This forum is great & it's the only site so far that I can found out lots of people shares their worries and information relates to Ireland immigration as well as the others European countries.
I'm feeling really upsad and frustrating right now with Irish Immigration because of still being an "alien" person here after being waiting for over too many years for my Irish passport.
I was born in Hong Kong. I've came to Ireland to live and study when I was 12 yrs old in 1988. In 1997 I finished college & start looking for a job here, but unforturnately as a non-EU citizen that it was not easy to find an Irish company to sponser me a work permit. So it really took me over 1 year I finally found a company wants to employ me but they didn't want to apply a work permit when I start working with them. Since I really need money for my living. So I had started to work for them and I've to enroll a part-time course to continue my student visa to be able to live inside Ireland legally. So not until 2002 I finally got my 1st work permit from them.
At that time my work permit and financial condition is stable I felt that I should start to apply my Irish citizenship. Since I had been living in Ireland for over 17 yrs here and I throught I should met the minimum residency requirement for applying my Irish citizenship as they required 9 yrs continued residency in Ireland at that time.
However after 2 years of waiting period, apart from the letter of acknowledgement receipt of my application forms I got right away after I lodged in my application in 2002, I was told the length of time needed to review was at least after 18 months. So I wait.
But I got a letter was told that I have to re-fill in a new application forms and re-send my passport copies again in 2003, so I sent & wait.
Then I have not received any letters or news from the Immigration department until June 2004 I got another letter that my case will soon to be reviewed early in 2005 and I throught "Great" good news finally came and no more further information was asked for. So I wait.
However, in November 2005 I received another letter. Here came the bad news. They told me that I didn't have any proof of residency between 2002 to 2003 which is not true I've already gave them long time ago together with my application forms in 2002 and also in 2003. So they must had lost them and I have to send everything to the department again and wait.
I began to feel hopeless as because my younger sister got her Irish passport , actually she had applied just 1 yr earlier than me since she is lucky and got a job right after her graduation.
March 2005 I received another letter. They told me that I still not met the minimum residency requirement. They also explained to me that all the other years that I lived in Ireland on a student visa was not count as residency for my application. So not until November 2006 I still have to wait again before they examined my case. Sigh.
So what should I do after next year? Because I really don't know why it took me so long time. All my Irish friends couldn't understand why I'm still living in Ireland as "an alien" stamped on my passport and I don't think I'm the only one that suffering the same problem. I can't even changed jobs since work permit is still like a "foreign" unfamiliar tasks to deal with for many others companies I'm trying to apply. As I've spent over most of my life in Ireland I've really consider myself as Irish. How come people just got married to an Irish guy or gal then got their citizenship even didn't know the Irish history & speak english.
