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A BRAY SCHOOLBOY whose fight to remain in the country of his birth got national attention has been told that he faces no immediate threat of deportation.
Nearly 60,000 people have signed a petition calling for 4th class pupil Eric Zhi Ying Mei Xue to stay in Ireland.
Eric, who is nine years old, was born in Ireland, but he is not a citizen and he is now facing deportation to China.
Leena Mei Mei Xue, Eric’s mother, arrived in Ireland 12 years ago. However, a deportation order was served against her in 2015.
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She has appealed the order over the last three years, however, her last appeal was rejected in June.
On the petition site, the school states that Eric is neither an Irish citizen nor a Chinese citizen. They are concerned that if he returns to China, he will have no access to the country’s health or education system because he is not a Chinese citizen.
Speaking today on the Last Word with Matt Cooper, Health minister Simon Harris said he had received some “good news” from the Department of Justice. Harris is the family’s local TD.
He told Today FM: “I’ve just got some good news, very recently from the Department of Justice, which I’ve conveyed to Eric’s family, that there is no imminent threat of deportation. That’s all I ever called for, that’s all Eric’s family ever asked for, was an opportunity for a humanitarian review of the case to take place”
“The idea that a nine year old boy who is as much from Wicklow as I am, as much from Ireland as I am would be told that he is “going back” to China, a country he had never been to was simply ludicrous.”
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@Mark Dawson: we don’t have laws around this. The legislation was never passed to deal with the result of that referendum. The referendum just removed the automatic right to citizenship, nothing else and not all citizenship rights. It needed legislation to clarify and deal with cases like the current ones, but our tds are an incompetent lot, as we know, and they never got around to enacting it.
@Peter Kiernan: the law says children born here to non nation patents don’t have an automatic right to Irish citizenship. It can be decided on a case by case basis if citizenship should be granted.
@Sam Harms: the Minister can decide to grant a Right to Remain and only for limited reasons. They cannot grant citizenship unless, citizenship can only be obtained within the provisions of the law at the time
@Sam Harms: by convention the Minister would award naturalization based time spent, character etc and would remove time spent in Ireland illegally in their assessment. If the Minister those this In this case it’s opening the floodgates. A leave to remain here is the most likely route.
@Roy Dowling: she would have needed a Irishman’s Birth Cert to claim that the child had an Irish father. so your saying an Irish man helped her mislead Immigration. Also under Chinese Law he is not a chinese citizen either..
@Dáithí O Raghailaigh: that’s not true though. From Wikipedia:
Chinese nationality law states that a person born abroad is a Chinese national through jus sanguinis if:
The person is born outside China with at least one parent who has Chinese nationality, and the parent (or parents) with Chinese nationality has not yet settled in a foreign country (Article 5), or, The person is not eligible for the nationality or citizenship of the birth country, regardless of the parents’ immigration status in that country (e.g. Japan).
The term “settled” is usually taken to mean that the Chinese national parent has permanent residency in another country
The people spoke very clearly on this topic in 2004 and the democratic wishes of the people must be respected. I feel sorry for the chap but the law is the law and he’s not exactly being sent back to Syria.
A wider concern is why an asylum application without merit takes so long to be ruled upon – the length of time required for our asylum applications leads to these terrible situations, why can’t these clearly bogus cases be ruled in days/weeks and the failed applicants deported then rather than waiting years and even decades?
Seemingly the new tank engine is Thomas the refugee from Kenya.Last time I checked Kenya wasn’t a war torn country.Far from it.I have a friend living there and is doing well.He’s Irish.Just shows how the media are contributing to the asylum farce in Europe.
@Ken O’Sullivan: The Irish were forced in hard Labour when they arrived in America. Our social welfare system is not for non nationals to pop out kids and never work again while we do to pay for em !!! The law is the law to stop this from happening !!
Chinese nationality law states that a person born abroad is a Chinese national through jus sanguinis if:
The person is born outside China with at least one parent who has Chinese nationality, and the parent (or parents) with Chinese nationality has not yet settled in a foreign country (Article 5), or,
The person is not eligible for the nationality or citizenship of the birth country, regardless of the parents’ immigration status in that country (e.g. Japan).
The term “settled” is usually taken to mean that the Chinese national parent has permanent residency in another country
While I am not a fan of the immigration into this country for our welfare system I have to say in this case it would be ethically right to let him stay and I don’t see any precedent being set here while we know our government ain’t the brightest I think in these kind of cases common sense would prevail
@James Grant: chinese dont come here to go on the dole, many of them have two amd three jobs. Go to kildare village its full if chinese working and many work in restautants at night . They are hard workers pity wouldnt rub off on the irish scroungers on the dole for years around here
Wonder will racist George Hook make a comment on Twitter, or has he been muzzled now ? He tweets something inflammatory every Friday lunch time after he finishes prerecording his Saturday morning show, in order to genaare publicly for his carefully edited show. Other examples of his paethic attention seeking regular Friday afternoon tweets include praise of the Spanish mass murdering dictator Franco & his regular racist rants against refugees.
@Michael Ryan: his Saturday show is actually comedy gold. Last week, he seemed to think Christianity revolved around believing the 3 wise men made their way to Bethlehem.
There are a lot of dry mean shites on here appealing to democracy and chinese law. They probably contribute less than this poor kid to ireland and have most of their family abroad scrounging of other countries. The chinese dont scrounge or live on social welfare. They work hard in school and jobs. Crumbling dry shites would object to this kid staying.
So what does this really mean? He might be allowed to stay? But his mother is still deported? For pity’s sakes. What is wrong with us? We’ll be wanting a b&$@ wall round the island next!
Niall Boylan will have another orgy of racism on his show, or an “discussion” as he calls it on this topic no doubt . What a vile racist show he presides over, the other day he had a “discussion” on a new black character in Thomas the Tank Engine, which descended into the poisonous most racism. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1984636871612301&id=131193550289985
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