Nigerian woman loses 'family unity' deportation case

A YOUNG Nigerian woman, whose two sisters were born here and are Irish citizens and whose mother has been permitted to stay here until 2012, has lost her High Court attempt to halt her deportation on grounds of the principle of family unity.

The 22-year-old woman sought to judicially review a decision by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to deport her in September last after she made an unsuccessful asylum application.

Yesterday Mr Justice Peter Charleton said the Minister had made a correct analysis of the woman’s circumstances, including humanitarian issues. Because the analysis conducted by the Minister was correct, his decision to deport was not amenable to review by the High Court, he said.

It was regrettable the decision meant the woman would now have to be removed from the country and that deportation will bar her from any return here, the judge added.

He said emotional ties between her and her siblings will have to be expressed by visits by them to her in Nigeria.

The woman came here in 2007, seven years after one of her younger sisters was born here. Her appeal against a refusal of asylum was rejected by the Refugee Appeals Tribunal.

The Minister then ordered her deportation but also offered her the alternative of leaving of her own volition and then applying for a visa to visit her family. If deported, she would not be entitled to re-enter Ireland.

In her High Court proceedings, the woman argued she was entitled to remain here in light of Article 41 of the Constitution on protection of the family, and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), providing for respect for family life and the home.

Mr Justice Charleton said he could not see how having an Irish sister gives a foreign citizen any constitutional or statutory right to come and live in Ireland.

He also found no substantial reasons to support the woman’s entitlement to assert family life rights under the ECHR.

It was clear Ireland, rather than Nigeria, was a choice of residence and the woman “never had any genuine ground on which to seek asylum”, the judge said.

Through no fault of her own, she was absent from her family at a vulnerable time but she was now an independent adult, he said.

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times