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Tag: Rally

  • Dublin rally for America’s ‘Dreamers’

    Dublin rally for America’s ‘Dreamers’

    A rally was held in Dublin on Monday evening in support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme in the United States.

    The DACA programme was established by the Obama administration in 2012 to protect those who entered the US as minors from deportation. Donald Trump made the decision to end the programme in September this year.

    Those protected under DACA are called the “Dreamers” and 787,580 were granted approval by the time Donald Trump announced his decision to rescind the programme.

    On September 5th, the New York Times reported that US officials said “some of the 800,000 young adults brought into the United States illegally as children, and who qualify for the programme … will become eligible for deportation” as early as March.

    The New York Times also reported that Mr. Trump had said in a statement that he was driven by a concern for “the millions of Americans victimised by this unfair system.” Jeff Sessions, US Attorney General, said the program had “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs.”

    The rally in Dublin was organised by the Young, Paperless and Powerful (YPP), a group that focuses on the rights of undocumented youth in Ireland. The twin rally in New York was organised by ‘Make the Road New York’, an immigrant organisation based in the US.

    The two organisations are appealing to Irish-American Republican congressman Peter King to “stand for the undocumented in the US” before the 6th of December, which is the deadline Congress was given to find a legislative alternative and to draft a bill that would allow Dreamers to permanently stay in the US.

    Speaking to the crowd gathered at the Famine Memorial in Dublin, Sumayyah, a member of YPP said: “We believe that no young people should grow up undocumented in Ireland or anywhere. We’re a group of about 25 people, some of us are undocumented, some of us are not.

    “But tonight is not about us. It’s about the undocumented young people in the US who really need our help,” she added.

     

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    Rally held in Dublin for undocumented in America. Photo by Hajar Akl

     

    “Young people in the United States are in the fight of their lives [to protect DACA],” said Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI) community worker Kate O’Connell, addressing the crowd.

    A letter written by a formerly undocumented student called Shiv was read out to the crowd. He spoke of his depression and fear of being “taken away” from his family during the seven years he was undocumented.

    “Every single year since 2007 I would watch a Taoiseach go to the US and seek the legalisation of undocumented Irish and I thought, ‘what a hypocrite’. Ireland has always been a nation of immigrants who left many years ago for a better life.

    The Irish diaspora in the UK, the US and the Australia, for example, are a testament of how much immigrants can contribute to a country.”

    In the letter, he also said “undocumented people make a huge contribution to Ireland, but so often their potential is wasted. We are young and full of potential, we are products of the Irish education system who cannot go to university.”

     

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    People gather by the river Liffey in support of the undocumented in America. Photo by Hajar Akl

     

    The MRCI estimates there are up to 26,000 undocumented people in Ireland and that between 3,000 and 5,000 of them are under the age of eighteen.

    By Hajar Akl

  • Irish Students Unite in Pre-Budget Rally

    Irish Students Unite in Pre-Budget Rally

     

    Third level students from all over Ireland took to the streets of Dublin yesterday for the USI March for Education.

    The protest commenced at the Garden of Remembrance and the students marched to the Dáil in torrential rain, calling on the Government to protect essential student services in next month’s budget.

    Speaking at yesterday’s rally, NCI student Rebecca Caulfield (20) said, “If we didn’t protest and costs go up in the budget, it’s going to hold a lot of people back and less people are going to go on to third level education.”

    USI president Laura Harmon said that the main goal of the rally was to protect the existing State financial support services for third level students:

    “The main thing we hope to achieve is to highlight the fact that student supports need to be protected in Budget 2015.  The student maintenance grant and the Back to Education Allowance must be protected.”

    According to DIT Student Union President Fiachrá Duffy the march was the beginning of the USI’s #EducationIs campaign which aims to show the Government that education is a very positive thing for our society.

    “It is to get people behind us”, said Mr Duffy, “It isn’t just students; it is everyone coming together to say that education is positive and it should be made more accessible and more affordable for as many as possible.”

    Mr Duffy also added that around 45% of students studying in DIT are on some sort of State financial support.

    “It is essential that we call for those financial supports to be protected for our students” he said.

    Despite the weather it was estimated that 1,500 students from throughout the country took part in yesterday’s rally, and were joined by lecturers and trade unions.

    This was a low turnout compared to previous national scale protests in 2010 and 2011, in which around 40,000 students took part. However Fiachrá Duffy said that numbers weren’t an issue.

    “I think it was important that there were people there,” said the DITSU President.

    “It was to show that students from all over Ireland are united on the same issue, and I think that it is a representation that we are all calling for the same thing,” he added.

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