Living life in the shadows of Galway’s Little Brazil

Gort used to affectionately be referred to as Little Brazil. During the boom years, its meat factories were a magnet for thousands of migrant workers from South America.

Companies actively recruited Brazilians, who came here on working visas and made South Galway their home. Gort was a ‘good news’ story covered in the world’s media, with praise for integration and inclusiveness.

Then Ireland was plunged into a deep recession. In 2009, one of the big Brazilian employers, Duffy’s meat factory, closed, and many workers returned to their home country.

Today some 1,000 Brazilians are living in Gort but it is estimated that between 40% and 50% of them are undocumented, according to Obert Makaza, of Gort Justice for Undocumented Group.

That’s roughly 100 families, or between 400 and 500 men, women and children who are ‘living in the shadows’.

That’s up to 500 people living in fear of being reported to the immigration authorities. Up to 500 people who are constantly looking over their shoulders, worrying will they be deported.

Many of them work, and pay taxes, but they get no Social Welfare benefits. Some of them are in abusive relationships, said Mr Makaza, but they are afraid to report domestic violence to Gardaí. They are vulnerable to exploitation at work, and blackmail.

Mr Makaza likened the situation of the Brazilians in Gort to the undocumented Irish in America.

They came here on working visas, on holiday visa or on student visas but for various reasons – mostly due to Ireland’s economic crash – their situation has become “irregular”, and they no longer have documents.

They are fully integrated into the Gort community, which is now ‘home’ but unable to return to Brazil to visit family or attend funerals of loved ones because they do not have the documentation and visas to get back in.

See full feature in this week’s Connacht Tribune.