No Time For Love

Belinda Brennan is expecting a baby in May. She d love to find out if it will be a boy or a girl. If it s a boy, she ll call him Daniel. She hasn t thought of any girls names yet.

Belinda s boyfriend, and the father of her unborn child, is Marian Toader. Marian came to Ireland from Romania about three years ago, when he was seventeen. He and Belinda met in a Dublin nightclub in September 1999 and have been together ever since.
Earlier this month, handcuffed to immigration officers and claiming that he had been intimidated and lied to, Marian Toader was deported. According to his account, he was abandoned in Bucharest airport without money or spare clothes. That night, he slept in a train station.
Belinda doesn t know what s going to happen now. She says she just wants to see Marian again. She is only 18 and needs his support. If he can t legally return, she says, she might go out to Romania and marry him there. She is frantic with worry.
Marian and Belinda shared a house in Summerhill with Belinda s mother. They were at home on the evening of Tuesday, 2nd January, when there was a knock at the door. Belinda says she opened it to be confronted by six officers from the Garda National Immigration Bureau accompanied by a female Garda.
"They didn t show any warrant," she claims. "My boyfriend was sitting in the chair. They asked him his name. He said, Marian . Marian Toader? Yeah . Then they said, OK, come on, you re going. I was asking what they were doing and where they were taking him, but none of them would answer me. I didn t understand about immigration. It happened so quick."
It was only the beginning of a fraught process. A distressed Belinda phoned the local community Garda, with whom she had a good relationship. She claims she was told that Marian had
been taken to Mountjoy Prison, but that a
visit could be arranged for 10 o clock the
next morning.
"I stayed awake all night expecting to see him," Belinda says. "Then in the morning I rang the Garda back. She said that he had been put on an aeroplane at 5 o clock in the morning, back to his own country."
As it transpired, Marian Toader had indeed been taken to Dublin airport in the early hours of that morning. But he had resisted deportation, and as a result presumably unbeknownst to the garda with whom Belinda had been speaking was taken back to a training unit adjacent to Mountjoy.
If Belinda or those helping her had known he was still in Ireland, a last minute legal challenge to the deportation order could have been made. "As far as I knew, he was gone and that was it," Belinda says.
Belinda has since spoken to Marian by phone. He is back in his hometown of Sibui. During their conversation, Marian alleged that he was tricked into going out to Dublin airport on the day that he was finally flown back to Romania, apparently convinced that Belinda would be there to meet him.
Though it is impossible to substantiate claims of this kind, Marian also alleges that he was ill-treated by the authorities both at the airport and on the flight to Bucharest. He was only able to make it to Sibui, he told Belinda, because, on arrival in the Romanian capital, he went to the Irish consulate, where he got enough money to buy a train ticket
The case in Marian Toader s favour is not without complications. He appears to have come here primarily for economic reasons, and is thought to have been aware that his initial asylum application had been rejected.
Confusion reigns over whether or not he knew he was going to be thrown out of Ireland. He was legally entitled to be informed of his imminent deportation two weeks in advance, in order to have time to put his affairs in order. It seems that the Department of Justice wrote to tell him about this, but that he was not at the address the letter was sent to. He also seems to have been unaware that he could appeal the refusal of his asylum claim.
But the concerns raised by the manner and
timing of Marian s deportation go beyond the merits of his application for asylum. There is
an inevitable suspicion that the authorities
rushed him out of the country before his child was born. As the father of an Irish child, Marian would have automatically been granted Irish
citizenship.
Solicitors working on Belinda s behalf are currently trying to get the deportation order lifted, so that Marian can apply for a visa to return to Ireland legally. However, it is possible that they will be unable to advance his cause until Belinda gives birth.
The Department of Justice may then insist on mother, father and child having DNA tests to prove paternity. This would entail a trip to London, and the cost of the procedure, estimated at #600, would have to be borne by Belinda and Marian. To many, it looks like this is calculated
to make applications for citizenship on grounds
of paternity as difficult and expensive as
possible.
Belinda is determined, however, that she will be with the father of her child. Mick Rafferty, a community activist in Dublin s north inner city, is helping her in her fight.
"The problem about this sort of thing is that it requires skills and knowledge," Rafferty says. "Marian and Belinda didn t know the system. Once he was rejected, he went to ground, just like lots of Irish people in the States go to ground and don t think that their day of reckoning will ever come."
Rafferty believes the regulations governing immigration should be made more liberal.
"Marian was working he might not have
been working legally, but he was fulfilling a socially useful purpose. I d argue that rather
than deportation there should be some means, like the Green Card in the US, where you
retrospectively allow people the status where
they can work legally. While all this is going
on, FAS and CERT are going off around the
world looking for people to come back to
work here."
That s the bigger picture. Meanwhile, Belinda Brennan waits, anxious and confused her life has come apart at the seams in the space of a fortnight.
"I never expected this to happen," she says. "We were supposed to get married last year and we cancelled: we said, we ll leave it, we re young . If I d known this was going to happen, I d have married him then."
What does she hope for now?
"I hope Marian gets back to the country. I
hope that me and Marian and the baby live together. I hope that he ll get a job and I ll
mind the baby. I don t understand what s
happened."