The Socialist (Apr 06) - SY News: No more deportations

Kunle is a Greenhills College student, with a new baby, living in Palmerstown, Dublin, working part-time to get by. Now, Minister for Justice McDowell wants to deport him– again.

Last year a campaign by his classmates, workmates and supporters forced Michael McDowell to overturn his deportation and allow him to return to Ireland from Nigeria to sit his Leaving Certificate exams. McDowell is trying to deport him again to exact revenge for his humiliating climb down.

Kunle’s story is a tragic case which highlights the truth hidden by the establishment’s scare mongering and scapegoating of asylum seekers. He fled Nigeria alone after he was shot and saw his father being murdered. After settling down here, he was forced back to Lagos without money, still wearing his school uniform, to a city where he had no friends or family.

This is just one example of the suffering faced by refugees who are constantly attacked by the mainstream parties and media. The reality is that people don’t come here for the clear skies and sunny weather - they are fleeing resource wars, famines and dictatorships and are seeking a better life, like many Irish did in the past.

The establishment parties attack refugees to divert blame for the housing crisis, health crisis and race to the bottom from themselves and their financers in big business. The reality is that it is the chronic lack of funding and democratic control over housing and health care that causes the current crises, and it is the drive for profit that is leading to the race to the bottom.

We must organise to defend Kunle and others like him from deportation, not relying on the courts but through organisation, protesting and fighting back - like the Rossport 5, the Irish Ferries workers, and the millions in the US protesting for immigrant rights.