Dear Honourable Minister of State for
Equality, Immigration and Integration,
David Stanton.

We hope this petition finds you in the best of health.

We have launched this petition to express our dismay against the recent changes introduced by the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service dealing with the re-entry visas. It states that "The On-Line Appointments service for customers seeking Re-entry Visas from Re-entry Division, Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service will cease as and from the Monday, 3 September 2018 with the exception of emergency re-entry visa on-line appointments. All applications for re-entry visas will now be received through the registered post postal system. Customers are advised to submit their postal applications 5 to 6 weeks prior to travel."

In this connection, we would like to bring to your kind attention the outcomes of an online petition opposing these changes which has received overwhelming support to halt this change; not only that, we propose to do away with the needs for re-entry visas altogether, thus bringing the Irish law in-line with the rest of the EU. Some of the comments by the signees of the petition which are worth noting are as follows:

• The risk of handing over one’s passport for the stamping of a re-entry visa for the expected duration of 5-6 weeks is unnecessarily risky and can cause many complications, including loss of a vital document in transit.
• Whereas, the re-entry fees may well be a source of revenue to the Irish exchequer, but common sense dictates that law should be simple and not unnecessarily complicated. The current fees structure can be retained (although, even this is being opposed overwhelmingly as being extortionate), but a GNIB stamp should normally suffice for seeking re-entry, and there is no reason as to why that cannot be considered.
• They have voiced their concerns about this completely ill-considered and irksome change which serves no good purpose at all.
• It is being perceived as draconian, almost contemptuous towards the hapless immigrants.
• Most immigrants who are law-abiding, quietly and privately go about the everyday norms of the society, fulfilling their duty as residents of this state, and actively contribute to nation building through taxes, are now being subjected to discriminative laws.
• We wish to highlight that it is insanely time-consuming and needlessly add to the overall travel-cost and stress for non-EU residents of the state, not to mention, cause them great inconvenience if and when they need to travel home, or outside of Ireland on business.

We, highlight that a registration with the Garda Naturalisation Immigration Bureau should suffice to grant re-entry to the state as long as the travel date falls within the span of the ‘stay-permitted-date’ stamped by GNIB.

This will save the unnecessary workload for everybody and the savings from the same could perhaps be directed towards addressing the work-permit backlog which is withholding many key jobs-positions which need to be filled up in order to build a better nation.

Therefore, we call on the state to completely abolish re-entry visa system.

Yours truly,
Law-abiding residents of Ireland.

Petition featured in:
The University Times
The PIE News
The Journal.ie