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

^^ Business operates to make profits. Governments make the rules. It’s annoying to see stuff like this because when the state spends from the exchequer ie. the public purse, they are spending taxpayers' money. All the billions. All the waste. All the funds to foreign nations and their citizens. It’s all taxpayers’ money. We are very compliant people, those of us who get up early.

The promotional image is about Irish culture odd a black woman who was not born here is a symbol for that .

I think the issue of asylum should be treated separately from the issue of Ukrainian war refugees. The vast majority of asylum seekers are not fleeing war.

Asylum is a broken system throughout the West. I think the drafters of the 1951 Refugee Convention did not have in mind many of the justifications for claiming asylum that are going on now. I think what they had in mind was the Holocaust.

Denmark is on the right track in dealing with this. Asylum cannot be for wealth distribution to the Global South through remittances, which seems to be how some on the Left see it. Ireland was never a colonial power. One of the reasons the Global South has resisted changes the the convention is the remittances. But they can also be a point of leverage for the West over the Global South on issues like readmission.

I think that while we need to separate them out, we also need to rebalance the ratio between upskilling and work permits for addressing labour shortages. I think increasing the population on its own creates labour shortages, because they need places to live, which necessitates more builders, and necessitates more teachers for their children etc. I have been listening since the early 2000s, during the FF-PD government, to the argument that we needed migrant labour to address labour shortages. If the labour shortages are still there, its clearly not working.

I think tightening family reunification rules, as is proposed, might help reduce the pressures on schools and hospital beds, as least temporarily. Families in the Global South, are often very large, especially in Muslim countries. Birth control, even where not banned, is often frowned upon in the Global South. Some of this is influenced by Evangelical and Catholic missionaries.

I agree but that rebalance will take time and will never remove the need for some level of work visa based migration

Yes, I think one of the problems is that we regard any low-wage employer not being able to find someone to work for peanuts as a "labour shortage".

Anyone can run a business if labour can be found for next-to-nothing, but it is rightfully part of the challenge of running a business that one can afford to employ people at a decent wage. And in a developed economy that cost is (again rightly so), quite high.

If one can't afford to employ people on a decent wage, that is not a "labour shortage" but rather that your business idea not sufficiently thought through or your business is inefficient. That is how it should be regarded, and the State should not be subsidising badly thought out businesses through undermining workers that are already here.

Well the numbers who are here now is about 80,000 compared to 120,000 which is the number that have been here.

Given developments in Venezuela this morning, how long will it be before we hear calls from the usual quarters to accept unlimited refugees from the country? PBP et all probably up out of bed by now working on a statement.

Tolü Mckay is a contestant on Dancing with the Stars. After her dance this evening, she gave a shout out to her mother who was in the audience - she had flown in from Nigeria to be there. It seems Nigeria is safe country for her mother to be in now she’s been given asylum 🙄

Why this approach at refusing aid to countries that refuse to take back failed asylum seekers has not been implemented before is mystifying.

https://www.msn.com/en-ie/money/other/belgium-urges-eu-to-use-aid-as-bargaining-chip-to-increase-migrant-returns/ar-AA1TPuBl?cvid=6960485a4a754c5692464d1f6cab4dce&ocid=hpmsn

I see Roderick n the green party are packing in Twitter.

The refugee industry thanks him for his fantastic work on Twitter a few years ago, promising asylum seekers keys to their own gaff after 4 months here. He tweeted n by God they responded.

I watched ‘Is Ireland Full?’ this week, a Virgin Media documentary about immigration (available online). I was amazed to see that it was first broadcast eighteen months ago, because even today it remains controversial. It gives a very fair hearing to owners of hospitality businesses, who complain about the detrimental effects of filling tourist accommodation with refugees, and John McGuirk gives an exceptionally assured performance arguing that it is rational, not racist, to support controls on immigration.

In hindsight, the pro-migration lobby are even more deranged. Their only argument is that ‘our international obligations’ demand it. That’s all they’ve got, and it looks so feeble now that countries around Europe have started to unilaterally ignore these obligations.

Nick Henderson, CEO of the Irish Refugee Council, says, ‘I can assure you that within forty-eight hours of somebody arriving in Ireland, the authorities would know more about that person than they would ever know about you or I’. He then goes on to detail how they would be interviewed and have their name, age, address and family details recorded - taking completely for granted that they would tell the truth! He says they would have their fingerprints taken and compared on international databases, but we now know that that comparison does not check for criminal records, only whether they have sought asylum elsewhere in Europe (which is an irrelevance because the Dublin Convention is now completely ignored).

That ‘I can assure sure you…’, while being categorically wrong, is appalling to me. He’s probably deluded, but he may as well be a liar.

It’s a shame the documentary didn’t have more of an impact.

The Green Party as a whole were held responsible by the public in the last election that seen all of them except O'Gorman lose their seats. In saying that though this was a Green party policy that the went into government with, for the me the bulk of responsibility lies with the FF and FG parties mainly with Martin, Harris and McEntee in not being strong enough to push back on the Green's for this reckless policy but also not putting in the place the measures to curb this in the Justice department. Instead we got Martin, Harris, McEntee and others in the opposition parties coming out and labeling people who were highlighting this as Far right thugs and racists. Same with the supporters of this with their "international obligations" or "Ireland is not full" or "Sure didn't the Irish go everywhere" pathetic arguments that they liked to spout out and preach to anyone that spoke against this and when that didn't work just resorted to calling anyone against this far right or racist.

It is just a pity the public didn't hold FF and FG as responsible as they held the Green party.

I see that the cabinet is to consider major reform of Ireland's asylum laws, where those granted refugee status will have to wait for three years before bringing relatives, including children. That grifter Nick Henderson was obviously not very happy about it.

But you can't really argue against it when you see news articles like this