ESRI on Migrant Workers

MadsL

Given the ERSI study, can we now put to bed all of those hysterical postings/newspaper articles about massive 'damage' to Ireland through immigration??

• Key points in relation to the Irish experience:
  
• · Immigration reached a record high in the post-enlargement year (53,400). Forty per cent of the migrants came from the Accession States.
• · The majority of the EU10 migrants who came to Ireland in 2005 were Polish.
• · Lithuanians and Latvians have the highest propensities to migrate to Ireland.
• · There was a significant increase in the number of Personal Public Service Numbers (PPSNs) issued to EU10 nationals in the post-enlargement period. 186,000 PPSNs were issued from May 2004 to February 2006. This compares with 35,000 from January 2001 to April 2004.
• · 55 per cent of the PPSN issued from May 2004 to February 2006 were issued to Polish nationals.
• · EU10 nationals have a 90 per cent labour force participation rate. This compares with 62 per cent for Irish nationals.
• · Employment of EU10 nationals tripled in the post-enlargement period.
• · EU10 workers are largely concentrated in the construction, industrial and hospitality sectors.
• · The unemployment rate of EU10 nationals is 2.6 per cent.
• There is no evidence of displacement of Irish workers at a macro level.

http://www.esri.ie/press.cfm?t=Press%20Area&mId=5&article=150

DJDC

No one is doubting the short term benefits of the huge levels of immigration we have seen recently.Its the liong term issues that may prove difficult.But we will worry about that when it happens I suppose.

zuma

As mentioned earlier in 5-7 live Summer jobs have suffered a LOT in recent years!

Why take on a 15-20 year old for 3months when you can get a more mature 30 year old for the same money and hold onto them until the employer feels thay are no longer required and not the school/college.

Time Magazine

Thems coming in and stealing our women in the Long Run is it, DJDC?

Wish to provide any international evidence of hard-working (90% participation rate) immigrant populace who are here primarily for the short graft (to afford deposits on houses at home, etc.) cause long run societal problems?

No?

Just your gut feeling?

Well it's my gut feeling that nationality alone makes feck all difference to long run societal detriment. Personally, I find Polish men are less aggressive and friendlier than Irish men. And the women are hot. What's the problem?

We do have a pretty massive hole in the labour force to consider as well, dontcha know? Do you wish to back up your little subtle prophecy of doom with anything or will I assume you've got nothing but masqued fear like everyone else?

mike65

Steady on, the man/woman/poster was puting the question in as neutral a fashion as possible! Long term effects of inward migration should be considered, integration will be a word we'll be hearing a lot of in the next 5-10 years.

As for the survey, the results don't surprise me, and the Polish girls are hot.

Mike.

Time Magazine

zuma wrote:

As mentioned earlier in 5-7 live

The undisputed source it is!

zuma wrote:

As mentioned earlier in 5-7 live Summer jobs have suffered a LOT in recent years!

Actually Summer work has increased massively in recent years. Anecdotal evidence counts for nothing. The amount of students able to get work has increased massively over the last five years. Read the ESRI report - no displacement. Furthermore, the USI are not making noise about this. I wonder why.

Why take on a 15-20 year old for 3months when you can get a more mature 30 year old for the same money and hold onto them until the employer feels thay are no longer required and not the school/college.

Even if summer work was being taken, which there is no evidence for other than an RTE call-in show, prove to me that that's worse than having 100,000 immigrants filling full-time vacancies.

Furthermore, your point is a bit empty and self-contradicting. Summer work is not really summer work by choice but by necessity. In tourist towns, employment only occurs during the summer. In summer in general, demand is strong and requires temporary staff to cover. If these dirty immigrants are coming and taking students jobs and keeping them after September, they're not summer jobs, they're full-time vacancies that would have to be filled anyway.

zuma

Angry Banana wrote:

If these dirty immigrants are coming and taking students jobs and keeping them after September, they're not summer jobs, they're full-time vacancies that would have to be filled anyway.

Nice reply!

Where in my post did I give the impressions of my racist attitude?
It appears all the racist undertones are coming from you!

As someone who used to work in a factory when I was between 16-20yo with a lot of other students it might shock you that no summer work has been offered in the factory for mabye 3 years now as all the vacancies have been filled and short term work can easily be farmed out at short notice.

It dosent bother me much but Im sure it financially hurts those who want to save up in the Summer for college.

Also I recently lived in a house with a Polish couple in their early 20's....one had a BA and the other was working on her MA....their jobs......stacking shelves in Dunnes Stores!
Now if thats not a horrible waste of talent I dont know what is!

BTW they were only in Ireland for the Summer and returned home as this utopia couldnt offer them a better future!

Time Magazine

zuma wrote:

Nice reply!

Where in my post did I give the impressions of my racist attitude?
It appears all the racist undertones are coming from you!

The racist undertones came from the Sarchasm.

As someone who used to work in a factory when I was between 16-20yo with a lot of other students it might shock you that no summer work has been offered in the factory for mabye 3 years now as all the vacancies have been filled and short term work can easily be farmed out at short notice.

And as someone who lives 4 miles from a university and goes to another one, and has five older siblings all of which went through third level from about 1990 right up to the present day, things have never been better.

It dosent bother me much but Im sure it financially hurts those who want to save up in the Summer for college.

The only people I know who are struggling to get jobs are those who live in the backarse of nowhere. I'm looking at you Ardee. Nobody I know in the main urban centres (the loci of immigration) can't find a job. It's certainly not enough to counter the arguments for immigration.

Also I recently lived in a house with a Polish couple in their early 20's....one had a BA and the other was working on her MA....their jobs......stacking shelves in Dunnes Stores!
Now if thats not a horrible waste of talent I dont know what is!

I completely agree. There are worse, the security guard in Xtra-vision has a PhD in Physics and used to lecture at home. But yet these scroungers are coming and taking are jobs. These guys take crap part-time jobs while they find better jobs, much like students. Of course there are some pockets where students can't get jobs, but there'd be a far less buoyant economy (and thus less jobs) anyway.

BTW they were only in Ireland for the Summer and returned home as this utopia couldnt offer them a better future!

Not scrounging on the Dole for decades to feed the army of children? . Methinks your good self thinks much more along the lines of my good self more than I originally thought.

BOHSBOHS

90% participation in the labour force
due to
1) almost all immigrants are of working age
very few are kids or OAPS
2) Immigrants from new EU countries are not entitled to social welfare
they work or they go home

sorry angry banana but polish people are less aggresive and friendlier??
more hard working?? what a silly statement to make , im sorry theres no difference at all between irish and polish people in those respects.
altho my girlfriend is polish so yes the women are hot!!!

where do u get the idea that immigrants are here for the short term???
none of my girlfriends mates intend to go back to poland anytime soon..
why would they ? wages are a fraction of what they can get here ...

The report does not state that there has been "no displacement"
in the irish jobs market . dont misquote ...


some people seem to think ireland will cope with any level of immigration
without any societal problems whatsoever... these people dont live in the real world , these problems will become most apparent the next time our economy goes belly-up cos its often in a recession that the issue comes to the forefront ...... if the head-in-the-sand brigade need examples theres plenty of other countries to choose from, although theyre much too busy calling everyone rascist to deal with reality.

BOHSBOHS

BOHSBOHS wrote:

where do u get the idea that immigrants are here for the short term???
none of my girlfriends mates intend to go back to poland anytime soon..
why would they ? wages are a fraction of what they can get here ...

Thats not been my experience then.
As someone who has been involved in the placing of 100's of new EU workers in jobs here as well as Irish people,I can tell you there is a high turnover and return home ratio with the new EU workers.

if the head-in-the-sand brigade need examples theres plenty of other countries to choose from,

As I said to you in other threads,perhaps you would have more credibility if you presented these examples so we could have a look at them...
The precedent you need to show are previous examples of new EU countries and the problems associated with the movement of labour from the new to old EU countries.

Otherwise you are just continuing with an unsupported rant.

You cannot use old colonies as an example because,those old colonies do not have the advantages of the EU that the new EU entrants will have.In other words,the new EU economies are entering the EU to catch up with the rest of the EU (like we did) and ergo to attract their emmigrants back.
Theres never been much incentive for collonial emmigrants to return to Africa.

Time Magazine

BOHSBOHS wrote:

90% participation in the labour force
due to
1) almost all immigrants are of working age
very few are kids or OAPS
2) Immigrants from new EU countries are not entitled to social welfare
they work or they go home

And you speak of it like it's some sort of bad thing?

sorry angry banana but polish people are less aggresive and friendlier??

Yes. Definitely friendlier, without a doubt. Obviously there's the language barrier but they are some of the friendliest people I've met. There's no shite with them like. Now I'm a big fan of Irish people, how we can slag each other without knowing each other and so on, but any Poles I've met are just class.

more hard working?? what a silly statement to make , im sorry theres no difference at all between irish and polish people in those respects.

None at all? I'm sorry, but that's a silly statement to make. Given that pound for pound, Poles have more to lose if they lose their job etc, but evidence certainly seems to suggest they're better workers than we are.

altho my girlfriend is polish so yes the women are hot!!!

To be honest that's just me putting on my lefty loony (ha!) hat on. The subtle xenophobes among us have really nothing to reply to that.

where do u get the idea that immigrants are here for the short term???

International empirical analysis, and rational economic logic. The ones coming over are almost always without kids. That's either because they've left the kids there or don't have them yet. Either way, it indicates they're here on a temporary saving mission, as Earthman suggested on another thread. This is in-line with international migration patterns. Look at all the Irish that came back during the Celtic Tiger. Poland should get rich far faster than we did.

none of my girlfriends mates intend to go back to poland anytime soon..

Hard-hitting empirical analysis again, just like the tales of those who work in the Department of Immigrant Giveaways. I can provide counter stories of debts being left in Xtra-vision. The fact of the matter is that most of the Poles who have been here have already left, and that they're being replaced by other Poles. It's a cycle, analgous to the Irish kids going on J1's.

why would they ? wages are a fraction of what they can get here ...

It's home.

The report does not state that there has been "no displacement"
in the irish jobs market . dont misquote ...

It says "no displacement at a macro-level". When we take inflation rates as per CSO statistics, it is not a realistic response to claim "But my friend Timmy's shopping basket increased by double that!".

some people seem to think ireland will cope with any level of immigration without any societal problems whatsoever... these people dont live in the real world

No? Where do I live? Are these young, fit, healthy, working guys with a similar culture to ours not less likely to be classed as a societal problem than, say, poor Irish kids?

these problems will become most apparent the next time our economy goes belly-up cos its often in a recession that the issue comes to the forefront

But we're nowhere near a recession. There's not an economist in the country suggesting anything like that. Growth this year was 5%, that's massive. Growth next year will be 6%, that's 20% more than 5%! And it's very simple, if there's no work (i.e. recession) and there's no dole they'll go home.

if the head-in-the-sand brigade need examples theres plenty of other countries to choose from, although theyre much too busy calling everyone rascist to deal with reality.

Quiet, you racist . Tell me exactly what's unrealistic about my approach? Provide an example please, and tell me why that situation is comparable to Ireland's.

gilroyb

DJDC wrote:

No one is doubting the short term benefits of the huge levels of immigration we have seen recently.Its the liong term issues that may prove difficult.But we will worry about that when it happens I suppose.

I think this report identifies the huge opportunities that exist for Ireland by encouraging immigration, but that does not mean that it is racist to wish to manage this immigration. There is a role for the Irish government to ensure that sufficient action is taken to bring all groups at risk of alienation into the society. It's not racist to want to try and solve possible problems which may occur in the future, as long as the solution is something constructive, rather than just shutting the borders.

where do u get the idea that immigrants are here for the short term???
none of my girlfriends mates intend to go back to Poland anytime soon..
why would they ? wages are a fraction of what they can get here ...

This assumes that they can continue to get paid wages, ie that the economy continues to tick over nicely. If this is the case, then there is no problem with them staying in the medium term.


On another issue, people are suggesting that students are losing out on summer jobs. So rather than students earning tax free income on their break from subsidised college, there are full time workers being employed who contribute tax revenue to the economy. A proportion of this tax revenue that pays for the very college education received by the students. Even though I don't think this is happening on a significant scale (as a 4th year student I have a fairly good idea), even if it is, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

MadsL

Can anyone in the anti-immigration lobby provide viable options for continuing 5% growth in the economy without large-scale immigration? What is preferable - continued growth or continued homogeneous culture?

Victor

coolhandluke wrote:

Why is it the loony lefties continually get their knickers in a twist and roar the word "RACIST" at the drop of a hat.It's just getting boring at this stage, when will they realise that they are actually in the minority and the ordinary person on the street does not want a free for all in regard to immigration.

OK, how about "BIGOT"? Happy now?

fly_agaric

MadsL wrote:

Can anyone in the anti-immigration lobby provide viable options for continuing 5% growth in the economy without large-scale immigration? What is preferable - continued growth or continued homogeneous culture?

Did you take a tardis in from the early 90's?
We don't have a homogeneous culture any more. Slowing down, or even halting immigration entirely cannot change that.

Also, (usually, unless things are very bad) if the population grows - the economy grows.

So what? Our population growth must be about 4 % pa or so at present.

What does it actually mean for all the little economic units (aka people)?


Also, there is no "anti-immigration lobby" in Ireland.

ArthurDent

fly_agaric wrote:

Also, there is no "anti-immigration lobby" in Ireland.

Hmm not so sure about that, what about
Justin Barrett
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2004/04/25/story907714238.asp
Aine Ni Chonaill and the Immigration Control Platform
http://www.immigrationcontrol.org/

How about I lock this thread for a while and you all go away and think about things and come back when you lot are less contentious...
(crapola has been deleted from the thread and will be deleted on sight if theres more crapola posted-keep it civil folks and keep it on topic-any charter infringement in this thread will result in a banning)

MadsL

As you were, people...Cheers Earthman

Raskolnikov

Angry Banana wrote:

Yes. Definitely friendlier, without a doubt.

Where's the "hard-hitting empirical analysis" that you demanded of BohsBohs to back this racist and ludicrous claim up?

Hobbes

I am just curious and this is really out to those who seem dead set against immigration.

If immigration was to stop tomorrow what would you expect would happen in 1 year, 5 years and 20 years time (for examples).

Raskolnikov

Hobbes wrote:

I am just curious and this is really out to those who seem dead set against immigration.

I haven't read a single post on this thread from someone that is 'dead set against immigration'.

MadsL

MadsL wrote:

Can anyone in the anti-immigration lobby provide viable options for continuing 5% growth in the economy without large-scale immigration? What is preferable - continued growth or continued homogeneous culture?

*Feels need to point out that it is growth per capita not growth per se which is important*

Hobbes

Raskolnikov wrote:

I haven't read a single post on this thread from someone that is 'dead set against immigration'.

Stick around a while.

We have contolled immigration already. There are certainly people on the forums that want this curtailed or killed.

So sort of the same question. What level of immigration do these people want and what do they expect to happen in the same time frames mentioned before?

MadsL

Why the time is right to stem this flow of immigrants, before it's too late

A GROWN-UP country would have taken the Afghans-in-the-Cathedral for what it was, a warning shot across the bows which we ignore at our peril. Foreigners blackmailing us and threatening mass self-murder in our oldest cathedral; a native underclass gathering outside, jeering and waving placards wishing death on them: oh here is the stuff of a serious debate in a serious society.

blah blah... read the rest in todays indo...I'l post the rest when I get access,

Basically saying it's time to ditch the common travel area and hoist the drawbridge...

bonkey

A GROWN-UP country would have taken the Afghans-in-the-Cathedral for what it was, a warning shot across the bows which we ignore at our peril. Foreigners blackmailing us and threatening mass self-murder in our oldest cathedral;

I read stuff like this and I ask myself....did I miss the bit where we caved in and gave them their demands?

I then read it again and ask another question....since when was mass immigration from a nation like Afghanistan the problem? Last time I checked, we had more asylum seekers than immigrants from such nations, and the people who were "threatening mass self-murder" were all amongst the former group as well.

But I guess they're all non-Anglo for-i-gen-ers, so there's no difference.

jc

Dr Galen

i've read this and "all" the other threads about this topic and while there's a lot of crap about, there's also so coherent stuff...
now while i agree in years to come the immigration levels may lead to some sort of social unhappiness/unrest (aka France) isn't it about time we started to talk about what can be done tro prevent such an occurance?

surely its an accepted fact now that we're gonna have immigration to the country, and I separate this from aslyum seeking btw, so what do we as the native society to integrate the incoming people?

workin in the health service i deal with lots and lots and lots of immigrant workers. Be it the Phillipino/Indian/South African nurses, the huge amount of foreign Doc's or just the Polish cleaners I have to say we all get along pretty well,in the main, and I've worked in 4 large hospitals across the city and county so this isn't isolated.

Any ideas?

MadsL

Plenty of reaction on the radio today. Well done Mr Myers, I'm sure your bonus will be a nice one from the Indo this year.

Some of the caller comments make me hoot, I love the ones about the Irish being a minority in their own country. I'd love to line up guys who spout this crap up against a wall (not what you are thinking) and ask them their full name...

Mr Abbott, ah, bit of English in you.
Mr MacAllister, Scots in there eh?
Miss Fitzgerald? - Any family in Cardiff?
Mrs Roche? Parlez-vous francais?
Miss Kelleher - sprechen sie deutsche?
Paddy Cotter - done any pillaging lately?

Will I go on? Nah, history is bunk. We're doomed I tell ye.

coolhandluke

Eh,why were my posts deleted ?
I posted up a genuine counter argument,i was a abused by a moderator,who i didn't report and whose post has been left there.There seems to be some serious censorship going on on this thread.

Hobbes

coolhandluke wrote:

Eh,why were my posts deleted ?

Because it was tripe and based on opinion not facts. Take for example...

t's just getting boring at this stage, when will they realise that they are actually in the minority and the ordinary person on the street does not want a free for all in regard to immigration.

There was a program on RTE this morning (not sure why at 6am, maybe a repeat) but they listed polls based on immigation. 56% actually said that we need immigration to survive, as well as the majority welcoming immigrants (I forget the count).

You are right that a very small minority want a free for all (likewise those wanting to close up the borders) however the majority are happy with the current immigration levels.

coolhandluke

coolhandluke wrote:

Eh,why were my posts deleted ?
I posted up a genuine counter argument,i was a abused by a moderator,who i didn't report and whose post has been left there.There seems to be some serious censorship going on on this thread.

Oh go read the charter before you post stuff will ya-good chap.

MontgomeryClift

Immigration is happening as a result of economic growth. Economic growth is not a result of immigration. The claim that economic growth cannot happen without immigration is unproven and dubious since it always comes from employer pressure groups, who would naturally like to have competition for jobs. It's doubly dubious since fast economic growth was a feature in Ireland for almost 10 years before EU enlargement.

Irish worker displacement is a reality. If you don't know it's happening then you're simply lucky enough not to know anybody affected by it. But please don't make life harder for those who are being pushed out of their jobs by claiming as a fact that displacement is a myth.

The problem with the current scheme is that if the need arises to slow or stop the 50,000+ per year immigration, it cannot be done. That's where a permit scheme would be useful - Not to 'apply the brake,' but to 'cover the brake,' to use a driving meta4.