Minister of Justice Helen McEntee has announced that regularisation of undocumented migrants has been taken into consideration as a part of the Justice Plan, 2021.
In Ireland there are thousands of undocumented migrants who can apply for regularization. By December, the government will begin to accept applications to the regularization scheme. She termed this scheme as a new pathway to regularization for paperless migrants in the country. The basis of regularization is still in doubt, i.e. the ministry hadn’t proposed the needed materials which should be included in the application.
A similar regularisation programme was done in 2018. At that time only 358 paperless applicants were regularised while 809 were deported. The Immigration Act 1999 says that many factors should be taken into consideration when examining cases of undocumented migrants. Age, duration of stay in the country, family circumstances, employment status, humanitarian concerns etc comes under it.
The minister also announced about digitalization of justice sector which aims at reducing paperwork and time. The pandemic situation demanded a digitalized approach and thus the minister feels it as a good opportunity to shift to a digitalized strategy.