Immigration in Ireland

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I'm interested to hear people's viewpoints on this topic, especially given the recent protests. My own opinion is that it is important to help genuine asylum seekers and people wanting to come to Ireland and contribute. At the same time, I understand people's concern about asylum seekers who are deliberately destroying travel documents. I can understand people's concerns. Just wondering what other people's two cents is. Just to give context, I am an Irish person who grew up in Ireland.

I am very concerned about the use of a housing crisis as a wedge to let right wing anti immigrant ideas get a foothold. We are a nation where economic migration, often illegal, has been central to our survival so we should be able to understand migration.

I think the protests are ridiculous. I live in an area with a lot of inward immigration and it’s honestly enriched the area greatly. Many parts of Ireland, particularly rurally have been suffering greatly from population decline and there’s plenty of room. What there isn’t currently is plenty of housing and that is a problem, but it is not the fault of migrants arriving in the country, it’s the fault of years of broken housing policy.

The people protesting are entirely misdirected. And as for saying they’re protecting women. What a joke.

That's a good point. I think people are very worried about housing. I'll be honest and say I come at it from an environmentalist person and I hate the idea of building thousands of houses, even though I know it needs to be done.

Perspective not person!

Peadar Toibin addressed this issue in the Dail a few weeks ago. He said most irish people have no issues with aiding people fleeing wartorn countries/ fleeing atrocities etc BUT it was very concerning that unvaccinated / unvetted people with no documentation get off a plane un Dublin but have documentation getting on it .Asylum applications take anything from 2 years and one case he saw- it was 14yrs waiting for a decision on asylum.
He went on to say its costing 140 million the processing of asylum seekers and accommodating them until a decision is made.
Why shouldnt rural communities be concerned with bus loads of unvetted single men lobbed into them with no notice, no liason with these poor people having nothing to do all day - how is that not a recipe for disaster for all involved?
I am not comfortable with children in hotels- it only leads to suffering!!! Killarneys tourism industry must be affected . Like will there be a hotel room available in this country this summer??. My 82 yr old Mum keeps saying how can Ireland afford this ?? At the rate its going and health services stretched are We heading towards a terrible country for us ALL to live in.
Helen Mcentee and her everyone welcome. Like welcoming them to community centres which seems to be on the horizon with Zero facilities is very unfair on the children and families coming never mind single men.
The people of Finglas protesting at bus loads of men arriving in their midst are ridiculed as far right - thats the term trotted out constantly not that they are genuinely concerned .
Where is the bus loads to Dalkey ??? Funny that.
Ireland cant take everyone without even badic questioning as to their background!!!

Well, I think whatever is happening, I absolutely refuse to pay more tax to cover it. The squeezed middle get caught for everything and I'm tired of it.

We, as a nation, don't have a leg to stand on, when it comes to talking about illegal immigration. Had it not been for emigrants, our economy would have literally left us as the poorest of the poor in the 50s. And most of our emigrants, were going to work in terrible conditions, with little education, limited opportunities at home, were decried in their host nations as dirty, illiterate, lazy, drunken, stupid, backwards and simian.

I've worked in countries where I've experienced being stereotyped as that (not just 1 country).

I welcome immigration, but, but, but, I loathe the silo-ing of immigrants into poor housing, in economically deprived areas.

We need to learn the lessons from France, Sweden, the UK, Germany.
Allow immigrants and we will be much the richer, financially/ morally/ socially and culturally.
But, a trickle, so that our new neighbours can be integrated well, and welcomed.
So that the fears of people in some areas of the country can be addressed by integrating children into the GAA club, and their mothers into the book clubs and the musical society, and their dads into the local running group etc etc.

If we fail to do that, we will see social splintering within 20 years, as the children of immigrants grow up, and start to talk about how they were discriminated against as children. That builds resentment and division.
I can see it with my own DC.
My daughter was incensed at the treatment of one of her classmates, by the Irish teacher. Classmate has black skin, born and bred Irish.
That child will grow up with issues, because that treatment happened and was tolerated by the school.

I've been saying this for about 10years now- I can see why communities are becoming fed up, and frightened about what this means for them. Because officialdom has not been listening for the last 20 years, and people on the ground can see the challenges.

I totally agree the Irish were immigrants too arriving in The US and UK and were welcomed but they were there to work and give back to the countries they went to. I often think that the irish were the same as lots of immigrants to here just trying to make it and make new lives etc etc
Coming here getting everything paid for as soon as you arrive ,you with no affiliation to this country with ages,identities and backgrounds not even verifiable or able to be checked is plainly wrong

Where is the justice in that for the hard working tax payers and elderly of the country who have given their lives working ,to end up in packed overstretched hospitals and services due to explosion in population .i mean its ludicrous. We cannot afford it!!! The govt now asking the people for empty sheds and out buildings to house refugees. Like what !! How is that safe/ humane/ fit for living in ? What a welcome for genuine refugees ?? And if the majority are genuine coming here well then i am embarassed.sold a utopia to end up in the back end of somewhere in accommodation unfit and with zero jobs or transport . A halt has to be put on this influx. One of the mammys in the school is ukrainian. Married to an irish man here years(her parents came here when the war started ) they are living with her. She is flabbergasted at all these african men claiming to be from Ukraine .where is it all going to end. I am relieved we can close our door with our 3 children upstairs. What is the govt going to do next?? Shanty villages outside citys .its a huge issue

You've put into words exactly my feelings @HilarysMantelpiece. I despair of the lack of any kind of joined up thinking from our officials.
We've been oh so smug the last few years thinking the far right won't get a hold here, while we've allowed the conditions which will do exactly that to snowball.
I feel this horrible simmering tension and resentment in our society now.
There was apparently a protest outside a Dublin hospital (today?) aimed at the non Irish workers there...wtaf like.

‘We need to learn the lessons from France, Sweden, the UK, Germany.

Allow immigrants and we will be much the richer, financially/ morally/ socially and culturally.’

The Swedish Prime Minister has compared the gang warfare in high immigrant areas to terrorism. The use of hand grenades is especially destructive and frightening.

The French government is trying to recruit an ‘elite’ police service, to control the arson, rape and murder in the banlieues .

The German government have kept the lid on the unemployment rate amongst the non German populace, but the increased criminality around the hospitality centres is beginning to make waves in central government as well as state.

UK….🤫

I will add that I believe society is already splintering here. I live not far from a town where asylum seekers have been basically ghettoised over the last 20 years. There is a serious gang mentality and how could there not be. They've been subjected to prejudice, suspicion and blatant racism over that time. We had a chance, to learn from the mistakes of other countries and instead continued with an inhumane asylum process (direct provision) and once people had exited that they were shunted into towns with already high social deprivation.
The trope of "they get everything before our own do", I've been hearing that for the last 15-20 years.

There is a lot of censorhip on this issue....youtube etc removes videos and comments....it's ridiculous that young men enter the country on planes from uk or other countries and destroy passports on the plane toilets and then claim to be refugees...most are the usual...albanians, indians, and those from places with no conflicts at all....its a scam...no wonder there are protests...sweden has massive problems and the new govt is now trying to deport all the bogus claimants, as is denmark etc. I have no idea how the immigration control are letting them into Ireland in the first place,. they used to have immigration on board which stopped them flushing documents down the toilet, they need to get back on board and return the fake ones instantly.

I’m pretty sure people have to destroy/ get rid of their passports before claiming asylum. Otherwise they would just be a regular traveller/ tourist etc.

People apply for asylum. They are asylum seekers.

It is only once a government allows them to stay do they become refugees. So if their applications are not successful they are deported. This has always been the process.

The cost come from the government outsourcing accommodation for asylum seekers to private providers. There are some people lining their pockets , but it’s not the asylum seekers themselves.

They get something like 40 euro to live on a week.

It’s the private companies making huge profits running direct provision centres

Sorry but where is this info about destroying documents coming from?
As far as I'm aware its only become part of the narrative in recent weeks and we've had asylum seekers coming here for years.

I heard some lady on the radio from the refugee council or somewhere talking about it the other day. Apparently some can't access passports so travel on false documents/their cousins documents or whatever then destroy them before they get here. She didn't deny that it happens. Just that it doesn't happen for nefarious reasons but becasue they are desperate.

It's very depressing that we haven't learned lessons from other countries, but we are very poor at any kind of forward planning, looking at what problems might arise in the future.
The failure to abolish the direct provision model is coming back to bite them on the ass now. I don't know anything about destroying documents. I don't want to be naive but also sweeping generalisations about groups of people are never helpful.
They need to speed up the process of assessing asylum applications, and work a lot harder to involve local communities & help people to integrate.

David McWilliams wrote about immigration and some of the actual facts around it in Ireland, just last weekend.
www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2023/02/04/david-mcwilliams-immigrants-like-my-grandparents-are-job-creators-not-job-takers/

"The most recent arrivals are highly educated, with 70,300 (58.2 per cent) holding a third-level qualification. EU immigrants account for 9.6 per cent of the workforce here, while those born outside the EU account for 4.9 per cent.
^Now here’s where it gets interesting. Seventy-seven per cent of all immigrants go to work every day, as opposed to just 63 per cent of people born in Ireland.
Only 18 per cent of immigrants are not making themselves available for work, as opposed to 24.1 per cent of Irish people.
Despite the fact that Ireland has among the highest percentages of people with third-level qualifications in the EU, the immigrants of working age are even more likely to have a third-level education than their Irish-born counterparts. So Ireland is getting qualified people, whose education has been paid for by someone else’s taxes, not ours. This is an obvious advantage for the country.Today in Ireland, immigrants from Asia and North America are more likely to occupy professional/managerial class jobs than their Irish counterparts. Interestingly, although immigrants from EU countries find it easier than those from non-EU countries to get a job here, those from outside the EU, when they get a job, are more likely to work in higher-skilled jobs^.

This is a message that needs to be widely spread.

I work in a professional job and have personal experience of co-workers, and clients who were born elsewhere. In my business, my fellow professionals and clients are immigrants from Russia, Moldova, Romania, India, Pakistan, Australia, Ukraine, Poland, Nigeria..... all qualified, in professional jobs, or starting their own businesses.
Highly motivated, hard working, decent people.

Ah, flipping italics fail.
Most of the above is a quote from McWilliams piece.

Thanks @leithreas. I was just wondering as hadn't heard mentioned before.

Are there any countries that have done it 'right' though? Can you do it 'right'. Can you house the population of Galway city in high quality houses, all spaced out to prevent ghettoisation in the midst of housing crisis that is seeing our young people leaving on droves?

Someone mentioned bookclubs etc? You've fled a war, you are in a foreign country, you don't speak the language fluently and even if you do you don't understand their idioms or sense of humour, you don't have the same cultural references, the same shared experiences etc. Would you choose this or to hang out with people who just 'get' you where it's easy, you understand what each other means without having to try.

There are a lot of perfect world scenarios being talked about on this thread but humans herd for the most part, people go to people with similar life experiences to them. I mean Irish people should know that as well as anyone Irish communities abroad are huge.

I dont mind immigration, I'm hoping to leave ireland soon and become an immigrant myself but its easy for me to say I don't mind it. I have a house, a job, my kids are in school with tiny class sizes that are not really going to be affected by immigration, I'm healthy don't need to access healthcare etc. I can see why it isn't so easy for people who lack basic things like stable homes to say the more the merrier.

It’s also worth noting immigrants and refugees are not the same.

Immigrants can legally come to Ireland to work.

Asylum seekers are fleeing danger/ persecution/human rights abuses and come to seek refuge.

They are only allowed to work and can contribute to society once they have refugee status. This takes years- and the government are to blame for slow processes. It’s an awful situation and the government need to be held to account.

I agree with you leithreas and I am not naively optimistic.

I think it's important to counteract the message "all immigrants are thieving scroungers who are here on dubious grounds to take advantage of idiotic policies and send all our hard earned multinational corporation tax euros to their backwards far away countries".
They are not.

People are people regardless of their colour or language or religion. There will be scroungers chancing their arms. The majority (in my personal experience and borne out by statistics) are in Ireland as economic tourists- if somewhere else offered better opportunities , that's where they'd be.

We need to find a way of welcoming migrants who are poor and disadvantaged and offer opportunities, so that their impetus to find a better life, (which brought them here in the first place) is harnessed to help us all.
Irish people who are poor and disadvantaged in Ireland, will struggle to see the new arrivals "get ahead". That will engender fear, and jealousy.
Fear and jealousy can be harnessed by the some sectors to gain power.
We either tackle that head-on, or, wait for it to become like "les banlieues" in Paris.

The really big problem is the development of a racist element in Irish society.

Piss poor planning and apparently no idea of best practices from other places are very much in evidence. The situation has all the ingredients for creating a monster, and it's already happening. There are some ugly undercurrents brewing.

Tbh I think it is really basic to say 'racist' and leave it at that? You have to ask why. Why are people so bothered. I don't think it is as simple as racist. Although we like to think of our country as great there are lost of people really struggling.

I know a young man with ASD who is going to be homeless in a few weeks. The council have said they don't even have temp accommodation for him. The lad will not survive on the streets, he can barely look after himself with a roof over his head. If he doesn't find somewhere willing to accept a young fella on disability soon he is fucked. Another family with 3 kids, the landlord is selling up, they can't find a place for love nor money. My eldests friends are all adamant they are leaving ASAP, they know there is no life for them here except working to pay a landlords mortgage. Travelling for hours everyday to get to college then having to work all weekend to afford that travel. It's no life for young ones.

Happy people don't suddenly turn for no reason. It's people that are struggling that need something to rage against. And yeah if I was that young man I mentioned who was told that they don't even have temp accommodation to put him in I would be raging. Of course comparisons are made to the 70000+ places the government have found for refugees in the last year.

I don't know it's late and I'm rambling but I think compassion needs to given to all sides. Help needs to be given to all sides. Like I said in my earlier post when all is peachy for us it's easy to be welcoming but try being a disabled 22 year old that can barely function as is being shrugged at and told you'll need to sleep on the street and see how you feel then.

I share people's concerns, empty buildings being filled with men. The people of East Wall should be heard.