As the passengers disembarked, many looking forward to spending New Year’s Eve back in Ireland with their friends and family, one passenger faced an uncertain future. Sheilila Said Salim had turned thirty-one that year and had left his wife and three children back in Kenya to set himself up with a new life in Ireland, the land of the céad míle fáilte, a hundred-thousand welcomes. Sheilila had heard about the laxity of Ireland’s immigration laws. He was confident that if he could get into the country there would be little that the authorities could do to get him out again. The Irish economy had turned itself around from the terrible brain drain of the early 1990s when our great and good had to emigrate to Britain and America to find work. The country was beginning to prosper and the Celtic Tiger was in its infancy, a phenomenon that would soon bring previously-unthought-of prosperity to Ireland’s five million residents. Sheilila Said Salim later claimed that he had paid $1,600 to a man who specialised in illegally transporting people into Europe.
What do You think about The Irish Scissor Sisters?
