AIBU to feel miffed about my family getting Irish passports?

[Honeysucklelane]

AIBU to feel miffed my DH & kids are getting Irish passports? They all have UK passports and it seems a luxury to pay twice.

I can’t get an Irish passport, but my DH and DC’s can. I’ve pointed out I’ll be stuck in the long non-EU queues at airports whilst they go ahead through the EU queue.

Realistically unless any of them travel somewhere alone, it’s highly unlikely they’ll be with other family or friends with Irish passports so they’ll always be waiting on whoever they’re travelling with anyway so what is the point?

DH was very sheepish when a neighbour popped round with the signed forms this evening and was avoiding telling me what he’d dropped round for.

My NI MIL voted for Brexit

The irony of this is that soon after the Brexit vote there was not a single Irish passport application form in post offices in Belfast or Derry (that was pre internet applications).

The rush was entirely down to protestants ie loyalists (who were pretty much the only ones in NI to vote for Brexit) all applying for Irish passports for the first time ever. I personally know a protestant family who did that. Not extremists, but still had never intended to have an Irish passport - until it suited them!

So I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that your NI MiL - or at least her children/grandchildren - have since availed of their (previously unwanted) right to hold an Irish passport.

exactly. You can have anxiety AND be unreasonable, selfish, etc. I have it myself and, perfect as I am 😁, fully accept I must have been U (or at least appeared so from someone with a differing POV) at least once in my life...

It's not a catch-all excuse to mean you can never be criticised for anything ever.

It's U for OP to be annoyed at people for answering the question she chose to be her OP, rather than in her drip-feed subsequent posts. Yes people should ideally RTFT but if her OP had been ''AIBU to ask about the process if 1 person in a family doesn't have an EU passport' or 'AIBU to be nervous about being left alone in a queue due to anxiety about travelling' she would have got very different responses.

OP chose to use the word miffed so it's fair enough for people to say that she is unreasonable to be miffed. They aren't saying she's being unreasonable to have anxiety, because that's not the question she asked!

I would live my kids to be able to travel/study much more easily at uni level.

Sadly my Irish forefathers are way too far back to claim anything!

So are a lot of Irish men

😆that bit where they're buckled in the car and you walk round to the driver's seat in silence
My kids are up a bit - I'd forgotten about those precious seconds of silence

God, I'd love any way of getting an EU passport. My Mum can (her grandmother was Irish), but we're a generation too far removed. I don't have kids, but my nieces & nephews would love the opportunities an EU passport brings in living, studying, and working in Europe.

I am empathetic to you OP because it bothers me that people post Brexit seem to have started treating passports like accessories instead of incredible privileges. I feel for people who are migrants to Ireland who live there and contribute to life there and are facing expensive visas or long and stressful immigration waits, when brits who had no interest in a passport before Brexit suddenly rush to access one with great ease. All so they can join the fast queue when they visit other countries on holiday and study at English speaking universities abroad.

However, it is a privilege to have a passport for a country and I think you should be happy for your family. In the long run this is a really lovely thing.

Travel anxiety is real and completely understandable. I am confident that the first few times you travel it will be stressful for you, but after that you’ll be relaxed and you won’t give it a second thought. If it really does continue to be stressful for you then you then I think it’s fair that you ask your family to all wait in the same queue together when traveling.

The thing is OP, that your anxiety is something that you need to deal with. It's not reasonable (in fact its utterly selfish) that you'd rather that your children and DH were disadvanted than you, an actual adult, steps up and deals with your anxiety yourself. You're trying to put the consequences of your anxiety on your children. That's not fair.

I understand anxiety, so hopefully knowing you can go through together will put your mind at rest, and you can be pleased that your children get to have an EU passport.

Just to clarify a couple of points though, your Husband is an Irish citizen because his parents are Irish, it doesn't matter that he was born in the UK, it is automatic. If your Husband has not had an Irish passport before, your children will need to go on the Foreign Births Register before he can apply for an Irish passport for them. Hope that helps.

My DH and I have different passports. In the last couple of years airports have got very strict with separating U.K. from Europe. We’ve had separate lines for the following airports

Malaga
Amsterdam
Rome
Frankfurt
Munich
Paris
Brussels
Plus Geneva which was particularly brutal with a three hour queue for non EU passport holders

Your husband is and has always been an Irish citizen whether he’s had a passport or not. That’s just how it works. It doesn’t have anything to do with how ‘connected’ you feel to the country or whether you like to drink a Guinness on St Patrick’s Day.

Is there any reason why you’re resistant to the idea that you’re husband and children are Irish as well as British?

A travel companion who's dealing with herding the children through passport control as well? You seriously think @Honeysucklelane is the one who'll be having it tough here??

Well if you're worried about migrants to Ireland not having Irish passports, or suggesting that those migrants don't have an equally utilitarian approach to getting an Irish passport as English people with an Irish granny do, you can stop worrying. The Algerian who stabbed little girls coming out of school in Parnell St had Irish nationality and was on Jobseekers Allowance, though he didn't speak enough English not to need a translator despite being here for 20+ years. He said that Ireland is a shit country. That was one of the reasons he attacked those children.

Apparently it's not appropriate of Irish people to ask why/how he was given Irish nationality but it seems quite possible that they're given out in lucky bags.
https://gript.ie/minister-not-appropriate-to-say-how-bouchaker-got-citizenship/

If you are getting your news from Gript media, take your tinfoil hat and go bother another thread, this isn't about that.

What is it you think is untrue there? The minister said those words, and Bouchaker's words about Ireland being a shit country and that he attacked the children because he was angry about being asked to prove his right to continued JSA are all in the court records.

Seems like you're trying to shoot the messenger because you don't like the message. It's the truth though, whether you like it or not.

I accept it's off topic in the thread, so I won't continue further, but it was in response to a comment and it's perfectly relevant to that comment.

Doesn’t matter. Heritage rules mean he can get one. They go back to Grandparents because of the history of the Irish having to leave their own country for generations.

Your children will have more opportunities as EU citizens OP. Perhaps focus on that rather than not wanting to be in a longer queue than them?

We were peeved when we realised dh couldn’t get an Irish passport as Myself and the kids have one
but
ultimately it’s the kids who will benefit the most now in terms of work opportunities
It is what it is and if an airport doesnt let dh queue with us it’s a small sacrifice

Agree
We’ve been separated in
many countries
Dh always asks but on several occasions he’s asked and queued with us only to be sent back to the end of the non EU queue

Everyone I know who's got an Irish passport gives reasons like these for getting it: ease of travel, can work in mainland Europe easier (not Ireland)...

For me, these are not reasons to get another citizenship. They never say that they're going to contribute to Ireland in any way: pay taxes, volunteer there, raise kids there, invest there.

They're treating countries like supermarkets, 'what's in it for me?', rather than citizens who contribute to their country of citizenship and take responsibility for it.

Whenever people like that get another citizenship or move to Dubai or whatever, I do reflect: nothing of value was lost.

No it's so that us nordies were still able to have an Irish passport in the immediate generations after independence (and now thanks to the GFA). Which is fair enough TBH - it's how I got my own Irish passport initially (grandparents born before 1921 in what is now NI but was then Ireland.)

But if anyone cared a damn about the diaspora they'd give the native-born Irish living abroad a vote in the presidential elections at the very least, as many countries do. Instead the size of the diaspora is actually cited as a reason NOT to let Irish-born people vote in irish elections. France, Poland, the US and many many other countries allow it, but in Ireland it's an unpopular suggestion for reasons that are not clear to me, but that make it obvious that the diaspora can go hang.

Lots of people have citizenship of a country through birth rites
They don’t have to live there

Let’s not forget that many Irish had their livelihood, homes and land taken from them by the English such that generations later they were still poor and wanting

If a persons ancestors went through that and if their families weren’t able to come back from that financially, as many couldn’t, even into the last century
then again to deny citizenship is just another disgrace

Nevertheless
The rules are much the same as many other countries

I have dual citizenship of another country, not Ireland.

My dad left me & my siblings his house in his will. It was my great grandfathers. It will go to our DCs. We won’t sell it. It’s part of my family’s heritage. We pay bills on it, pay someone to keep an eye on it, when not there, haven’t invested per se it’s true, but we all go regularly, use the shops and eat out, see family & family over there, do repairs using local people, etc. what more should we do?

we are going next week for a family wedding, but only staying there a couple of days, as wedding elsewhere.

You assumed wrong. My MIL has lived in the UK since 1968 (and is catholic). She already had what she needed regarding right to freedom of movement but she wanted to fuck up everyone else’s.
My DH got his Irish passport over 20 years ago and hasn’t held a British one for a long time. And thank god he did, because if he hadn’t sorted it out before our DCs were born, the Irish citizenship would have stopped with them.
My DCs have Irish passports now because why the hell should their rights be curtailed because of a group of ignorant fuckwits, and I absolutely include their DGM in that group. I am confident they would have applied at some point as they are very attuned to their Irish roots, preferring to say they are Irish rather than English.

Ok fair enough. I know one other Irish person (from the south) living in England for many decades now who did something similar so I do know that sort of thran behaviour exists. I just assumed he was a lone specimen.