SOMETIMES in life you judge people without knowing them. You judge how they act, what they do, what they say and how they live; in fact you pretty much judge everything about them.
In no time at all you start to make all sorts of assumptions about them, and before you know it, you’ve written them off without giving them a chance.
I know it’s wrong, but it happens all the time.
I’ve done it myself on more than one occasion.
In my defence, however, I am good at admitting I was wrong.
One person I was wrong about is Anny Shakalli, the Director of Civil Registry and Migration.
In all fairness to me, I had repeatedly tried and failed to get an interview with her for months. It had become a running joke whether I’d succeed, but I persevered, knowing I’d get there in the end.
It was only as I waited outside her office that it dawned on me why she’d taken so long to see me: it was pure pandemonium.
Both her secretaries’ desks were piled high with immigrants’ case files, the telephone rang incessantly, the fax spewed out a constant flow of paper, and people, including other interior ministry employees, lawyers, immigrants, and former employers, kept dropping by demanding to see her – each one more insistent than the last that his or her reason was the most important.
I suddenly started to feel rather nervous, as if I was about to have an audience with the Queen. After all, this is the woman who ultimately has the final say in which immigrants are to stay and which ones are to be deported.
What was she like? Was she the monster I’d built up in my mind? Was she heartless, unfeeling and rude?
The answers to all those questions is no. In fact, within five minutes of speaking to her, it quickly became apparent that I’d misjudged the 52-year-old, who was clearly overworked and hard pressed to fit a day’s work into 24 hours.
But if I was wrong, then how did this mother of two young adults, explain the apparent ease with which she gave the order to have people deported?
“No case is black and white. If a case is brought to me, it means the department was unable to reach a decision based on existing laws and government policies, and so it must have even more ambiguities than usual. It’s truly a soul-destroying procedure to make that decision.”
She said: “Deportation is not a punishment. This must be made clear. Deportation means the removal of people from the Republic, who don’t have the right to remain here because they’ve either lost the right or they never had it to begin with because they came illegally.
“I know the decision to deport has abolitionary consequences for the individual affected, but I must at any given moment be in a position to balance the interests of the state in relation to individual interests.”
Shakalli underlined she could not allow all third country nationals to stay on the island due to the state’s particular circumstances, which include its occupation as well as the worrying dimensions that illegal immigration had taken on in the past couple of years following the island’s EU accession and the opening of the Green Line.
“We estimate that there are 120,000 non-Cypriots on the island, of which 25,000 are illegal. What concerns me more is the abuse of the procedures, including [false] political asylum applications and sham marriages,” she said.
Shakalli said since she transferred to the position in 2002 from her previous role as head of international legal co-operation at the Justice Ministry, she had been disappointed to discover to what lengths people would go to stay in the country, including taking advantage of their own children.
“Parents have no problem enrolling their children in schools here and say they can keep up with the curriculum, but when it’s time for them to go back home, they suddenly say their child will have a problem integrating in the educational system. How were they able to integrate here? These are all excuses,” she said.
She also maintained that contrary to popular belief, her job had not made her prejudiced against third country nationals.
“I can’t say I’ve become prejudiced. What I can say is that what strongly concerns me is the abuse of the system and the false pretences just to stay in the Republic.”
Another aspect she is clear on is the law: “If you’re illegal, you have to go.”
She said this legal principle was upheld throughout the European Union and that no one was secured of staying in any other country other than his or her own, unless they were in danger in their own country.
“Just because you’re poor, it doesn’t mean you get up and leave your own country and go through the process of illegal migration to get to another country and end up in a political asylum camp. Who wants that? Instead of building new detention centres, developed countries should be looking to find ways to give money to developing countries to help them create jobs and avoid the problem of illegal migration.”
However, this was not a problem a country the size of Cyprus could solve, she said.
“In the meantime, Cyprus can’t house all immigrants. The state has the responsibility of protecting its demography, its national autonomy, and to protect its borders. We certainly don’t want to see what happened in France when all the immigrants, who had been sidelined and unemployed, revolted and set fire to Paris.”
Shakalli said it did not bother her that people depicted her in a negative light because she was confident that when she made a decision it was the right one.
“That’s not to say I’m infallible, however, and even my decisions are subject to scrutiny by the courts.”
In fact, she said thousands of her decisions were appealed daily and she had to justify each one. “At the end of the day my judgement is also judged,” she said.
She also said that although she felt a great deal of responsibility and pressure in her role, it was no greater than the pressure other civil servants faced, including the police, legal services, the Attorney-general’s office and the courts.
“All these roles have a direct impact on peoples’ lives too,” she said.
The 52-year-old admitted her job was very challenging and she had seen tremendous changes in migration issues in just a short time.
“It’s an interesting role that is both demanding and stressful.”
Part of the stress probably has something to do with the fact that the department is severely understaffed, which in turn delays procedures, hence multiplying the workload.
“We need another 40 employees to cover both the district and head offices’ needs,” she said.
With regard to her degree of compassion for immigrants’ individual stories, Shakalli said she showed as much understanding as exercising her duties allowed, which included incorporating the government’s migration policy, international treaties, the acquis communautaire, and national laws.
Nor did she think her job had hardened or softened her in any way. What it did do, however, was reduce her out of work activities, which have lately been limited to unwinding in the company of friends and reading a good book.
“If only I could give all immigrants visas… But as I said the interests of the state need a balance between public interests and personal rights.”
She added: “Migration is something that has been going on since ancient times.
You can’t stop it. It’s like a natural phenomenon and it’s impossible to limit people, so instead you try to adjust regulations so that things don’t spin out of control and you have less of a problem.”
Asked whether she saw a parallel between Cypriot migrants who’d emigrated to all four corners of the earth since the 1920s, she said she did.
“Of course I do. The people who migrated from Cyprus and ones who come here have the same needs, but the circumstances are different. When Cypriots migrated, the countries they went to had a need for them; not only do we not need them, but we also have an unemployment problem of our own.”
By the time our meeting came to a close, I’d not only warmed to her, but I left her office realising how much I’d liked her.
She may sometimes be tough, unflinching and dogmatic in her implementation of the law, and I might not always agree with her decisions, but at the end of the day she has a difficult job to do, with specific legal guidelines to follow. Would another person in the same position do any better? I certainly couldn’t.
