West African nurses question why they must wait longer than others for family to join them in Ireland

On a recent Friday evening, one after another, about 20 people logged into a video call.

They’re all Black nurses from the west side of the African continent, now working in Irish hospitals and care homes.

They share a problem: missing their kids or partners they’ve left behind to come and work here.

They’re trying to bring them over, wishing and hoping for a visa decision to come, they say. But the wait can be long.

Habiba Abdul Mumin, who works at the Coombe Hospital on Cork Street, had organised the call so her colleagues could give voice to their feelings, too.

Abdul Mumin is trying to reunite with her two kids, an eight-year-old girl and a little boy who’s just turned 10.

Her son was psyched about his birthday, said Abdul Mumin on 27 February. “He always told me he wants a big event for his 10th birthday.”

She had waited and hoped to surprise him with a big party in Ireland, but her kids’ visa applications weren’t approved in time – they’ve been pending for nine months.

That’s over the time-frame the embassy of Ireland in Nigeria gives in its automated emails – “6 Months for Critical skills permit holders” like these nurses. (Although the message warns the wait can be longer than that.)

As Abdul Mumin and others talk, a common thread appears. Vignettes of profound frustration in watching colleagues who’d applied after them reuniting with family and sharing their joy at work.

Several people brought up how their co-workers who’d applied to the Irish embassy in India had their reunion visas processed at pace.

“And they say our application is in queue,” said Mavis Agyeiwaa Kyei, who works as a nurse at a stroke unit.

Said Obed Asumadu, another nurse on the video call: “You’d be tempted to think that’s sort of discriminatory when it comes to [the Irish embassy in] Abuja [in Nigeria].”

There’s evidence backing up the suggestion that the Irish embassy in India can be faster to process visa applications. Its website says it takes three months for a join family visa to come through.

That’s one of the shortest time frames among the Irish embassies in non-Western countries with thousands of work permit holder immigrants that the Department of Justice’s IrishImmigration.ie website links to.

Even though there’s a massive gulf between the number of join-family visa applications filed at the Irish embassy in India –  12,460 –  and the one in Nigeria – 1,007 –in 2024, official figures show.

Is it on account of better resourcing of embassies in countries with more immigrants, or something else?

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice did not directly respond to a query asking about staff numbers at the two embassies’ visa offices, but said that local administrative staff and Irish civil servants work at both embassies.

Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan, a Fianna Fáil TD, told the Dáil last month that processing time frames at different visa offices across the globe can vary. He didn’t say why, but said he was expecting waiting times to shorten on account of recent resourcing.

A different track

Immigrants from outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) who qualify for critical-skills work permits – like engineers and animators – can apply to move here with their families.

For nurses and some doctors though, the process is a little different.

First, they have to pass exams centred around adjusting and qualifying to work in the Irish medical sector before they can get a work permit. These involve on-site stuff they can’t do from abroad.

So the Department of Justice allows nurses to arrive here under a precarious short-term permission called  “atypical working scheme”.

Workers must pass exams, then register as nurses and midwives in Ireland before their atypical working permission expires.

If they pass, their bosses can apply for a critical skills work permit on their behalf. If they don’t, they have to go back.

One solution the nurses floated on the video call Friday night was to allow them to come with their families on a work permit, but cancel their permits if they failed their registration exams.

But a spokesperson for the Department of Employment said at the moment it doesn’t have plans “to provide employment permissions to a non EEA national to work as a nurse in the State prior to being considered suitably qualified and registered”.

It’s not possible to say how many of those applying to the embassies of India and Nigeria were critical skills workers, but the Department of Justice assessment is that “a greater number of join family applications received by the New Delhi are sponsored by [critical skills work permit] holders”, said its spokesperson.

That helps speed up processing, especially “when submitted in tandem with the sponsor’s employment visa application”, the spokesperson said.

This might imply that entry visa applications from holders of critical skills work permits are prioritised, which in turn fast-tracks their family members’ entry applications too.

Nurses can’t get a critical skills employment permit from their country of birth to apply for a visa off the back of it, though.

They must arrive on atypical working visas, sit Irish nursing qualification exams and earn the critical skills work permit even if they have years of experience in their country of birth.

Once they get the permit and start working as registered nurses here, they can apply to bring families over and those cases might go through a slower track.

A lengthier wait?

With no change to the rules in sight, it can be a long while after nurses arrive to sit exams that they can hug their kids or partners again.

Besides serving Nigerian citizens, the Irish embassy in Abuja offers services to citizens of other countries on the west side of the African continent.

Tony Fitzpatick, director of professional services for the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), says they get a ton of complaints from Nigerian and Ghanaian nurses, restless to see their loved ones again.

They have shared these concerns with the Minister for Justice and are waiting to hear back, he said.

“We are very privileged that nurses and midwives choose Ireland as a destination to work as a nurse or midwife,” Fitzpatick said.

INMO will continue to fight for their rights to family reunion, working with the Department of Justice, he said.

Sinn Féin TD, Eoin Ó Broin, who’d followed up in January at the Dáil on two people’s reunion applications at the Irish embassy in Abuja, says discrepancy in processing speed is divisive and has to be addressed.

“It creates frustration and tension between communities where there are different time lines depending on nationality or staffing of a particular embassy,” he said by phone on Friday.

In response to Ó Broin’s query at the Dáil, on 22 January, former Minister for Justice Helen McEntee, of Fine Gael, mentioned the overall growing number of visa applications.

Over 166,000 were lodged in 2023, she said on 22 January.

“In 2024, approximately 201,000 visa applications were received,” she said. That means numbers grew by 21 percent compared to 2023, McEntee said.

She said the Abuja embassy is processing applications chronologically. But some nurses who’d applied there aren’t convinced of that either.

Abdul Mumin and others on the group call on Friday night said the embassy in Abuja also asks for original copies of their passports, which can stop them from travelling while it processes their case.

We asked for workers …

Fianna Fáil TD Cathal Crowe raised family reunification delays in the Dáil last month and heard that processing times can vary across different visa offices.

By email, Crowe said he’s getting “quite a number of queries from professionals in the healthcare sphere” who want to reunite with their families here.

These workers have lives beyond their jobs, and have families they want to be close to, Crowe said. “The delays are quite frustrating.”

He keeps raising the issue at the Dáil, hoping to spur change, he said.

Labour TD, Marie Sherlock, said she’d also heard from Nigerian nurses aching to see their families again.

“It is upsetting that workers providing a really valuable service to our country are reduced to having to plea like this,” she said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said it recognises and values “enormous contribution to the Irish economy and Irish society made by migrant workers from outside the EU”.

It’s keen to help close the space between them and their loved ones, they said.

It’s also “committed to improving the service this Department provides” and has boosted resources and staff numbers, expecting processing times to fall in the coming months, the spokesperson said.

Abdul Mumin says she’d left her kids in their country of birth with their aunt, who has become ill and was hospitalised recently.

She wrote to the embassy to say all of that, she says. “I added the doctor’s report and if they could check on my children’s visas, but I didn’t get a positive feedback,” said Abdul Mumin.

On Saturday, her little boy’s big day came and went. He turned 10 in Ghana. Thousands of miles away, his mama clocked into work at the Coombe.