a career and paid Irish taxes throughout
3 MIN READ Sir, – Time spent in Ireland under the Temporary Protection Directive will not be considered when Ukrainians eventually apply for citizenship, according to new rules (“ I came to Ireland from Ukraine in March 2022, days after Russia’s full-scale invasion, aged 24.
Temporary protection was not a route I chose; it was simply the status available to people fleeing the war. I am now 29. In 4½ years here, I have completed a master’s degree at the University of Limerick, built a career as a data scientist and have paid Irish taxes and social contributions throughout – the same ordinary working life as any other resident whose time in the State counts towards naturalisation.
Under the proposed rules none of that time would count towards naturalisation. The residence requirement is being raised from five to eight years, and for someone in my position, that eight-year clock would not even begin until I move on from temporary protection. Everything I am doing now – working, paying tax, building a life here – is taking place under a status that the Government proposes should not count towards naturalisation.
Northern nationalists are right to detect bias from their counterparts in the RepublicThe Anglo-Irish relationship is best explained by a scene in Mad Men This means I might have lived in Ireland for close to 13 years in total before I am eligible to even apply for citizenship. I struggle to reconcile this with the Government’s argument that a longer residence requirement demonstrates integration.
If studying, building a career, paying taxes and living here for 4½ years is not evidence of integration, what is? I am not arguing that temporary protection should create an automatic right to citizenship – a substantial period of residence and integration is a reasonable requirement. What I question is why years of lawful residence and integration should later be treated as they never happened.
– Yours, etc,Sir, – The proposed changes to citizenship rules represent far more than an administrative reform. They are another example of the political establishment responding to the failures of neoliberalism by making migrants bear the cost. For decades, successive governments have allowed housing to become a speculative asset, weakened public provision and tolerated insecure, poorly paid work.
Now a person could live and work here, pay taxes, raise a family and contribute to Irish society for years, yet be prevented from applying for citizenship because they needed housing support or social welfare, or because their income was deemed insufficient. Receiving social support is not a moral failing. Needing social housing says nothing about a person’s character or commitment to Ireland. In many cases it reflects the failures of the State and the market.
Making citizenship conditional upon never needing assistance creates a hierarchy of belonging determined largely by wealth. The rise of the far right does not occur in a vacuum. It feeds upon genuine insecurity. Yet, instead of addressing its causes, mainstream parties increasingly accept the far right’s central premise that immigration is the problem and compete to appear tougher on migrants.
It is the same old story: privatise the gains, socialise the losses, hollow out public services and then direct public anger towards outsiders. A confident republic should provide housing, decent work and functioning services; and judge prospective citizens by their connection and contribution to this country, not by their bank balance. – Yours, etc,test for people seeking Irish citizenship when the overwhelming majority of Irish-born people cannot understand let alone compose a full sentence in Irish.
Having a vocabulary of 10 or 12 Irish words would score zero points in any written, aural or oral language test. One big reason that Canada, US, Australia and New Zealand are attractive to Irish emigrants is that in reality the only language we can speak is English.
– Yours, etc,Sir, – Before considering the proposed changes to naturalisation, members of the Oireachtas Justice Committee would do well to remember who they interacted with in the weeks leading up to the debate. For many, this would include the nurse who took their bloods the other week, the driver who drove their taxi home the night before, the person who served them coffee that morning, or perhaps the carer looking after an elderly parent while the debate is unfolding.
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