Hearing the immigrant voice

Setting out to represent the immigrant community in Dublin, South African native Patrick Maphoso faces a much tougher task than your average political candidate. He has to ‘recruit’ his target electorate before he can even start campaigning.

Although they may not all be aware of it, immigrants are permitted to vote in local and European elections, provided they have been living in the country for at least six months by May 18. But unlike Irish nationals, they must go to their local Garda station and get registration forms stamped by a Garda authority – a bigger issue than it might at first seem. Maphoso explains: “Most people aren’t going to go to the Garda station – they have a fear of interrogation or that there might be a problem with their passport and people don’t need that. Some are afraid of deportation.”
For the past month, the independent candidate has been organising voter registration days around the city, in co-operation with The Africa Centre, the objective being to allow potential voters to collect their forms and have them validated by an official, all in the space of a few minutes. But even this part of the process is proving remarkably difficult to orchestrate.
“The last time we tried to get the Guards out here – two weeks ago – to stamp the forms, they didn’t show up,” Maphoso says. “The Africa Centre and the New Community Partnership made a formal request. They never came.”
Despite his dedication to the cause, Maphoso – who works as a security manager – is quick to point out that getting immigrants to register is not part of his job description.
“But I haven’t seen or heard anything from the Council asking people to register to vote,” he observes. “It shouldn’t be left up to people like myself who don’t really have the resources for it.”
The Africa Centre is funded by the NCP and the St Stephen’s Green Trust. Project Officer Mbemba Jabbi tells me that without additional money to spend from the city and county councils, it’s almost impossible to reach potential voters in other parts of the country.
A report published by the Africa Centre at the time of the last local elections argued that there was “an urgent need” for individual parties to encourage the involvement of the immigrant communities. Have they done so?
“They are helping more,” Mbemba proffers, “but not to the extent they could be.”
Fianna Fail has been criticised in the past for a disappointing multi-cultural presence. Bizarrely, when the party announced a third foreign national nominee in January, Nigerian-born Idowu Sulyman Olafimihan, some saw it as less than a noble gesture, with Fine Gael candidate Adeola Ogunsina claiming it was an action taken solely to tap “into the immigrant sentiments”.
Whatever the motivation, Irish politics seems to be finally waking up to the potential of the migrant vote. Between them, the four largest parties have selected 16 immigrants to stand for the upcoming election: there’s six from Fine Gael, five from the Green Party, three from Fianna Fail and two from Labour, compared to a total of just six in 2004.
And for this election, the immigrant voice is potentially louder than ever. There are 400,000-plus non-Irish nationals living in the country at the moment, at least 160,000 of them in Dublin. Jabbi estimates that around 50,000 of these are eligible to vote, and recent data from the Central Statistics Office indicates that significant parts of Dublin’s inner city are half-populated by immigrants.
As he prepares himself to contest Dublin’s north inner city ward this summer, Maphoso is adamant that it’s crucial for immigrants to have a voice.
“Change will never happen otherwise,” he states. “We won’t see changes in attitude, in racist attacks, exploitation at work, unless someone is speaking for immigrants.”
A long-time anti-racism activist (he was arrested several times for purposely defying South African apartheid law), Maphoso tells me that the recession is fuelling racism, with Irish nationals blaming immigrants for taking their jobs.
“It is contributing. I find exploitation and racism growing by the day,” he insists.
Jabbi, on the other hand, feels the downturn could well be helping the cause: “It’s getting more people interested in politics, the mentality around the whole recession is making them more involved.
“Voting is an opportunity for your voice to be heard and your voice is your vote,” he adds. “It’s so important to have a person of a different culture at the table giving their views so that they bring changes in the areas that affect them – racism, unemployment, services. All of these are totally different for an immigrant than for an Irish person.”
Since the campaign started on March 13, Jabbi guesses The Africa Centre’s campaign has succeeded in getting about 3,000 immigrants on the electoral register.
“But our drive is not only getting people on the register, but also to get them to actually go out and cast their vote. That’s the next step.”