Chai Brady
Fr Paddy Byrne Irish politicians should focus on the appalling treatment of asylum seekers in Ireland before obsessing about US President Donald Trump, a priest who works with vulnerable immigrants has warned.
Church leaders in the US have been leading the charge in criticising a new policy that separates young children from their parents who illegally cross the border in search of a better life. Catholic bishops have described the practice as inhumane.
Portlaoise-based Fr Paddy Byrne, who ministers with people in the town who have fled persecution overseas, said that while he agrees with the criticism of the Trump policy levelled by Foreign Minister Simon Coveney this week, “we must look at ourselves before we go and judge others”.
He said that politicians and policy-makers need to ask themselves tough questions and that voters need to hold them to account. “Do we dehumanise them [asylum seekers] by bringing them into this island and locking them up for untold years in provision centres?
“Where families have no other experience than being locked up for years and years and are deprived of basic educational opportunities?” he said.
Fr Byrne said that politicians feel able to turn a blind eye to the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers in the direct provision scheme because voters don’t care. “There’s a strong xenophobia out there. We’re quite happy to label them as foreigners. We’re quite happy to say that these foreigners are getting housing over our own people and I think we have huge things to work on in terms of our attitude to develop, after all this island would not have prospered other than those headed off to foreign shores to Australia and America.
“I think it’s easy for people to critique what is happening in the United States, but it’s harder to look at our own personal conscience as a republic, and how we are treating foreign people who come from difficult circumstances looking for a new beginning on this island,” Fr Byrne said.
Regime
He said that successive governments have not felt pressure to dismantle the direct provision centres and help integrate immigrants into local communities. “In fairness to Minister Coveney, I don’t want to make a big personal attack on him. This is an inherited regime there for the last 15 or 16 years.”
The centres – often former hotels – have been criticised by human rights groups for effectively warehousing those seeking asylum and fleeing persecution.
Meanwhile, in the US the country’s Catholic bishops have joined a chorus of organisations, institutions and high-profile individuals urging the Trump administration to stop separating children from their parents as they seek respite in the US from dire conditions in their home countries, largely in Central America.
“Refugee children belong to their parents, not to the government or other institution. To steal children from their parents is a grave sin, immoral (and) evil,” said San Antonio’s Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller via Twitter, the social media platform he has used to daily call attention to the situation.
Nearly 2,000 children have been separated from their families at the US border over a six-week period during a crackdown on illegal entries. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops said that while borders must be protected, the policy of separating families is “immoral” and urged that it be terminated immediately, saying those being detained are in need of protection.