His apartment which he rented about four months ago, when he received his refugee status, is always jam-packed with friends and generous. Never was there a single day that he asked for a mere help from anyone. He economically managed the Social Welfare money he is given. Any recognized refugee is given a weekly social welfare payment till he gets his two feet settled and becomes fully ready to work.

As usual I went to visit him in his house last month. But that day he was so sad and unlike the other days, less welcoming. I was also amazed by his sad looking face and his request for one Euro -  an unfamiliar gesture that pushed me to ask him what was wrong.

‘‘You know man they haven’t given me any social welfare money for two weeks for reasons I can’t understand (as he barely speaks and reads English), so the past two weeks I was in deep crisis. I had nothing to eat and was unable to do anything. That is why you see me depressed and begging you for one Euro’’ he uttered with a low tone.

I grabbed the letter he was given as a reason for the cutting of his allowance. The letter stated that  he hadn’t supplied two documents during his first application or claim for allowance, so as a result of this his money was cut from the day the letter was sent to him.

How would one see this decision? Was it a fairly analyzed one or does the law itself stipulate that someone like him who fails to give a document either due to his own slip or because he was unrequested by the processing officer, be denied his basic human rights?

Consequently, this person who has less knowledge about the legal and administrative system of the Western world, and as he  was unable to give a copy of those documents because he was not asked then, was subjected to two weeks of starvation, begging and bureaucracy to various offices to restart his allowance.

Luckily, it was restarted.

I bring this point not to criticize anybody or office but to discuss about the need of giving good treatment to immigrants and in particular immigrants who have been persecuted in their country and are in need of affection and integration from the host country.
Abdullah says that the cause of the problem was lack of information in rights and entitlements from both sides.
Simple errors can repel immigrants. It gives strength to anti-immigrant groups that are dispersed with a narrow minded point of view all over the world today.
A recent report of the World Bank reckons that if rich countries allowed their workforce to swell by a mere 3 percent by letting in an extra 14 million workers from developing countries between 2001 and 2015, the world would be $356 billion a year better off, with the new migrants themselves gaining $162billion a year, people who remain in poor countries $143 billion and natives in rich countries $139 billion.

Migration is the hottest global issue of today that has an undeniably huge benefit and challenge to host countries. And one of the most unspoken challenges of immigrants themselves is exploitation by employers, mistreatment, language, racism and legal inefficiencies.
Plus exploitative work conditions, a lack of information on entitlements and having to take jobs below their qualification levels are some of the complaints raised by immigrants.

If immigrants are cherished it’s likely that they mingle themselves into the society. An integrated migrant can play huge role in the multi-faceted sectors of a country. To just get glimpses of what some immigrants have done to and in countries they have fled to looking at the greatest physicist of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein born in Ulm, Germany, who immigrated to Switzerland and USA and did many discoveries, Ieoh Ming Pei Chinese born American designer, Hakeem Olajuwon, a Nigerian now an American Citizen who shot to “The Dream” fame in America’s Basketball history could be a fractional example of how incontrovertibly necessary immigrants are.

The repelling actions, laws and behaviors against immigrants could only bring the waste and loss of their valuable input, tarnish the host country’s image and perhaps if the abuses went grave end up in an international court.

And I think the best question that should be asked by the host community (Ireland in this case) is what should we do to help immigrants and people of foreign descent who are already living among us fit in better.