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Immigration and Rural Ireland

theguzman

We have seen a huge amount of immigration in recent years however it is primarily Urban centric with the vast majority of new immigrants basing in Dublin.

This type of immigration has placed a huge burden on our urban areas especially the Capital.

I would propose that as a term and condition of immigration visas that you should have to settle in a small town and village, even if for a period of say 3-5 years similar to the Australian style fruit picking clause in the Working Holiday Visa.

Where I am located we had 4,500 people pre famine and upto 2,000 prior to the 1950's and today around 950 people primarily in one off rural houses with the village centre effectively dead with a few elderly people in council houses, it is a similar tale throughout rural Ireland. Immigration brings its own challenges and some welcome it and some oppose it, welfare tourists who have no intention of working should be deported in my opinion and the lenght of time for Citizenship should be increased and make it revokeable for serious crimes committed. We should be welcoming in hand working immigrants and ensuring that those who abuse or use the country are quickly removed. A commonsense approach is required and geographic spread and increasing the populations of rural communities from this could benefit hugely.

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[Deleted User]

I come from rural Ireland.

One night I was getting a taxi home and an immigrant from Bangladesh was driving the taxi, as I was giving him directions to my home off a boreen, off a boreen, off a boreen off a main road he was naming all the townlands in the area trying to figure which I was going to.

I thought to myself, hasn't our country changed, here is this Bangladeshi rhyming off the names (all Irish) of these townlands like he has been doing it for years.

So I asked him how does a Bangladeshi man end up in rural Mayo.

So he told me he first came to Dublin working in catering, then got an offer and moved to Westport and then the crash happened and he ended up driving a taxi in Castlebar.

Anyway that's just a story
To your point OP, immigrants don't come to rural Ireland because there are no jobs there.

The Celtic tiger did bring some because the building boom was spread across the country, as in daft housing estates going up in tiny villages etc.
But the post recession boom has been largely city based.
So there are very few jobs in rural Ireland.
And believe it or not most immigrants come to work and make money.

Hermy

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

So there are very few jobs in rural Ireland.

Not just jobs - education, broadband, public transport, social outlets are all in short supply in rural Ireland.

Brussels Sprout

I'm certainly not adverse to the idea of trying to inject some much needed young blood into rural Ireland by way of immigration. A few things to think about though:

Would the locals actually be on board? There are several cases of countries in Eastern Europe that really need immigrants but people (stoked by their politicians) do not want to see immigrants in their country.
For it to work any visas would need to be tied to jobs in rural areas. That begs the question - what would they do? Are there copious amounts of unfilled positions in year-round jobs? There are only so many slaughter houses, supermarkets, creameries, and other factories. FDI is disproportionately focused on the urban centres.
What type of immigrants do people want? Usually people will say those with a lot of skills. The thing is the jobs that those workers do tend to be around cities. Will people be happy to officially lower the bar for non-EU immigrants in order to attract people to lower paid work that is not seasonal in rural areas?
What sort of annual quotas should we then have?
How do we ensure an even spread around the country and especially how do we reduce the chance of ghetto-isation from occurring (admittedly this is more likely in an urban setting e.g. the North African banlieues in Paris and Marseille)

weisses

theguzman wrote: »

We have seen a huge amount of immigration in recent years however it is primarily Urban centric with the vast majority of new immigrants basing in Dublin.

This type of immigration has placed a huge burden on our urban areas especially the Capital.

I would propose that as a term and condition of immigration visas that you should have to settle in a small town and village, even if for a period of say 3-5 years similar to the Australian style fruit picking clause in the Working Holiday Visa.

Where I am located we had 4,500 people pre famine and upto 2,000 prior to the 1950's and today around 950 people primarily in one off rural houses with the village centre effectively dead with a few elderly people in council houses, it is a similar tale throughout rural Ireland. Immigration brings its own challenges and some welcome it and some oppose it, welfare tourists who have no intention of working should be deported in my opinion and the lenght of time for Citizenship should be increased and make it revokeable for serious crimes committed. We should be welcoming in hand working immigrants and ensuring that those who abuse or use the country are quickly removed. A commonsense approach is required and geographic spread and increasing the populations of rural communities from this could benefit hugely.

I think you have your approach backwards ... You need to have a lot in place before you can ask or incentivize people to move out of the cities

Arthur Daley

So let's get this straight. Areas with no jobs should get migrants in to provide even more competition for what little there is. Presumably these migrants will be outside the EU, a market that already has an excess of labour heading into a prolonged period of double digit unemployment.

Just because.

Do you intend putting this propsal to the Irish people (in particular the people impacted) any time soon?

[Deleted User]

There's probably not all that much I agree with Peadar Toibin on but he's been absolutely right on the East/West divide in Ireland being just as big an issue as the North/South one, even though it receives very little attention. If you are an educated or skilled immigrant, why would rural Ireland appeal to you, since you could work all over the world? If you are under-educated or unskilled immigrant, what would you do in rural Ireland?

Tbf, no one knows how to stop rural decline. It's being going on all across Europe since the industrial revolution. Personally I think working from home might help some rural parts of Ireland revive but to do that you need to have a good job already that allows you work from home, an employer who will facilitate you and the infrastructure to be able to actually get work done.

We should be focusing FDI on Athlone and Sligo imo. I can see the benefit to North Munster that focussing FDI on Shannon and Limerick has had. Likewise Cork city is the driver for South Munster. If we turned both Athlone and Sligo into cities of 100,000 people (essentially an urban solution to a rural problem) we might achieve the necessary momentum to save the rural midlands and the Northwest. It will never happen because the local rivals of Athlone and Sligo would cry about it being unfair. They'd rather all die slowly together than see a rival town succeed, ime.

rossie1977

theguzman wrote: »

We have seen a huge amount of immigration in recent years however it is primarily Urban centric with the vast majority of new immigrants basing in Dublin.

Ireland has welcomed approximately 50-70k immigrants into the country each year past decade. About 1/3 of those are Irish people returning to country. On flipside country loses roughly 50k through emigration each year. In fact we had negative net migration from 2009-15.

This type of immigration has placed a huge burden on our urban areas especially the Capital.

The numbers I highlighted are small and shouldn't be a burden on a city with approximately 1.4 million no.

If you take the 70k annually on its own from immigration there is much more serious underlying issues if those kind of numbers are effecting a city of Dublin's size.

I would propose that as a term and condition of immigration visas that you should have to settle in a small town and village, even if for a period of say 3-5 years similar to the Australian style fruit picking clause in the Working Holiday Visa.

Once you start enforcing stuff like this it gets messy and impossible to control. How would you be able to keep tabs on everyone?

Anyway why do you assume there are no immigrants in rural areas. Roscommon Town had 10% of it population being immigrants in 2003 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/brazilians-adapt-to-life-in-roscommon-1.351543

Ballyhaunis more than 1/3 https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-20369099.html

Imagine 1/3 of Dublin were non Irish born...

Where I am located we had 4,500 people pre famine and upto 2,000 prior to the 1950's and today around 950 people primarily in one off rural houses with the village centre effectively dead with a few elderly people in council houses, it is a similar tale throughout rural Ireland. Immigration brings its own challenges and some welcome it and some oppose it, welfare tourists who have no intention of working should be deported in my opinion and the lenght of time for Citizenship should be increased and make it revokeable for serious crimes committed. We should be welcoming in hand working immigrants and ensuring that those who abuse or use the country are quickly removed. A commonsense approach is required and geographic spread and increasing the populations of rural communities from this could benefit hugely.

Firstly we need FF and FG to invest in rural Ireland. Successive governments have massively cut back public services in rural Ireland.

In Roscommon we have seen post offices, fire stations, police stations closed. There has been massive cut backs in mental health services and Roscommon hospital itself downgraded to nothing more than a cuts and bruises ward. Bus Éireann has cut numerous routes too.

So we need to get our own house in order before thinking people will just flock to rural Ireland.

blanch152

Deleted User wrote: »

There's probably not all that much I agree with Peadar Toibin on but he's been absolutely right on the East/West divide in Ireland being just as big an issue as the North/South one, even though it receives very little attention. If you are an educated or skilled immigrant, why would rural Ireland appeal to you, since you could work all over the world? If you are under-educated or unskilled immigrant, what would you do in rural Ireland?

Tbf, no one knows how to stop rural decline. It's being going on all across Europe since the industrial revolution. Personally I think working from home might help some rural parts of Ireland revive but to do that you need to have a good job already that allows you work from home, an employer who will facilitate you and the infrastructure to be able to actually get work done.

We should be focusing FDI on Athlone and Sligo imo. I can see the benefit to North Munster that focussing FDI on Shannon and Limerick has had. Likewise Cork city is the driver for South Munster. If we turned both Athlone and Sligo into cities of 100,000 people (essentially an urban solution to a rural problem) we might achieve the necessary momentum to save the rural midlands and the Northwest. It will never happen because the local rivals of Athlone and Sligo would cry about it being unfair. They'd rather all die slowly together than see a rival town succeed, ime.

To be fair, the NDP does begin to address this.

However, it is more focussed on Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Galway than the towns you mention. In their defence, the need to create counterbalances to Dublin is probably greater than the need to develop Athlone and Sligo.

Charles Babbage

One of the reasons that EU immigration is not a problem in Ireland is exactly because people have spread throughout the country and not clustered in one place. Non Eu immigrants have failed to spread out in the same way.

Eric Cartman

Charles Babbage wrote: »

One of the reasons that EU immigration is not a problem in Ireland is exactly because people have spread throughout the country and not clustered in one place. Non Eu immigrants have failed to spread out in the same way.

I remember getting a taxi driven by a guy from rural china in rural cork. Asked him how a lad from china picks rural cork and he explained that he just didn't like cities, came to Ireland for the whole postcard villages vibe.

I don't think it matters urban or rural, concentrations can obviously make cultural differences, and particularly some of the issues with some cultures a lot more visible but I don't think banishing immigrants to rural towns with no jobs is necessarily the way to go. However the infrastructure to make rural Ireland more attractive for anyone should be built.

The way to improve our non EU immigration experience is to go to a points based model which allows in skilled people who are ready to hit the ground running being net contributors to the economy immediately. We also need to start ranking by cultural compatibility / chances of integration.

We don't need any more taxi drivers, deli workers, food delivery drivers, bar staff etc... we also don't need whole extended families coming over where the husband is earning a low wage and theres 10 other people claiming every benefit in the list to stay here / cultures that forbid or frown upon women working etc..

Jim2007

Eric Cartman wrote: »

The way to improve our non EU immigration experience is to go to a points based model which allows in skilled people who are ready to hit the ground running being net contributors to the economy immediately.

That is what the blue card is for.

Eric Cartman

Jim2007 wrote: »

That is what the blue card is for.

wasn't aware of that, thats brilliant. We should be closing EU borders to everyone who doesn't qualify for a blue card.

Tell me how

Eric Cartman wrote: »

I remember getting a taxi driven by a guy from rural china in rural cork. Asked him how a lad from china picks rural cork and he explained that he just didn't like cities, came to Ireland for the whole postcard villages vibe.

I don't think it matters urban or rural, concentrations can obviously make cultural differences, and particularly some of the issues with some cultures a lot more visible but I don't think banishing immigrants to rural towns with no jobs is necessarily the way to go. However the infrastructure to make rural Ireland more attractive for anyone should be built.

The way to improve our non EU immigration experience is to go to a points based model which allows in skilled people who are ready to hit the ground running being net contributors to the economy immediately. We also need to start ranking by cultural compatibility / chances of integration.

We don't need any more taxi drivers, deli workers, food delivery drivers, bar staff etc... we also don't need whole extended families coming over where the husband is earning a low wage and theres 10 other people claiming every benefit in the list to stay here / cultures that forbid or frown upon women working etc..

In 2009, I got a taxi from the centre of a large regional town. The taxi driver was a born and bred Irish man. Heading towards home, a taxi approached the road we were on and stopped at a T-junction. The driver of the car I was in looked in to the taxi as we passed it and saw what looked like an immigrant driving it. 'Get back you fcuking ni**er' he said and laughed.

He turned to me and said 'These fcukers are ruining the trade'. I asked him what he meant, and he said that they were making females uncomfortable because of their accents. I said I reckoned having a driver use the N word probably made people uncomfortable as well. Neither of us said another word but I still remember the incident and how I should have reported him, but didn't.

There's elements of the culture in Ireland which definitely don't do the country or the people in it any good. A lot of coming from people who are pointing the fingers at others while insulting and abusing them. Let's do something about these people.

46 Long

Tell me how wrote: »

In 2009, I got a taxi from the centre of a large regional town. The taxi driver was a born and bred Irish man. Heading towards home, a taxi approached the road we were on and stopped at a T-junction. The driver of the car I was in looked in to the taxi as we passed it and saw what looked like an immigrant driving it. 'Get back you fcuking ni**er' he said and laughed.

He turned to me and said 'These fcukers are ruining the trade'. I asked him what he meant, and he said that they were making females uncomfortable because of their accents. I said I reckoned having a driver use the N word probably made people uncomfortable as well. Neither of us said another word but I still remember the incident and how I should have reported him, but didn't.

There's elements of the culture in Ireland which definitely don't do the country or the people in it any good. A lot of coming from people who are pointing the fingers at others while insulting and abusing them. Let's do something about these people.

Amazing how you managed to spin a decade old anecdotal experience as evidence of a supposedly problematic culture and citizens that we need to 'do something about'.

I would submit that Ireland is one the the least racist countries in the world and has absolutely no colonial legacy or history of oppression towards non-nationals. If recent arrivals think otherwise they are more than welcome to avail themselves of any one of the perfectly good airports we have in this country.

Das Reich

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

Would the locals actually be on board? There are several cases of countries in Eastern Europe that really need immigrants but people (stoked by their politicians) do not want to see immigrants in their country.

Can you name one? Just one please.

Tell me how

46 Long wrote: »

Amazing how you managed to spin a decade old anecdotal experience as evidence of a supposedly problematic culture and citizens that we need to 'do something about'.

I would submit that Ireland is one the the least racist countries in the world and has absolutely no colonial legacy or history of oppression towards non-nationals. If recent arrivals think otherwise they are more than welcome to avail themselves of any one of the perfectly good airports we have in this country.

You obviously missed the other taxi stories in the thread which is why I posted my story.

Ireland is not an inherently racist country, but there are racists in Ireland, and there should never be any effort made, such as you have done, to excuse such behaviour.

looksee

Maybe the OP could publish some actual statistics instead of waving generalities. It took me a couple of minutes to find figures about immigration generally and direct provision specifically (which is what I presume the OP means by immigration) and it did not support their very simplistic version of the situation. (Its the OP's responsibility to find and publish statistics to prove their case, not mine to refute waffle. I am not about to donate a load of research to a non-researched thread).

Opinion about the immigration generally is fine, discussion of how to integrate people is good, but basing it on gut feeling is pointless.

Eric Cartman

Tell me how wrote: »

You obviously missed the other taxi stories in the thread which is why I posted my story.

Ireland is not an inherently racist country, but there are racists in Ireland, and there should never be any effort made, such as you have done, to excuse such behaviour.

My taxi story was to highlight that immigrants too are allowed preferences of whether to live in urban or rural environments and how we should concentrate on the quality of immigrant we allow in and then it wont matter where they live.

Youre story was a glib remark that basically devolves to ‘irish people are racist’ as if that automatically shuts down or wins any point favouring immigration control..

TobyHolmes

correct horse battery staple wrote: »

The first post could be summarised as "to hell or to connaught".

Of all the political problems this country has immigration is not even in top 10 I say despite some posters wanting nothing more than use dog whistles and politics of blaming "them people over there" which has taken over US and UK politics

yes exactly and I dont think threads like this should be allowed to be opened on boards.ie when someone clearly has their own hate filled agenda. how sad that people just cant accept and support each other. why do we still have to fight for everyone to just love each other instead of judging, judging, judging. arent you tired people of judging?

Brussels Sprout

Das Reich wrote: »

Can you name one? Just one please.

Sure. Hungary is the most obvious example. They are facing a demographic crisis due to emigration and low birth rates. The Fidez government has been trying, unsuccessfully, to stem this purely by increasing fertility rates by offering government incentives for larger families. At the same time their leader, Viktor Orban, is on record as saying:

“For us migration is not a solution but a problem ... not medicine but a poison, we don’t need it and won’t swallow it,”

Brussels Sprout

46 Long wrote: »

I would submit that Ireland is one the the least racist countries in the world and has absolutely no colonial legacy or history of oppression towards non-nationals. If recent arrivals think otherwise they are more than welcome to avail themselves of any one of the perfectly good airports we have in this country.

Let me get this straight. You personally don't think there is any racism in this country while at the same time refusing to entertain the possibility that there might be from the very people who are most likely to actually experience it.

That's quite the "Heads I win, tails you lose" scenario that you have constructed there.

46 Long

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

Let me get this straight. You personally don't think there is any racism in this country while at the same time refusing to entertain the possibility that there might be from the very people who are most likely to actually experience it.

That's quite the "Heads I win, tails you lose" scenario that you have constructed there.

Quite the strawman you have constructed there.

Care to point out where I supposedly said 'I don't think there is any racism in this country' ?

rock22

46 Long wrote: »

Quite the strawman you have constructed there.

Care to point out where I supposedly said 'I don't think there is any racism in this country' ?

You said ( and i quote)
"I would submit that Ireland is one the the least racist countries in the world and has absolutely no colonial legacy or history of oppression towards non-nationals. If recent arrivals think otherwise they are more than welcome to avail themselves of any one of the perfectly good airports we have in this country."

So those who experience racism should leave ireland, presumably until there is only true natives left?

This is one of the most subtle forms of racism there is, " we don't want you here and if you call us racist then we will send you back"

bertiebomber

No one will defend us in this hate speech argument. We are all uncomfortable now, both black & white and the racism goes both ways. They dis like us too but they want our western, first world life, technology, money, comfort & food etc. We should help but not at the loss of our free speech and their racist bullying of us at every turn. We need the society to be fair as we have no history of abuse or colonies we are not guilty of the crimes of the UK, we too were abused by Britain.

Eric Cartman

rock22 wrote: »

You said ( and i quote)
"I would submit that Ireland is one the the least racist countries in the world and has absolutely no colonial legacy or history of oppression towards non-nationals. If recent arrivals think otherwise they are more than welcome to avail themselves of any one of the perfectly good airports we have in this country."

So those who experience racism should leave ireland, presumably until there is only true natives left?

This is one of the most subtle forms of racism there is, " we don't want you here and if you call us racist then we will send you back"

Youll never have a country on this planet without some racism, there'll always be some yob down the pub giving out about foreigners and some immigrant on twitter giving out about natives , but in terms of systematic racism in government, access to housing/ welfare, getting a driving license, policing , access to work etc... Ireland ranks very very low on that front.

On the ‘go back home then’ front I think theres a massive double standard, weve all heard about brits moving to spain and giving out about the people, the language etc.. and the response is overwhelmingly ‘well then leave pal’ , migrants come here and you have mouthpieces like ebun joseph or emma dabiri call us all racists and complain about natives but ‘well then go home pal’ is suddenly a problem

Brussels Sprout

Eric Cartman wrote: »

Youll never have a country on this planet without some racism

Agreed

Eric Cartman wrote: »

but in terms of systematic racism in government, access to housing/ welfare, getting a driving license, policing , access to work etc... Ireland ranks very very low on that front.

Globally we certainly do but in fairness that's not a very high bar since immigrants are treated appallingly in many countries. I'd be interested to see how we compare to our peers who we are usually competing with with for the top spots in the various development lists, e.g. New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Australia and the Scandinavian countries.

Access to work is one I suspect that we will hear more and more about as the children of the people who emigrated here in the past 20 years begin to enter the workforce over the next decade.

Eric Cartman wrote: »

On the ‘go back home then’ front I think theres a massive double standard, weve all heard about brits moving to spain and giving out about the people, the language etc.. and the response is overwhelmingly ‘well then leave pal’ , migrants come here and you have mouthpieces like ebun joseph or emma dabiri call us all racists and complain about natives but ‘well then go home pal’ is suddenly a problem

The Brits who head over to the south of Spain are renowned for using their money to carve out their own culturally isolated enclaves. They're often at ages where they aren't sending their children to the schools or trying to get jobs in Spanish companies. They're basically using the country purely for its climate, scenery and lower cost base. They don't see the need to attempt to integrate since they're often retired and don't see any reason to do so.

In contrast people facing problems here tend to be because they are trying to integrate. They might be having issues with schools or jobs or housing.

I think they are entirely different scenarios.

Also for the record I'm not sure how representative of these communities Ebun Joseph is. She seems like a bit of a clown. If I recall correctly she accused a restaurant of racism after she was mistakenly served Ribena instead of red wine. I believe that says more about her then the community that she comes from. It'd be like saying that Dublin women are prone to bitter feuds because Twink keeps ending up in them.