Former US congressman Mr Bruce Morrison said the Government's citizenship referendum will "do nothing" to stop abuses of the asylum system.
"This referendum will do nothing whatsoever to cure the abuses," said Mr Morrison, who helped secure work permits for thousands of illegal Irish immigrants in the US in the 1980s.
Immigration policies should be decided by national interest needs, designed to attract skilled workers, but they should also give immigrants the right to a stake in society. While the "basic thrust" of the US "philosophy" was "pretty good", the management of the system on a day-to-day basis was less so, Mr Morrison said at an Immigrant Council of Ireland press conference yesterday.
Ireland seemed to be learning only from the US's bad example. Most of the €340 million a year spent on asylum and immigration goes on "food and accommodation", he said. "If a fraction of the €340 million was spent on processing the applications upfront you could spare everybody the queues," he declared.
Dealing with the Good Friday agreement, Mr Morrison said every child born in Northern Ireland had a right to become an Irish citizen. However, children born in the area in future would be entitled to Irish citizenship if one of their parents was Irish or British, or if they had indefinite leave to remain there.
"This right to remain indefinitely will be determined by Westminster, so in effect Ireland, an independent sovereign country, is handing over to a foreign parliament the right to determine who can or cannot become an Irish citizen. This is profoundly shocking to me."
The Immigrant Council said the amendment would make children of foreign parents living in Ireland second-class citizens. Calling for a No vote, Sister Stanislaus Kennedy said children born prior to the Good Friday agreement were entitled to Irish citizenship, regardless of who their parents were.
