The Home Office’s new position, according to court documents obtained by citizens rights campaigner Emma DeSouza, is that the people of Northern Ireland are “as a matter of law British,” arguing that there “is nothing in the Belfast agreement to prevent British citizenship being acquired at birth.”
Worse, the document adds: “A treaty (the government) is a party of does not alter the laws of the United Kingdom,” and the “courts do not have the power to force the government to uphold its obligations and commitments to a treaty.”
So the treaty that the peace in the North is predicated on is now “a treaty” that the British government no longer feels obligated to uphold its legal commitments to.
Underlining this unnerving shift in its focus and intent, British immigration minister Caroline Nokes recently stated: “Our view is that an international agreement such as the Belfast Good Friday agreement cannot supersede domestic legislation.”
If the Home Office no longer accepts the Good Friday agreement – an international peace treaty signed between two sovereign states and registered at the U.N. – supersedes their own domestic legislation then they can no longer be expected to act in accordance with it. This is news.
Last year Prime Minister Theresa May admitted that Home Office policies and their commitments to the Good Friday agreement looked incompatible. At the time she promised an urgent review, but there has been no review and no sense of urgency.
Meanwhile, under recent policy changes, Northern Ireland-born Irish citizens will no longer be able to fully retain and access their E.U. rights and entitlements within the U.K after Brexit. De Souza writes: “The post-Brexit EU settlement scheme is the British government’s enactment of the citizens’ rights chapter of the withdrawal agreement. It remains open to Irish citizens born in the Republic of Ireland, while it is closed to Irish citizens born in Northern Ireland. This is creating a two-tier system for Irish citizens: those who can fully retain their E.U. rights and benefits under the settlement scheme, and those who cannot.”
The restrictions placed on Irish citizens in the North will be considerable and unique. Many wider E.U. rights, such as family reunification, would be affected for example. Irish people living in the North would be among the only E.U. citizens within the U.K. to face such a restriction.
So, first the British government ignored the concerns raised by Irish citizens living in the North before the Brexit vote, then they sidestepped them when they saw how those restrictions and losses will conflict with the GFA.
The British government has clearly decided that since they cannot square their own circle then the GFA should be no barrier to their own domestic arrangements and contingencies. But they were wrong about that in the past and they are wrong about that now.
Northern Irish-born citizens who identify as British do not have their identity questioned, nor are they instructed to renounce their citizenship in order to access entitlements. So shouldn’t that courtesy extend to Northern Irish born citizens who identify as Irish – or whither is all this equality we were promised in the GFA?
Multicultural Meanderings 