Time for a zero refugee policy? - *Read OP for mod warnings and threadbans - updated 5/1/24*

Whats with the getto speak.

No. Id argue through Brexit they did try to be the best boys in the class. FG pushed the Single Market as if it was sacred entity whose enforcement (checks) could not be changed to suit our complex border situation. Ireland's hard line on the Single Market has led to a radicalisation of the Tories preventing Britain from returning, and for what purpose? Was the Single Market really under threat and if so why are we making concessions allowing a light touch approach to checks now?

Trouble is half the lads who show up here that are called refugees are really economic migrants.

How many of them are asylum seekers?

No comparison whatsoever.

Fail.

40% of the refugees arriving have no passport and so the simplistic "send them back" doesn't apply,as we don't know where to send them back to and good luck trying to get Italy or Greece to take em back because that was the safe country they came from. .Theres a simple answer to this but also a practically insurmountable problem.Answer: all Airlines/Shipping lines bringing customers into Ireland must provide a photocopy of the Passport that allowed the customer to travel with their company.Problem,airlines or Shipping lines wont play ball and will threaten to stop flying into Ireland if we try to introduce this.I think we will eventually see a version of this but expect massive resistance initially.

"This country survived handsomely with over 2 million extra inhabitants, long before the invention of modern democracy and its' paraphernalia."

Are you referring to early 19th century, pre famine?? If so, that's bizarre - you had many people living in relative squalor then, in cabins and mud botháns or tramping the country sleeping in sheds and ditches. You can't be serious?

Your average international asylum seeker arriving here now expects a higher standard...........

And therein lies a problem, we have a good population of 20/30 something year olds being screwed on rent and priced out of housing purchase, turned back to live at home, whilst we are lectured on meeting our legal obligations to house anyone who rocks up in Dublin airport. Something is wrong in the kingdom.

That very question was put to some NGO on Drivetime today, she waffled her way out of it saying she wasn't there to talk about that issue and of course O Hara didn't push it any further with her.

I did have a wry smile when I saw O'Gs tweet to would be asylum seekers, not verbatim but along the lines of "We have no accommodation, so if you are currently in a place of safety please stay there"

Now would someone please tell me how someone other than an economic migrant would leave a "place of safety" to come to Ireland under International Protection. Protection from what I wonder?

Regarding our International obligations, I am not in the loop about the legalities of the 1951 declaration, but we as a country are contributing a huge whack of cash under the International Aid Program to many of the countries from which we are taking in asylum seekers. What is going on, is International Aid money from all over the globe not helping these countries sort themselves out or what? Maybe another flippin scandal waiting to break.

So there we are on a Friday Night. Enjoy the weekend.

Currently at pretty much full employment while still retaining access to EU migrant workers

This is a fine example of the kind of bullsh1t that the current circumstances can lead to.

Our international obligations and the additional pressure of the Ukrainian invasion are replicated all over the Western World and are not the fault of the current Government parties. In other words, if a majority Sinn Féin government was elected tomorrow, nothing would change around this.

However.

The current circumstances are absolutely not sustainable. They just aren't. Whether that be the US southern border, or the Greek Islands or the English Channel or the Straits of Gibraltar or wherever.

Lets face it, by comparison, we have it pretty lightly in Ireland.

But no, the current model of industrial scale wholesale criminal human trafficking cannot continue. It can't.

There is a tinder box of resentment building up in so many Countries that it may well kick off an international protest against mass migration the likes as hasn't been seen for a hundred years.

Yes, some it is plain old fascist xenophobia, but we'd be fools to think a huge chunk of it isn't just ordinary working people seeing their earning power disappear and their kids not being able to buy houses and not being able to get Doctor's appointments and they will turn nasty.

I wish I could suggest what is to be done about documentless migration and international protection and criminal trafficking and exploitation, but I do know it won't be solved nationally. It has to be as a new charter of the UN, with local support on the ground in the main sources of this migration.

The old saying goes, cook a fish for someone and feed them for a day, teach them how to fish and feed them for life. We've got to help people that need it, in their own Countries and make disruptive economic migration unattractive or the societal consequences in both origin and destination places will be profound.