Immigration and Ireland - MEGATHREAD *Mod Note Added 02/09/25*

This is as pure Irish a view as I can think of. Who'd have thought we were on the same side!

I think there will be some immigrants that put religion ahead of secularity though. And religious councils and courts will operate in the shadows while they assure us of commitment to western values.

I wonder how long it takes for the 9073 to head back home?

The issue with Muslim immigrant ms is their spectacular birth rate compared to ours. We are at our weakest and they are at their strongest. The present day isn't the problem, the future is.

Look at Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine are resisting lowering the conscription age compared to Russia, it's not just about popularity or willingness to fight. It's about winning the population pyramid. Ukraine and Russia have had similar population collapses in their history of wars but Ukraine will be trying to win the future by beating Russia on future birthrate numbers.

We are not winning our future. I totally understand why someone would look around them today and say 'Calm down you're overreacting' but it's the birthrate that tells all.

My grandmother died up north last year. 80% of the names of people dying on her ward were recognizably Protestant. We know that story because they were a majority once and now there are loads more Irish in society because we outbred them. By contrast when my child was premature in Rotunda all I saw everyday that I went in was 40-50% Muslim birthing mother's.

The birthrate is everything. It's what keeps Putin and Zelensky up at night. It's what keeps the DUP up at night. It should be what keeps us up at night.

Haha what, are you serious? You don’t think it’s possible to be critical of something without legislating against it?

Well, I was serious, because I thought you were actually serious about suggesting we shouldn’t be permissive of it. I didn’t figure you wanted to go as far as the French Government have done, but I was assuming there might be more to your idea than just tutting in their general direction. Turns out you just want to give out about it, which is fine.

I’m sure when the marriage bar was lifted here there were many women that were reluctant to enter the workforce due to social conditioning and people like yourself that tried to frame their relative lack of equality as something acceptable

The marriage bar, as the name suggests, only applied to women in certain occupations upon marriage. It was intended to discourage women from maintaining employment once they were married. Sort of like the way you would wish to discourage women from wearing the niqab, but as you pointed out you wouldn’t want to legislate for a ban, so it’s not the same thing at all really.

It hasn’t exactly been a roaring success in France in terms of its purported aim of gender equality, whereas treating women as equals means recognising that they have the same agency already to choose whether or not they wish to wear the niqab, rather than suggesting they shouldn’t be permitted to wear it because it’s their husbands are telling them to wear it. If that is the argument, then it surely makes more sense to be critical of men who try to force women to do what they want, and that’s already legislated for in Irish law as recently as 2018 when coercive control was made a criminal offence under the Domestic Violence Act -

https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2018/act/6/section/39/enacted/en/html

Goes a hell of a lot further than your idea of tutting at women who don’t care a whole pile for your opinions of what they choose to wear, and is far more effective than the French law which is intended to target women who choose to wear the niqab -

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/12/ban-headscarves-france-secularism-exclusion-intolerance

It’s not a strawman at all, I’m just trying to figure out what exactly do you mean by suggesting we shouldn’t be permissive of something which you disapprove of. It genuinely does seem to amount to just giving out about it which, like I said, is fine.

To give you a direct answer to your question - No, I don’t see it the same way you do, it has as much meaning to me as yoga pants, because for one thing I’m not Muslim, and second I’m not interested in using what women who are Muslim choose to wear, as a proxy for criticism of Islam. I can think of plenty of things to criticise about Islam before I’d be remotely interested in how Muslims dress themselves or appear in public.

The niqab is akin to yoga pants…right…

Alright Jack is alright with women being compelled to cover themselves in public to protect their modesty. It’s a totally outdated and misogynistic practice and your attempt to frame as being symbolic of their right to choose is beyond mystifying.

I note you haven’t at all engaged with what the consequences are for these women that push back and decide they don’t want to wear it. It’s most certainly not viewed as some casual personal choice within the Muslim community, like you’re trying to suggest.

You said you viewed the niqab in the same way you view yoga pants

This isn’t going anywhere, let’s leave it there

If you cant see how demographics are currently changing and extrapolate how they will continue to change in the future then you cannot see or choose not to see.

Athiests are obviously just harder to spot…

Walking around my local park or the square is unrecognisable to even 10 years ago.

So yes in a century i would say its almost guaranteed that the same area will resemble Bradford/Birmingham as currently its not far off it.

Athiests are obviously just harder to spot…

Obviously 😂

Walking around my local park or the square is unrecognisable to even 10 years ago. 

So yes in a century i would say its almost guaranteed that the same area will resemble Bradford/Birmingham as currently its not far off it.

You’re basically just cherrypicking criteria which suits your narrative, and claiming on that basis that your predictions are almost guaranteed, as though current demographic trends will remain constant in the intervening 100 years. At that scale it’s not even worth entertaining tbh, because neither Tallaght, Bradford or Birmingham are likely to remain as they are in 100 years either, certainly not considering the amount of changes there have been in just 10 years as you’ve pointed out already. There will obviously need to be greater investment in infrastructure, but I’m guessing you haven’t factored that into your predictions either. It just sounds like you’re more interested in people-spotting.

My point is crystal. Its about demographic change. So yes that includes ethnicity.

Your point is much less clear. I think it amounts to something something i dont see colour something something.

Your point is less about demographic change and more about your observation that there are more black people or brown people or whatever, like that isn’t literally stating the obvious, and you extrapolate from that, that there are going to be more black people or brown people in Ireland in 100 years time than there are now. Again, one doesn’t need any particular insight to be able to make that determination, it’s obvious, which is why I figured I must be missing something, as your point couldn’t simply be as obvious as that surely? It turns out that’s exactly all it was. There was no extrapolation of the implications of your observation, no explanation of any potential outcomes you might have in mind, nothing, just - there will be more black or brown people in Ireland in 100 years time. So what?

If they’re anything like Shazia Mirza I figure the more the merrier, could do with people who don’t take themselves so seriously that they are given to imagining they are somehow under existential threat of extinction due to ‘demographic change’ over the course of ten generations 😒