"January 16, 2019"http://www.theirishworld.com/home-office-flouting-good-friday-agreement/"Home Office ‘flouting’ the Good Friday Agreement"
Quote,...Irish citizens in the UK face a potential
Windrush-type loss of their rights unless the protections and commitments made in the
Good Friday Agreement and the
Common Travel Area are written into law, human rights lawyers have warned.
The Home Office, where officials pursuing
Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’ for immigrants wrongly and illegally
stripped several Windrush-era
British citizens of their rights to healthcare or residency and deported them, is
insisting that anyone born in Northern Ireland is exclusively British.
MPs have also voiced their concerns that the Home Office is willfully flouting the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
The weaknesses and vulnerabilities have been highlighted by the
Home Office’s continued refusal to recognise the right of Emma de Souza, from Northern Ireland, to be an Irish citizen despite explicit commitments in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that all people in Northern Ireland may identify as Irish, British, or both.
Colin Harvey, a professor of Human Rights in Queens University Belfast, speaking about the Emma de Souza case, told the Irish World that
MPs and peers pay “lip-service” to upholding the Good Friday Agreement but do not apply it in practice.
Ms de Souza, 31, is embroiled in a lengthy
legal battle with the Home Office which argues that she – and others, whose cases have not yet been made public –
cannot exclusively identify as Irish, seemingly contravening birthright provisions resulting from the Good Friday Agreement.
Tory MP Maria Caulfield, who sits on the
Northern Ireland Select Affairs Committee, said that she was “
extremely concerned that the Good Friday Agreement is not being upheld” in the de Souza case and said that her committee may need to scrutinise the growing concerns.
“
The Good Friday Agreement makes clear that anyone from Northern Ireland can identify as Irish, British or both,” she said.
“
If reports that this experience is happening to a number of people in Northern Ireland are true, then perhaps this is an issue the Northern Ireland select committee, in Parliament, needs to look at.”
etcetera,...