There has to be a better way

I'm starting to think that Galway's Immigration office is guilty of human rights violations.

(Backstory: if you're a non-EU or non-EEA national, and you want to stay in Ireland for more than 90 days, you have to be registered as a legal immigrant. Registration permits you to stay for up to a year. If you're a student, as I am, it's not terribly difficult-- all you need is a few pieces of easily-obtainable paperwork. Fine. I could do without the accompanying €150 fee, of course, but overall the process is fairly easy. One of my first blog entries was about my first registration.)

So I have no beef with the Garda National Immigration Bureau, as a whole. I don't even have beef with any specific employees; they are generally pretty friendly. I have a major problem with the administration of the Galway GNIB office, though.

This is the fourth year I've had to go through the registration process. The past three years, it has been like going to the DMV or Secretary of State's office or whatever-- you go to the office, take a number, and wait until you're called. In the past I've had to wait for up to 3 hours, but whatever, it happens. This year, however, they are giving out all the numbers as soon as they open their doors at 7:30 am, and since they can only process so many people per day, if there are more people than that they don't get in. Yesterday, I arrived 20 minutes before the office opened; there was already a huge line, and I didn't get in.

[Here it is worth mentioning that the GNIB office is a 35-minute walk from my house, or about a €10 cab ride.]

Today, I left the house at 5:30am, arriving just around 6am. There were already probably 35 people in line when I got there, standing or sitting on the sidewalk outside the office. I sat, in the cold, on the cold pavement, for an hour and a half until they opened. By this time there were maybe 15 more people behind me. The single employee that was working let in about 20 or 25 people, but then stopped the rest. "I can only see this many people today," he said. "Come back tomorrow, or maybe next week, and try again." More than thirty people, more than half the line, were turned away, after waiting outside in the pre-dawn cold for hours. I am young, strong, and healthy, and I found the experience miserable-- there were small children, pregnant women, and elderly people who had been waiting. For hours. Outside. In the cold. Thankfully it wasn't raining today, but in Ireland it often is.

On Monday I'm going to try again. I'm going to leave my house at FOUR O'CLOCK in the morning, to walk for 35 minutes, to get there THREE HOURS before they open. Because apparently that's what you have to do, if you want to register as an immigrant. And when I get there, I just have to hope all my paperwork is in order and they don't arbitrarily decide I need something extra. One of my friends was turned away three times in a row, after going through the same thing I did. There has got to be a better way-- more employees would be a start. Maybe if you know you only have 25 slots available, have people make appointments. Whatever it is, leaving dozens of people out in the cold for hours only to be turned away is not the right way.