Could Ireland cope with another wave of immigration?

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

Now I'm just a student looking for Summer work. I blame the system and I hold nothing against the foreigners who have these jobs.

As said, the employer would prefer to have a team of full-time staff then a lot of part-timers who will leave next September or might only be available to work evening or weekends, it's makes the roster a nightmare to organize.

If the shop is busy and particularly for a tourist type shop like Carolls, they'd certainly take on summer staff.
But tourism numbers are down, it's expensive for American tourists now with the US dollar so they probably don't need as many staff this summer.

I've worked in a small hotel in Galway, 18 staff and only 4 of us of us were Irish.
We certainly got lots of CV's from Irish people too but apart from the chef's they were mostly students looking for part time work.
Since management wanted full timers they went with other staff, even using agencies to recommend staff from Eastern Europe. So they had the job arranged before they arrived in Ireland.

It certainly wansn't that Irish people don't work as well, there are great workers and useless wasters in equal numbers from all countries. Tbh, it wasn't the Irish staff who were constantly missing work due to nights out and hangovers.
Just companies want full time staff and not students who will pick and choose shifts and changing rosters every week.
If times are good, they'll take them on

Edit, I've been in your situation though, it's tough.
I went to McDonalds on Headford Rd, Galway and asked about a job, this was 2005.
The manager said they were not hiring and I sure didn't spot many Irish staff there! Not the staff's fault, they got a job before I applied
Rejected by McDonalds, the shame

Denerick wrote: »

The 'foreigners' are not to blame with you not been able to find work. The problem is that you are seeking student summer work - while employers want people who they can rely on. They can't rely on students as they are definately going to leave around exam time or when they finish their degree. When times are good employers will take on students (I never had problems finding part time work in shops and restaurants) When times are bad they'll concentrate on people willing to stay longer. This means they will predominatly stick with their current long time staff, who are foreign. The reason they are foreign is because Irish people simply didn't apply for these jobs. You choose to overlook that.

Furthermore, our 'working classes' do not want to work minimum wage jobs because they can earn more, or as much, on welfare. This is part of our ridiculous social welfare system that effectively punishes work. This is the main reason why you hear Pakistani, and not Dublin accents in your local centra.

When I worked in a shop in Dublin city centre there was around 20 people on the payroll. There were 2 Irish people, one of them being me. The boss always had a sign on the shop window advertising for new staff. Not once did an Irish person come up to me with a CV at any time that I was working.

what is a student to do for money so? they are punished as they are getting themselves educated

Overheal wrote: »

well then by all means have a bitch and a moan and discriminate against the poles and your irish american brothers, not to mention irish that live in just about any other corner of the world.

yes, ireland and the irish will be in trouble if such bigoted attitudes are left to fester.

the crazy thing is a lot this attitude is coming from our so called ''best educated generation'' !

To get back to economic arguments,

This can of course happen provided you can persuade the governments & parliaments of the East European states to allow you to discriminate against their citizens. Failing that, you can forget about visas.

The West can easily get an exemption from the treaty. They may well ignore it. Its great that France came onboard about 5 years after Ireland to allow full access to the labour market, and Germany will come onboard in about another year. That will soak up some of the pressure from here and the UK ( particularly Germany, although it remains to be seen how employers and unions react in those more "corporatist" states). However the reasons they stayed out - their labour force can't compete - is still valid. Let's see what happens.

Iif unemployment stays static in Western Europe as companies choose to hire Eastern Europeans in the recovery attitudes will change. It is not guaranteed that we will have the Euro in 2-3 years, it will be finished sometime in our lifetimes. If, well into a boom in Ireland and the UK unemployment stays static and the statistics show positive net immigration they they are turking our jobs ( or rather; jobs that would have gone to the unemployed in a previous recovery).


The best the pro-screw-the-working-classes-with-immigrants lobby can hope for is to keep throwing ad hominens about xenophobia and racism around - even as we are dealing with white christian europeans. Will that work if unemployment stays sticky in a recession?


No it wont. The reason why Germany got an exemption is because it's politcians and it's unions demanded it. Nobody shouted racism. They are in not in any better position next year. It seems that they cant change the terms of the agreement? So lets abandon the agreement. Who even got to vote on it in Europe? Us, twice. Wrong first time. And yes, I know which agreement I am talking about.

The labour party in the UK has started - now it is in opposition and wanting to represent the actual working classes rather than rich central London - to make noises about immigration. One of the Milibands is suggesting that Labour become an anti-immigrant party. The Tories ( for different, and possibly for reasons which might be more legitimately have some whiff of "racism" ) have massively curtailed ex-EU immigration already.

The days of the absolute agreement amongst the ruling classes that immigration is a economic good and a moral right are over, I suspect the aging politically correct "leadership" on the internet to catch up some time soon.

If the average age of an immigrant is 25 and the average age of an Irish person in the labour force is 45, then the maths isn't too hard to work out. By the time they're 45 they'll be paying the taxes to allow your parents to rest on a Donegal beach.

ignoring the fact that the 45 year old age for the Irish worker is almost certainly wrong. And ignoring America.

What happens when the immigrants get to 65? Are they having any more children than the rest of us? No. That mean more immigration to cover their pensions when they get to 65, so more immigrants needed; and on, and on.

Simple solution to this: the pension scheme is a pyramid scheme which depends on generations having more children than the previous generations, or allowing in more immigrants . I expect to work until I am 75 unless I get very lucky. That solves the pyramid problem, and it is in fact how Western Governments will solve, and - in the case of the UK and others - are solving the problem. The change will be incremental but in general a decade will be added over the next 40-50 years to the retirement age.


If, for instance, in the future 40% of the population is over 65 - a fairly extreme supposition which probably does not apply to Ireland - then only about 20% will be over 75 assuming life expectancy is 85. That 20% will is about equal to the number over 65 now. So people work to 75.

And If immigrants are "solving" the problem by having more children ( as, supposedly, in America) then that pyramid problem is fobbed off until the next generation, as birth rates converge. Somebody is going to pay for the immigrant baby boom (if the immigrants are having one) in the next generation. That, clearly, is not a long term solution.

The real solution to the pension crisis is to work longer. I have already factored that in, immigrants or no.

You don't just "get an exemption" from part of the Treaties as to "achieve an exemption" would involve re-writing the Treaties. That requires the consent of every member state.

Well Germany and France and others clearly did. Already.

Trust me Mate. If Spanish, French, Italian or other unemployment fails to fall in a recovery, - the treaty will either be renegotiated or dropped. The alternative is to allow the 40% of Spanish unemployed between 18 & 24 ( now) to be the 40% of unemployed between 18 & 30 in 6 years. And if you have never worked by the age of 30 you never will.

Needless to say, following such a blatant breech of an international treaty, no other state would trust such a state to apply any other international treaty that is has signed or would sign.

Rubbish.

There is a similar legal prohibition on deficits - for which countries can get fined if they exceed 3%. All are in breach, none are being fined. Countries are not sucicidal. The Spanish often over-fish. France and Germany ignore competition rules all the time and favour their own companies for government work, the accounts of the European commission cannot be investigated. All of this is illegal.

If immigration is not the magic brilliant pill as proposed by the unholy alliance of the cultural left and the libertarian far right it will be curtailed. I doubt the Euro will survive, leaving the EU as a trading block with freedom of movement in the West, and curtailed labour and capital movements elsewhere. Thats because when ideological systems fail they are replaced.

You are welcome to provide links to court rulings on any or all of the above "illegal" matters. I suggest you start with the rulings of the ECJ and follow up with the Court of Auditors.

LOL.

My point was clear: there were no rulings by the ECJ. The governments ignored the directives and laws anyway. The ECJ never got invoked. The maastrict treaty imposes, and I quote from the BBC

The 1992 Maastricht Treaty imposed common rules: low budget deficits, national debts below 60% of GDP, no bailouts and no central bank intervention in the market for government debt.

Apparently the treaty has ceased to have any legal force whatsoever. It may as well have been written in sand. Rightly so. Circumstances change, there is a credit crucnch, and the thing is ignored. Thats because when ideological systems fail they are replaced.

it is possible there is something special about legal agreements on labour movement which are far more special than the entire ( and now utterly defunct) Maastricht treaty, but I really really doubt it.

Pittens wrote: »

Would people coming here necessarily have any means?

They'd have to satisfy the Habitual Residence Conditions to apply, which rules out just arriving and claiming.