QUICK UPDATE ON ACCOUNT ACTIVATION AND MY LOST IDENTITY

The last thing I wrote about my account was that of sending an email to justice office for the provision of attested copies of my ID documents which I am still waiting.

In the meanwhile, Miss Kay from the administration staff of Cork Training Centre called me up in the office and inquired about the returning back of the payments made by the college into my given account of AIB.

I explained to her the actual situation I was going through for the account. She was kind enough to contact the head office of AIB. They instructed me to call into the bank and get the issue of my address sorted out which they said was wrong with my account which was not the reason I was told when I was in the bank myself.

Anyhow, Miss Kay wrote a letter about the returning of payments from the bank and handed that to me for dropping in the bank the next day. So I went to the bank, my address got corrected supposedly, they took the letter of Miss Kay, made it part of their record and asked me to provide the same documents which I provided them earlier for the proof of my address. But this time they actually activated my account as I received a call from the bank Employee, and I Also received the pin of my student debit card in my post next day.  This is how this drama of account came to an end.

But let me tell you, if you are an asylum seeker and you go and tell the banks about it, they actually treat you with ridicule. I felt it during my struggle for opening an account.

What happened to me, I can keep that to myself, but what is the use of that. My incident can actually open the eyes of many asylum seekers going through the same situation, facing the same ridicule. Any NGO can pick up this story and make it a reason for launching a new campaign for the sake of asylum seeker’s identity issues.

I suffered because I provided my genuine documents to the Justice office and I was given a card which stated on the face of it that it did not confirm my identity. I came with an identity but I immediately lost it. So these issues should be highlighted to make people understand the issues asylum seeker deal with.