Immigration Referendum

BuffyBot

Take a look at the problems Britain is experiencing with the muslims who never properly integrated into thier society.

Balls. A very minor issue, isolated to particular areas. For the most part the UK is a good example of a working multi-cultural country

Trebor

Originally posted by MadsL
I'm seriously concerned that this will affect the children of non-EEC/Irish unmarried couples. Imagine an American has a child with an Irish girl. Kid gets citizenship naturally enough. Then Father loses job and work permit. Bye bye dad. Traumatised kid. Great.

is it not being considered that they are changing the work permit's so that they go to the person as opposed to the employer? that way the dad would have a permit and could just apply for another job and aslong as he can get any job he would be fine

Eoin P the Dub

Originally posted by capistrano
Well, they should get married then. We need some rules!

I don't understrand the russian girl case. My sister married an american and he can get Irish citizen ship immediately if he wants. There must be more to it than you say.

Some rules?!?! You mean everyone must get married for the sake of your convenience? What about Irish couples, should they get married?

Your sister married an AMerican who was entitled to an Irish passport, probably under the same rule that Clinton Morrison gets one...his grandparents.

MadsL

Originally posted by capistrano
Well, they should get married then. We need some rules!

I don't understrand the russian girl case. My sister married an american and he can get Irish citizen ship immediately if he wants. There must be more to it than you say.

Are you saying that people should get married so that they don't get deported! If they do that then the gvt kicks them out by not recognising the marriage - which is what happened to the Russian girl.

And your sister's husband will not get immediate citizenship. Read the rules here

If you marry before Nov 2002 - three years of marriage and you are a citizen.

After Nov 2002: A non-national who married an Irish citizen on or after 30 November 2002, can only apply for citizenship through the naturalisation process.

In other words you don't have much more rights than a long stay resident except for an accelarated naturalisation process.

capistrano

Originally posted by MadsL
Therefore just over a third of immigrants are non-EEC nationals...

What you actually said was "Take those gvt figures on the number of non-national births and divide by three THAT is approx the number of non-EEC nationals we are really talking about." - And we were talking about non-nationals coming to Ireland to have kids for citizenship purposes.

You are assuming that there is an even spread between of births between all non-nationals. Can you back this up? I contend that most EU citizens do not come to Ireland to have children. Most come there for a relatively short period for work experience and to learn english. The non-nationals who are also non-EU and non-USA nationals, on the other hand, often have children. That's undersandable because it gives the child EU citizenship, which of coure they value greatly.

capistrano

Originally posted by BuffyBot
Balls. A very minor issue, isolated to particular areas. For the most part the UK is a good example of a working multi-cultural country

I agree, I worked in London for a few years and I think it is a very integrated society. Much more so than America, for example.

capistrano

Originally posted by Eoin P the Dub
Some rules?!?! You mean everyone must get married for the sake of your convenience? What about Irish couples, should they get married?

No. But for the same of immigration rules, marriage is a good mark of commitment.

Your sister married an AMerican who was entitled to an Irish passport, probably under the same rule that Clinton Morrison gets one...his grandparents.

No. His great-grandparents were Irish, but that's too distant.

capistrano

Originally posted by MadsL
Are you saying that people should get married so that they don't get deported! If they do that then the gvt kicks them out by not recognising the marriage - which is what happened to the Russian girl.

Why did they not recognist the marriage? They must ohave had good reasons was it bogus?

BTW my sister's husband falls under the pre-2002 3 year rule. I didn't realise they changed the rules.

MadsL

Originally posted by capistrano
What you actually said was "Take those gvt figures on the number of non-national births and divide by three THAT is approx the number of non-EEC nationals we are really talking about." - And we were talking about non-nationals coming to Ireland to have kids for citizenship purposes.

You are assuming that there is an even spread between of births between all non-nationals. Can you back this up? I contend that most EU citizens do not come to Ireland to have children. Most come there for a relatively short period for work experience and to learn english. The non-nationals who are also non-EU and non-USA nationals, on the other hand, often have children. That's undersandable because it gives the child EU citizenship, which of coure they value greatly.

what the gvt is saying is "My God look at the number of non-nationals giving birth in the hospitals"

All I am pointing out is that one third of immigrants are from the EU/USA one third are returning Irish and the rest are from the Rest of the World.

MAYBE someone in the Gvt might do a better job of identifying the nationalities that are giving birth in Ireland.

A few important questions;

How many leave after the birth of the baby?
What countries exactly are we talking about?
Just how many are we talking about - enough with the 'huge percentage arrive pregnant headlines'
Does it matter? What exactly is the problem here - other than embassing the govt in admitting that the heath service is a mess.

I'd like to see some solid numbers instead of this statistical woffle.
As far as I can see we are talking about 11,000 female immigrants a year from outside EU/USA. Not a huge number, considering 20,000 Irish leave the country each year.

Trebor

lets get back to basics, can someone give me a reason why it should not be changed?

capistrano

Originally posted by MadsL
As far as I can see we are talking about 11,000 female immigrants a year from outside EU/USA. Not a huge number, considering 20,000 Irish leave the country each year.

And we know that 57% of them arrive pregnant (see earlier posts). So that's over 6000 extra births a year (>100 per week), mainly in Dublin maternity hospitals. That's a large number, costs a lot of money, overcrowds the hospitals and the kids become Irish citizens.

MadsL, Ireland, as a free state, can make its own ruless as to whom we want to confer citizenship upon. What we are trying to do is not racist, prejudiced, biggotted or anything else. We are just trying to regularise a situation that is beginning to get out of control.

MadsL

MadsL, Ireland, as a free state, can make its own ruless as to whom we want to confer citizenship upon. What we are trying to do is not racist, prejudiced, biggotted or anything else. We are just trying to regularise a situation that is beginning to get out of control.

No, what you are doing is saying "Anyone born in Ireland is citizen"
Damn, got that wrong...oi! Not you. Those kids up the North, that's OK. You, you're a dirty non-national - we don't want your kids.

Make up your goddamn minds!

Why not keep the law as it stands and conduct a decent review of the process of entery - like the US. Grant citizenship to anyone born under the law but start applying stricter entry rules. Admit some on temporary admissions using a scoring system, but exclude them from the citizenship 'benefit' until they become useful memebers of society.Then give full rights.

At the same time loosen the restrictive practice of giving the employer the work permit and give it to the employee - this will help prevent exploitation.

capistrano

Originally posted by MadsL
Why not keep the law as it stands and conduct a decent review of the process of entery - like the US. Grant citizenship to anyone born under the law but start applying stricter entry rules.

So, you'd rather we let nobody in, in the first place, like USA. Turn them back at the border. That's very humane, I must say.

As reagrds, Northern Ireland, surely you understand our history and why we want people born in Northern Ireland to be 100% eligible for Irish citizenship. Anything else would be unfair to people who ARE Irish.

I think I've been very consistent. I agree with you we need a proper immigration policy. But the issue of giving automatic citizenship to every kid born here is an unrelated issue.

Oiche maith!

MadsL

A constitution should be a thing of great beauty. Personally I find the phrase "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." pretty damn spine-tingling. One of the finest pieces of prose ever written.

This referendum wants to take a fine upstanding inspirational text of the constitution;
Quote:
Every person born in the island of Ireland is entitled to be an Irish citizen.

And turn it into this dogs breakfast;

Subject to section 6A (inserted by section 4 of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2004), every person born in the island of Ireland is entitled to be an Irish citizen.


Some statement.


Land of poets eh?

Eoin P the Dub

ooops, out there for a while because I got attacked by a nasty spyware program. I am out of here, it's past bedtime and The Dude is on C4, far better than this convoluted waffle. Night all, keep on truckin' and remember: let's take all comers, the pregnant, the black, the yellow and green, the disabled, the children.....

Meh

Originally posted by capistrano
And we know that 57% of them arrive pregnant (see earlier posts). So that's over 6000 extra births a year

Well, no. MadsL's "11,000 a year" figure was referring to total non-EU immigration, not asylum seekers. The 57% claim referred only to asylum seekers, not immigrants in general.

There were about 8,250 asylum seekers last year. If half of them were female (don't know if this is a reasonable assumption), and 57% of that half were pregnant, that's 2,350 extra births.

Originally posted by MadsL:
A constitution should be a thing of great beauty. Personally I find the phrase "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." pretty damn spine-tingling. One of the finest pieces of prose ever written.

That's the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.

MadsL

And for the the KO blow...after trying a spot of Irish on the foreigner...

You don't you mean oíche mhaith ???

maith is a feminine noun!

Tskk...learn your own language.:rolleyes:

MadsL

That's the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.

So what? - the point is still made. And the declaration formed the spirit of the constitution anyway...

AngelofFire

the government claim that ommitting the article from the constitution will solve the negative economic and social knock on effects that immigration brings. me arse if they government cared about society they would have addressed the issue of rediculously expensive housing, rat infested schools and a deplorable health service a long time ago. they are going ahead with this referendum as it will suit a certain group of people. the government couldnt give a rats arse about welfare and health problems.

arcadegame2004

"How many births to asylum seekers last year - 3270. This is a trickle compared to.." Germany according to Madsl.

Madsl, this may be true. But it is also misleading. What matters is the number of asylum-claimants per head of population, for that has the real impact on the visited country's ability to afford the strain placed on the health-service, social-welfare system etc. by the asylum-seeker. To that end read this section of an Irish Examiner report on Monday, December 30, 2002 :

"We rank second for asylum seekers


By John Breslin
IRELAND has the second highest number of asylum seekers per head of population in the European Union, according to latest figures.


Almost three in every 1000 people living in the State is an asylum seeker, it emerged as Ruud Lubbers, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees called on the EU to share more evenly the distribution of refugees.

Of the EU countries, only Austria has a greater number of asylum seekers per 1000 living within its borders than Ireland, which is tied at second place with Belgium on 2.7 per thousand."

So you see while the numbers in solely numerical terms may be low compared to our EU neighbours, a greater strain in terms of the proportion of our GDP spent on asylum-seekers is borne by us than other EU states.

Besides the citizenship for children issue, I would like to point out that with so many asylum-seekers coming from democratic countries like Romania and Bulgaria, that a list of "safe countries" is urgent to deprive immigrants from democratic states with good human-rights records of the ability to claim asylum in this country.

Angelfire says :"if they government cared about society they would have addressed the issue of rediculously expensive housing, rat infested schools and a deplorable health service a long time ago".

Angelfire, while I am not usually an avid defender of our government, I point out that part of the problem in our Health-Service is the strain citizenship-tourists are placing on it. Thus, the Government's actions on immigration may eventually free up resources in the Health-Service that can then be more productively apportioned.

halkar

Time changes, people changes so does the laws. 10-15 year ago no one would want to come to our little rock in the ocean. They probably didn't even know where it was. Then we got a bit of boom and suddenly start seeing 5000-10000+ asylum seekers a year. I think it happened too quick for government to react and deal with it. You have few thousand coming in, they see the system, spread the word and doubles the figures following year. For me saying Yes to this referendum is nothing got to do with racism or my rights or your rights but government needs to deal with genuine cases instead of chancers. As for people thinking why these people does not work and this and that, I don't think they can work while their asylum cases are dealed with. And you know how fast things are here

Frank Grimes

Originally posted by halkar
For me saying Yes to this referendum is nothing got to do with racism or my rights or your rights but government needs to deal with genuine cases instead of chancers.

If people vote Yes the current system for dealing with asylum seekers will not change.
All this referendum is doing, ultimately, is stopping people born here becoming citizens, depending on their parentage.

arcadegame2004

No Frank it is indirectly linked to the asylum issue because mothers having children here will otherwise be able to emotionally blackmail our courts into letting them stay.

Frank Grimes

Originally posted by arcadegame2004
No Frank it is indirectly linked to the asylum issue because mothers having children here will otherwise be able to emotionally blackmail our courts into letting them stay.

So what is it you're saying? The only people applying for asylum here are pregnant women?
I asked before, but I'll ask again. Do you have any evidence you can share that people are still "emotionally blackmailing" the courts?

capistrano

Originally posted by MadsL
And for the the KO blow...after trying a spot of Irish on the foreigner...

You don't you mean oíche mhaith ???

maith is a feminine noun!

Tskk...learn your own language.:rolleyes:

Nice googling, MadsL.

You're almost right. It's Oíche that is the feminine noun, maith is an adjective. But you're absolutely right I should have said "Oíche mhaith".

corley

Originally posted by capistrano
I tired hearing the USA be quoted as an example. It's not a problem in the USA because they'll deport you at the airport. Not like here where you are automatically allowed in and you application for asylum is assessed, which takes months, plenty of time to have that baby.

The US example is relevant. How many Mexicans illegally cross the US's southern borders each year? Yet the US has not seen a need to alter its citizenship by birth rules. In the case of Mexicans entering the US they are clearly economic migrants. In the case of people seeking asylum in Ireland many are coming from countries with oppresive regimes where their lives are in danger. In any event the US actually has made attempts to regularise the situation for people who have been living illegally in the country (e.g. Green card lotteries etc.) They at least make an attempt to have some form of immigration policy. Ireland has failed to implement an immigration policy and is failing to properly operate an asylum policy.

At the end of the day this referendum is a political stunt. It will boost voter turnout which would be good for the Government (FF typically does badly in local/European elections because a significant percentage of their voters usually don't bother to come out and vote.) It also puts the opposition parties in a very tricky situation. For instance, I would imagine that a lot of Sinn Fein's voters would support the referendum while I would be very surprised if Sinn Fein as a party were to do anything else but call for a "No" vote. (I'm not a member of Sinn Fein so I've no "inside track" on this but I'm basing my opinion on Sinn Fein's stance on similar issues.)

This is political opportunism at its worst. Particularly when official statistics show that the number of racist attacks in Ireland increases at election time. To hold the referendum on the same day as an election is totally irresponsible.

capistrano

Almost all your points are complete hogwash, but I am using my pda so i cant be arsed repudiating it right now.

BuffyBot

How many Mexicans illegally cross the US's southern borders each year? Yet the US has not seen a need to alter its citizenship by birth rules. In the case of Mexicans entering the US they are clearly economic migrants.

There is a difference in scale involved though.

Victor

Originally posted by Eoin P the Dub
This is such a red herring Silverside: the debate is not about unrestricted immigration but immigration. Can we please have a mature discussion on what we want as Ireland's immigration policy. No one is asking us to put forward a law allowing unrestricted immigration. Questions like this are the last resort of the indefensible.

Damn, I thought it was a citizenship debate, not an immigration one.

Originally posted by Phil_321
1. They are not taking jobs, but taking lots of cash from the exchequer.

Actually they get sod all cash, most of it gets recycled though Irish businesses, especially landlords. The FF/PD landlords are getting the money.

Originally posted by capistrano
It's not like we have the best health care system in the EU, now is it?

Actually we have just about the lowest infant mortality rate in the world.

Villain

Originally posted by MadsL
Why not keep the law as it stands and conduct a decent review of the process of entery - like the US. Grant citizenship to anyone born under the law but start applying stricter entry rules. Admit some on temporary admissions using a scoring system, but exclude them from the citizenship 'benefit' until they become useful memebers of society.Then give full rights.

What about children born while their parents are awaiting a decision?

As for your post about a parent being deported I don't think this referendum is going to change anything in that respect, I could be wrong do, so correct me if I am.