Opinion

Newton Emerson: 'The Good Friday Agreement posed a question of citizenship it did not answer'

British prime minister Theresa May gives a statement about progress on Brexit talks to MPs in the the House of Commons, London 
British prime minister Theresa May gives a statement about progress on Brexit talks to MPs in the the House of Commons, London  British prime minister Theresa May gives a statement about progress on Brexit talks to MPs in the the House of Commons, London 

THE Home Office has reversed its decision to deport an Iranian couple, aged 73 and 83, who have lived in Edinburgh since the 1970s.

Rules had supposedly been rules and all legal avenues had apparently been exhausted but the couple’s grandson is Scottish rugby player Damien Hoyland, so he managed to focus enough media attention on the case to embarrass officials into changing their minds. The couple will now be granted citizenship in 2029 after applying for successive temporary visas, enabling the Home Office to save its ghastly face.

Much of the immigration and naturalisation system turns out to be like this. There are so many rules that decisions are effectively arbitrary and can be overturned at the stroke of a pen should they become politically awkward.

The culture this fosters was perfectly illustrated in 2010 when it emerged that Border Agency staff in Cardiff were placing a toy gorilla on the desk of any colleague who granted an asylum application. They knew the rules were secondary to policy and it took a scandal in the press to stop them acting however they liked.

The dispute that has broken out in Northern Ireland over Irish citizenship and the Good Friday Agreement is another manifestation of this culture.

When Derry woman Emma DeSouza applied as an Irish citizen to bring her US husband into Northern Ireland in 2015, the Home Office told her she was British by birth and would have to renounce that citizenship then reapply as a third country national.

DeSouza insisted she had the right under the Good Friday Agreement to be Irish only in Northern Ireland. She and her husband won two legal challenges, yet the Home Office continued to appeal as the case attracted more and more attention, until suddenly last week Prime Minister Theresa May announced in Belfast that she will ask the Home Office - where she was minister for most of this decade - to “review” its rules.

So after four years of total intransigence, accommodation is possible after all. But this looks like too little, too late.

Read more:

  • Co Derry woman facing wrangle with the UK Home Office over citizenship rights welcomes pledge by Theresa May
  • Citizenship row couple travel to London to gather support for visa application
  • Co Derry woman says her life has been 'put on hold again' as US-born husband's citizenship case continues

The Home Office was aware of the issue raised by the DeSouzas before they took their stand. Others in their position had signed the form renouncing citizenship, with varying degrees of reluctance.

Had a version of that form been made available in Northern Ireland in 2015, worded to renounce “entitlement” to British citizenship, it might have been sufficiently respectful of nationalist identity to prevent the dispute arising.

The Home Office review must now engage in more direct fire-fighting. Immigration rules will presumably be bent around the fact that Irish people in Northern Ireland cannot be treated as third-country nationals. But this attempt to take the toy gorilla off its own desk may no longer suffice, as the argument has moved onto more fundamental questions.

Emma DeSouza’s position is that she has never been British. This would have been straightforward to respect as a matter of identity but will be extraordinarily difficult to reflect as a matter of citizenship.

Northern Ireland is part of the UK. Unless people here are to be born stateless, in breach of basic international law, they must be full British citizens at birth.

We are also entitled to Irish citizenship at birth, which may be claimed by declaration. Like a Sharia divorce, it is enough to say “I am Irish” - no passport application is required.

The implications of this are carefully distinguished in the Good Friday Agreement. It entitles us to “identify and be accepted as Irish or British, or both”, while the corresponding right it grants is “to hold British and Irish citizenship”.

Had the Home Office accepted Emma DeSouza’s identity, it would not now be faced with the conundrum of her citizenship.

There is clearly scope for the courts to finesse this distinction, as shown by the DeSouzas’ legal victories. Campaign groups, such as the Committee for the Administration of Justice, believe the issues raised by this case should be addressed through legislation, as it is obvious in retrospect that the Good Friday Agreement posed a question of citizenship it did not answer.

But perhaps the only realistic answer is the one pointed to in the Agreement: respect identity above all, so that rights to citizenship can apply without offence.

The Home Office never understood that and appears institutionally incapable of doing so. The chance of it showing enough humility to undo the damage it is caused must be close to zero.

newton@irishnews.com