Before the war started, Haneen Eshraim, an English teacher in Gaza, was hustling as hard as she could, she said, recently.<\/p>\n
\u201cI worked in a school during the day while also running my own private English teaching centre,\u201d Eshraim said.<\/p>\n
She wanted to make her own money and be independent, she said. Eshraim was born and raised in Gaza. \u201cI have lived here my entire life.\u201d<\/p>\n
She did her undergrad in English language education at Gaza\u2019s public university, Al-Azhar, she said. And she was dreaming about doing her master\u2019s in an English-speaking country, she said.<\/p>\n
In October 2023, after Hamas members killed over 1,200 Israelis and took some 250 people hostage, the Israeli government launched what became a relentless mass slaughter campaign, taking the lives of about<\/a> 70,000 people \u2013 though that\u2019s probably a conservative estimate<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI lost almost everything,\u201d said Eshraim. \u201cI lost my home, my teaching business, my source of income, many of my personal belongings, and people I cared about.\u201d<\/p>\n Now that that bombing has abated, people in Gaza are still navigating their own daily struggles. Even charging a phone involves a dangerous journey now, said Eshraim. \u201cWe have no regular electricity at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite all of this, Eshraim swung into action. On a patchy internet connection that regularly cut out, she said, she spent months applying to different universities.<\/p>\n She\u2019d a bunch of offers, she said, but decided to go with a scholarship from University College Dublin (UCD) to study a Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) course.\u00a0<\/p>\n She is among a small number of young people in Gaza who have sought a reprieve from war and tried to restore in their lives something that resembles normality by applying for student visas through some universities\u2019 humanitarian scholarship schemes.<\/p>\n A visa is the thing that lets you get through border control and into the country, but you need to register it at the city\u2019s immigration office and get an immigration stamp to live here.<\/p>\n Travelling without a visa is expensive and dangerous, even more so for Palestinians who live under Israeli siege.\u00a0Meanwhile Israeli citizens don’t need a visa<\/a> to come here. <\/p>\n Between 2024 to 30 June 2026, 305 Palestinian citizens applied for long-stay \u2013 that\u2019s for people who want to stay in Ireland for more than three months\u00a0\u2013 student visas, according to Department of Justice figures<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of that 305 applications, 58 of them were rejected (but applicants had the chance to appeal) \u2013 roughly 19 percent. Eshraim, who got a rejection letter just last week, isn\u2019t counted in that statistic yet, but she wasn\u2019t alone in getting a refusal.<\/p>\n In an email to those would-be students last week, a UCD worker wrote that \u201cmultiple students\u201d had their visa applications thrown out.\u00a0<\/p>\n For others from Gaza, who have their student visa application approved, the reality of how shaky the immigration stamp is \u2013 that the system doesn\u2019t automatically recognise their vulnerability \u2013 quickly sets in, they say.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said \u201cthere are no special arrangements for Palestinian nationals in place, nor are there any plans to introduce any\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n The years of living precariously\u00a0<\/p>\n Ibrahim Abusaqer, another student from Gaza, is some ways along the path that Eshraim had hoped to take.<\/p>\n He did his master\u2019s in public health at UCD, he said, recently, sitting at a city centre caf\u00e9. But the question for him is what comes next.\u00a0<\/p>\n In another life, in Gaza he was a dentist, he said, but translating his qualifications involves moving through a maze of bureaucracy.\u00a0<\/p>\n He was wearing a black beaded wristband on top of another one with the pattern of the Palestinian keffiyeh.\u00a0<\/p>\n The closer they got to the end of term time, said Abusaqer, he and others felt the clock ticking down on their student immigration Stamp 2s.\u00a0<\/p>\n People in Abusaqer’s position can move on to graduate immigration permission 1G \u2013 and time on it does count towards citizenship \u2013 for two years. And on that, try to find an employer who\u2019s willing to sponsor a work permit.\u00a0<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not easy, and sometimes dependent on chance and knowing someone who knows someone.\u00a0<\/p>\n In recent years, non-EU graduates who\u2019d asked for some extra time on their 1G stamps to find work have said<\/a> they grappled with poverty and unemployment as they lost their legal status for long stretches because the Department of Justice has been slow to review their cases.<\/p>\n Abusaqer said that UCD staff went out of their way to help get people to safety out of Gaza. \u201cThey did impossible things even outside of their work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But people in his group scrambled to find a solution to steady their status and living situation once the term ended and they had to move out of student accommodations, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n They wrestled with questions like should they get their 1G, hustle hard and hope for the best, or apply for asylum and join its system of accommodation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to mention other schemes, but for example, for Ukraine, I know we\u2019re not an EU country, but we deserve something similar,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The EU’s Temporary Protection Directive unlocks the zone for those fleeing Russia’s war on Ukraine, which means they can travel to Europe without visas and automatically get recognised as refugees without navigating the asylum bureacracy. <\/p>\n They can work, set up their own business and access some housing aid, though the latter has been dwindling<\/a> in recent years.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said its student immigration stamp is for the most part for studying, though people are allowed casual part-term employment during the term and free to work full-time once it wraps up.<\/p>\n Those who move on to its graduate stamp can continue to work full-time for as long as it\u2019s valid, they said.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, former students from Gaza who do apply for asylum see that the wait is not short-lived even when it\u2019s broadly agreed they are in need of protection.<\/p>\n Anne Connolly, a member of D6 for All, who hosts a student from Gaza in her home, said that when he first got here he was still too shaken to focus in class.<\/p>\n So, he deferred the course for a year. But he has since applied for asylum and has been waiting months for an answer.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBut he got his work permit, so he can work,\u201d said Connolly.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ireland does offer a refugee-protection programme that\u2019s different from its regular asylum system. Those who arrive as \u201cprogramme refugees<\/a>\u201d don\u2019t have to navigate the asylum bureaucracy.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Ireland\u2019s admission intake through the scheme has been falling in recent years.\u00a0<\/p>\n