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

You'll have to wait for the inevitable 'tribunal' which will only ever serve to make the legal classes even more wealthy. The legal classes hate it when opportunist classes pop up and out-earn them. The likes of Banty emerging and becoming instant multi-millionaires overnight certainly sticks in the craw of the legal class who have spent multiple times more amounts of time screwing the taxpayer for their lavish lifestyle. In the words of Greta, 'how dare they'. So they will hark back to their ol' chums in the political class and seek a trough to stick their snouts in to even it all up. That takes a bit of time, but rest-assured it will come to pass. No doubt.

Study visas how many are English classes , most will use it as a way to stay .Family reunification adding more migrants one quarter actually work Wonderful.

This woman came to South Africa from Nigeria maybe she was illegal there .The NGO advice would be get as much publicity as you can . I think if they did a hunger strike outside the Dail all will be grand .

The media are using 'stories' like this to stoke division because the vast majority of the media are people who align with open-borders and other socially liberal stances. Take a look on TheJournal.ie as an example of a media outlet fawning over the SocDems who are a party that would change laws so there would be even more inward migration and virtually zero deportations.

The division stokes up anger in gullible quarters of the public which gets harnessed by [NGO] which in turn then paints a picture of 'widespread outrage' that inevitably gets raised in the Dail by Labour/SocDems/Greens/PBP types in an attempt to pressure the minister to 'relax rules' or 'change guidelines'.

Anyone who speaks out against the above practice is painted as an amoral far right racist by the same media.

The Journal’s “Fact Checks” come across as incredibly arrogant. They usually cherry-pick posts from X and rely on extreme examples to support their claims, then disable the comments so no one can challenge their one-sided narrative. They do this routinely, and it feels completely disingenuous, presenting opinion as objectivity while shutting down any meaningful scrutiny or debate.

I was intrigued and had high hopes when the Journal came out with the Factcheck stuff. Fast forward a couple of years and it is one of the main things I hate about the place. They most certainly are rooting out examples of "fake news" but from what it looks like they'll inspect and critique instances where it fits with their agenda.

If something leftie or immigration based has been "fake news"ed on social media. You can guarantee TheJournal will fall over themselves to get out their factcheck article to dispel anything wrong which may have been reported. If they know deep down these straight-from-horses-mouth social media reports have legs will they F do a Fackcheck on it.

They did a piece where they "Fact checked" a tweet from that Derek Blighe gobshite. It was a clear as hell AI image of immigrants on a dingy going down the Liffey. It was entirely cringe how "GOTCHA" the whole report was. You could picture some jobsworths high fiving in the press room. They credibly pointed out it couldn't be real because The Spire looked like it was beside Phoenix park, The ha'penny bridge couldn't be there etc etc.

Journalism has now become a little game. They all need to get their fingers out and start reporting on news as if it is something factual. It is for our benefit not theirs.

I see a new EU-wide list of "safe countries" that people will no longer be allowed to seek asylum to the EU from has been agreed by MEPs.

The seven nation list of Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Kosovo, India, Morocco and Tunisia is in addition to countries already in the process of formally seeking EU membership.

Interesting, Ireland's representatives vote against both measures that were passed in the EU parliament.

In order to agree with your logic, I would want to know if the AS lady in question is being provided state housing or HAP, if she is in receipt of any social welfare allowance eg. Family supplement (on top of carers pay), if she is dependent on the state for her and her children's health costs (Medical cards), and any other benefits she is recieving.

I believe there is some bit of merit in your logic if this lady and her family do not depend on the state for anything and contribute through income tax.

We see examples in the states where Irish, Hispanic, Latiino's and others, are picked up off the street or their home and deported (with no criminal records). The difference between the AS lady and vast majority of AS's in Ireland, and the people being deported by ICE, is that those illegals in the US that I refer to, fund themselves 100% (work, housing, medical, etc) and do not rely on the federal or state government (US tax payers) for welfare, benefits and any other hand-out.

People like the woman mentioned in the article are undercutting Irish workers, and I don't think it's good for society. When my siblings and I were grown and had left home, my mother went back to work as a care assistant in a nursing home. She did that job for nearly 20 years before retiring. It was basic pay, and it barely increased over time - particularly in the later years, when there was an increase in African care assistants like the lady in the article, or Indian care workers who came from India through an agency.

My father earned a decent enough wage, so my mother didn’t qualify for income supports like HAP, etc. She worked because she wanted some independence and her own income. There is no real reason, however, that we should be relying so heavily on foreign nationals to staff our nursing homes. It is not a highly skilled job, and to be honest, many elderly residents struggled to understand the accents of foreign care assistants, or were simply not used to people of colour and sometimes acted out as a result, according to my mam.

If care assistants, for example, were paid properly, more Irish people would be encouraged to take on this work. Many would see it as a vocation. Instead, we rely on foreign labour, much of which then requires additional state supports to make living and working here viable. That approach ultimately drives down wages and does little to improve standards of care or conditions for workers.

What you are describing though (i.e. the undercutting of Irish wages), is not caused principally by illegal immigration or by rejected asylum seekers. The vast majority of migrant workers are here under the valid visa process — IPAs are a significantly smaller cohort within the migrant community, and for 'rejected' IPAs it's even smaller. So the main cause of this issue are the migrants who have actually shown they are willing to work. While your points are reasonable, this is a difficult reality to overcome.

And this is where you have to confront the reality of what drives demand for these migrant workers. It isn't purely the fact that they may work for less, it's also driven by changes in Irish society. Our population is more educated and trained than ever before, and that means young people aspiring to careers in STEM subjects, law / accounting, the trades etc. which means the skills of our English-speaking workers are in global demand. So there is a twin "problem": (1) It's not that your young people won't work in nursing homes out of snobbery, they are simply armed with qualifications that allow them to pursue more lucrative careers; (2) they are qualified enough to have fairly extensive global mobility.

All of these things mean labour gaps and brain drain, and this where gaps have to be filled. Migration sceptics have many reasonable and rational arguments against immigration, including those you mention, but they haven't been able to identify the formula for changing the phenomena which cause it — and it's not even clear that they really want to.

Interesting figures from the UK. Whites are the only group that are net payers of tax (in other words, their final income after taxes and transfers is lower than their original income, meaning they net paid into the system).

All non-white groups on average are net drains. Their final income after taxes and transfers is higher than their original income, meaning they were net paid by the system.

I suspect we would see similar figures if Ireland were to publish this data.

Source is table 23 here:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/datasets/theeffectsoftaxesandbenefitsonhouseholdincomefinancialyearending2014/financialyearending2024/etbreferencetablesfye202324final.xlsx

I have no issue, and the majority of people here have no issues with workers coming her on work permits, legal visa's, EU or UK passports. Its another debate if we issued too many based on our infrastructure and housing.

Its people who are using the AS to bypass the legal processes, and get a free ride (welfare, housing, medical card, etc) for the rest of their lives. Only a very very few AS who become citizens can leave the welfare system and fund their own life eg. A doctor or specialist IT engineer. Which we know are few and far between.

If the state starting turning a blind eye to AS scammers, it sends out a clear signal to the world, come here, ride the system and you will be rewarded, and never deported. Yes, its very unfortunate that children are involved. But the state cant start treating women and men or women with kids versus single men differently.

But is the family involved getting much of a free ride, or at least if they are then can we really say that they aren't making genuine attempts at using the opportunity to integrate into society and contribute? The mother has done qualification training here and appears to have a job or at least some connection to Mowlam Care. The kids are taking part in the local rugby club and seemingly participating well in education (one is doing his Leaving Cert). This does not strike me as a family of spongers, but as people who are taking steps to positively use the opportunities given to them, rather than negatively exploiting them. Perhaps there is more to the State's case against them, but that's what the available information suggests.

By all means, you can support seeing this deportation through. Letter of the law, consistency, precedent — these are logical and valid considerations. But what is logical is not always strategically smart — what is smart in this instance is to focus on the cases that people can get behind, not get mired in cases like this where you will only create martyrs and harm the move towards a tougher migration policy that targets scroungers and material wrongdoers.

So if what she did is illegal (claiming AS when she was not genuine)

Have you a link to the relative legislation that states claiming asylum is illegal?