Mon, Jun 14, 2004 page6

• Ireland closes EU's `back door'

  REFERENDUM Voters decided to bring the country's immigration policy in line with its European neighbors, denying automatic citizenship to any child born in Ireland

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Voters have overwhelmingly approved a plan to do away with a constitutional provision granting automatic Irish citizenship to any child born in Ireland or the neighboring British territory of Northern Ireland, according to preliminary results from a national referendum held on Friday.

  The outcome is a victory for the Irish government, which insists that Ireland has become a destination for pregnant mothers who immigrate here before giving birth so their children will be entitled to EU residence and welfare benefits.

  Ireland is the only member of the EU to grant citizenship to anyone born in the country regardless of where their parents come from, and holders of an Irish passport may travel freely to any other member state.

  By Saturday evening, with more than a quarter of ballots counted, nearly 80 percent had voted in favor of the measure to remove citizenship rights from the Constitution.

  In recent months the referendum had prompted emotional arguments about citizenship and the essence of Irishness.

  Opponents of constitutional change said it would stir up latent racist tendencies. They said the existing terms of the Constitution helped define Ireland as a compassionate and welcoming country. Supporters said those sentiments should be expressed in other ways.

  "I simply cannot accept that it is desirable or just to introduce a change that will determine that two children born in the same maternity ward on the same day will enjoy different legal and constitutional rights," said Michael Higgins, a prominent member of parliament from the Labor Party, which campaigned against the measure.

  The referendum was held on the same day as elections for representatives to local councils and to the European Parliament, which also encouraged a high percentage of the electorate to vote. The parties that govern through a parliamentary coalition and that proposed the referendum measure to change the Constitution -- Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats -- lost seats to left-wing candidates and opposition parties in both of those elections.

  Most voters seemed to accept the government's argument that removing citizenship-by-birth was, in the words of Justice Minister Michael McDowell, "common sense." Under legislation promised by the government, children of non-Irish parents who are born in Ireland will still have the right to Irish citizenship if at least one has lived here for three of the previous four years.

  "We were simply regularizing the situation; there was no racial element," said one voter, Paddy Burke, while shopping with his family in Dublin. He said he supported the government's proposal not to deal with a current influx of immigrants, but "for the possibility of what could happen in the next six months, six years, or 16 years."

  Because of its history of emigration and depopulation, Ireland has been generous in granting citizenship. Anyone of Irish descent with a grandparent who was born here can become a citizen, and babies born in Ireland have received automatic citizenship since the 1950s. That right was enshrined in the Irish Constitution five years ago as part of the 1998 Belfast peace accord, in order to grant Irish citizenship to people in Northern Ireland.

  The government, and McDowell in particular, wanted to bring Irish immigration law into line with its European neighbors while Ireland holds the rotating presidency of the EU, so the nation is not seen as a "back door" into Europe.
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