No. 1 of 2004 - Immigration Act 2004
What does this law do?
This new law to expresses in primary statute the principal elements of the law governing the State's operation of controls on the entry into and presence in the State of non-nationals.
The approach of the Act is to express in primary statute, with the minimum of changes and additional provisions necessary to create stand-alone provisions consistent with modern legislative practice, the content of the provisions of the Aliens Orders made under the Aliens Act 1935 as they stood up to 22 January 2004.
The Act is necessary because on January 22 the High Court struck down as unconstitutional section 2 of the Immigration Act 1999, which was thought to give statutory effect to the Aliens Orders as if they were Acts of the Oireachtas. The principal features of the Act are:
- provisions setting out in principle the circumstances in which non-nationals are or are not lawfully in the State;
- requirements on non-nationals to present to an immigration officer on arrival in the State;
- criteria whereby an immigration officer may refuse a non-national permission to enter the State;
- the requirement on non-nationals to register with the Garda Síochána;
- the keeping of hotel registers;
- offences and powers of arrest and search;
- powers to determine which non-nationals should be subject to visa requirements before arrival in the State;
- power to make regulations to charge fees for the issue of the various documents provided for under the Act.
The Act contains special provisions to take account of the exercise by EEA nationals and their families of their Treaty rights of free movement, and to take account of the special provisions regarding entry to the State for asylum applicants contained in the Refugee Act 1996.
Contact Department: Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform
Signed by the President on: 13.02.04
Full version of Immigration Act 2004 on Oireachtas website