For undocumented young people, third-level education remains out of reach

The fear was planted one night when Sumayyah Maghoo was 12 years old.

“I couldn’t tell any person that I was undocumented,” she said recently, sitting at the kitchen table in her parents’ home, a cramped apartment in Skerries.

At the time, Maghoo’s family were renting in Phibsborough.

Cops turned up outside their home in plain clothes, beaming flashlights through their windows and banging on the wooden gate between their home and a neighbour’s, she says.

“It was like immigration police, I vaguely remember,” says Maghoo who is now 24 years old. They barged in and wanted to see their passports, she says.

She can’t remember the detail of what happened after, she says, but it scared her off any mention of immigration again – even though her status defined her childhood.

At school, she made up excuses to sidestep overseas trips, she said, hiding the truth even from her close pals. “They were all Irish; they were clueless about immigration.”

Ahead of the leaving cert exams, her six closest friends planned a trip abroad. “They were counting me in and dividing all the money,” said Maghoo.

At that point, she caved in and told them that she couldn’t travel, that she didn’t have the documents, she says, but they couldn’t grasp it. “They were like, ‘Whatcha mean? Just bring your passport.’”

After the exams, Maghoo was again left behind. She couldn’t enrol in college.

“You’re supposed to discuss these things with your friends, like which college you want to go to, but what’s the point?” says Maghoo.

Maghoo was shut out of college because undocumented people can’t access third-level education – even if, like her, they grew up in Ireland, and went through the Irish school system.

Those who do get immigration papers still have to rack up three years of living with status to qualify for free tuition and student grants. Those who don’t want to wait have to cough up the same steep fees as non-EU students.

Falling short

There isn’t a specific pathway in Ireland to third-level education for undocumented people, said the Irish government last year to counterparts in the Netherlands who were scoping out other countries’ policies.

A study by the European Migration Network found that they can access it if they pay non-EU tuition fees, says the government’s response to Dutch officials. But “their migration status may be checked upon enrolment”, it says.

They’d also need a PPS number to get their degrees, says the government’s response – which undocumented people can’t get because it brings the risk of being outed as paperless to the government, unless they’d applied and got it before losing their status.

Even if undocumented people can afford non-EU fees, colleges generally won’t enrol them, says Mairéad McDevitt, a community-work lead at the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI).

They’d be too afraid of getting in trouble with the Department of Justice, she said. “It’s a requirement that you have to have legal residency to attend third-level education.”

That is unfair, she said. “Because, like, why? What does your legal residency have to do with access to education?”

Even if someone does get status, they still have to wait three more years to meet legal residency criteria and be eligible for free tuition, said McDevitt.

All those years that they went to school, sat exams, and made friends here without status? They don’t count as residency in the eyes of the government.

McDevitt says it should be possible for young people who’ve grown up here to meet the residency criteria straight away: “If they were thinking of drawing the line, surely it should be if you’ve done your leaving cert in Ireland?”

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said it doesn’t make policy decisions around access to education for undocumented people. The Department of Further and Higher Education does, they said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Further and Higher Education said that residency criteria apply to all students equally. Students can reapply for grants if their situations change, they said.

In March 2022, Simon Harris, a Fine Gael TD and Minister for Further and Higher Education, told the Dáil that he always wants to allow access to education for anyone in the country.

“Regardless of nationality, circumstances, background, gender or any other matter,” he said. “I accept that we need to do more,” said Harris.

Becoming stuck

Maghoo moved from Mauritius to join her father, who had immigrated here, she says. She was 11 when she arrived, says Maghoo.

Her father had status at first and gradually brought over family to join him, she says, but they fell undocumented, grappling with immigration renewal costs. Her parents both worked hard, all the time, she says.

As Maghoo’s friends enrolled in college, she got a job at a restaurant.

To help get the job, she showed her boss a letter from MRCI saying she had an application for status in progress with the Department of Justice.

She and another undocumented guy had the same letter, she says. They kept working until someone asked for an update.

She saved some money as she worked and paid for post-leaving-cert (PLC) courses, says Maghoo.

McDevitt, the MRCI worker, says it’s hard to watch undocumented kids doing a PLC course, then another, and then another.

“They end up doing like a series of PLCs, they do like five or six of them,” she said. “But they can only go so far.” None of that amounts to a college degree.

Off course

Maghoo joined MRCI’s undocumented kids’ group, Young, Paperless and Powerful, to fight for their right to college education, she says.

There, she was struck by how brave and unabashed some of the kids were about their immigration statuses, she says, “As if it was not a big deal.”

One girl would tell everyone she was undocumented, says Maghoo. “As we went along this journey, I was like, okay, yeah, if she can do that, I can do that.”

In 2018, she finally got her status: a Stamp 4S. It wasn’t permanent residency like a Stamp 4 but could evolve into one after two years.

It opened some doors too. “You can travel, no problem, no issue with travelling, you can, like, work,” said Maghoo.

But it wasn’t the golden ticket to university that she thought it was. Colleges would accept her but quote international fees, says Maghoo.

She couldn’t afford that, she says. She couldn’t get the Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI) either, falling short of its requirements.

She says she thought she’d try again a few years later, imagining Maynooth University and a teaching degree in French.

“I always had my eyes on Maynooth, I remember going to every single open day they had,” she says.

But life got in the way and edged her off that course. She travelled a little and then met someone, and they married. “All that eventually pulled me away from the world of education,” said Maghoo.

A little later, Maghoo’s mum carries her six-month-old granddaughter, a calm baby in a traditional Mauritian skirt, through from the living room.

Maghoo took her and clutched her close. “I’m so happy she’s an Irish citizen,” she says.