BBC on mass immigration to Ireland - we have messed it up basically

darkman2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/worldtonight/ram/worldtonight_immigration_20071204.ram


How much longer will it be, I wonder, before we wake up one morning and collectively realise that we have destroyed the social cohesion of this country? We have seen what has happened in the UK but more particularly the race riots in France. We are going the exact same direction only faster then they did. The ghettoes are there - and new ones are springing up all over the place. Balbriggan will surely go down as the first immigrant town in Ireland. An 'all black' school? FFS have we apartheid
going on now!? Someone has screwed up big time. Its alright for the Middle class areas in Dublin. They have rarely seen this yet. They will. Note on that link - the mention of the faltering economy at the end - we have big problems coming.

We need much tougher immigration and social policy and we need it now. We need a sense of direction. In the end the 'opportunities' are gone. We screwed up when we should have learned from the failures in France and the UK. What makes it worse is we had the benefit of hindsight but were too feeble to plan immigration and integration properly. Imagine any woman that had a child here could automatically be Irish only 4 or 5 years ago!? It was long before that IMO we should have got our act together.

super_furry

"Ah sure it'll never happen to us. If we ignore it, it'll just go away."

The alarming thing is the lack of will to even debate the issue on any level for fear of being labelled as racist.

PHB

Yep, that's why our economies are suffering and the economies which wouldn't let immigrants in are doing great .... oh wait

Wertz

Stable doors can't save us now.
If we hadn't have been so busy hanging onto the UK's policy coat tails back when all this began, we might have been able to get a handle on it. We swapped short term gain, in terms of a low cost labour force, increased rental incomes for long term loss, cost of schooling, cost of the coming social welfare demand and who knows what else.
I'm sure the liberal brigade will be along in a moment to decry what is staring us all in the face and accuse people of being wannabe stormfronters, and that's fine....they'll reap what's been sown along with the rest of us.

EKRIUQ

super_furry wrote: »

The alarming thing is the lack of will to even debate the issue on any level for fear of being labelled as racist.

Too true, and the writing was on the wall 10 years ago with the bogus asylum seekers (90%) and any one in the next posts with a strong point of view will be called a racist!!

dlofnep

Thanks - listening to it now.

PDN

darkman2 wrote: »

How much longer will it be, I wonder, before we wake up one morning and collectively realise that we have destroyed the social cohesion of this country?

Social cohesion? As when we were all poor, ignorant and dominated by the Catholic Church - but we stuck together by reminding each other how we hated the British?

Thank God this country has changed from the cultural, intellectual and economic backwater it used to be.

MIN2511

darkman2 wrote: »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/worldtonight/ram/worldtonight_immigration_20071204.ram


How much longer will it be, I wonder, before we wake up one morning and collectively realise that we have destroyed the social cohesion of this country? We have seen what has happened in the UK but more particularly the race riots in France. We are going the exact same direction only faster then they did. The ghettoes are there - and new ones are springing up all over the place. Balbriggan will surely go down as the first immigrant town in Ireland. An 'all black' school? FFS have we apartheid
going on now!? Someone has screwed up big time. Its alright for the Middle class areas in Dublin. They have rarely seen this yet. They will. Note on that link - the mention of the faltering economy at the end - we have big problems coming.

We need much tougher immigration and social policy and we need it now. We need a sense of direction. In the end the 'opportunities' are gone. We screwed up when we should have learned from the failures in France and the UK. What makes it worse is we had the benefit of hindsight but were too feeble to plan immigration and integration properly. Imagine any woman that had a child here could automatically be Irish only 4 or 5 years ago!? It was long before that IMO we should have got our act together.

While i understand that you want to preserve the Irish values, you have to understand that with success comes a price. Ireland wouldn't be the way it is now if it wasn't for the Celtic boom, unfortunately it also comes with problems. Immigration cannot be tackled in one day, one month or a year. It has to be planned, for Ireland’s continuous success ye have to understand the need for more immigrants.
I came here 6 years ago, as a student still an international student btw. I hope to get a work permit next year; i actually love Dublin and consider my self a dub.
But i also understand how ye would feel about bunch of f***** immigrants are taking away everything... sorry is all i can say:)

Flex

PDN wrote: »

Social cohesion? As when we were all poor, ignorant and dominated by the Catholic Church - but we stuck together by reminding each other how we hated the British?

Thank God this country has changed from the cultural, intellectual and economic backwater it used to be.

:rolleyes:

dlofnep

Did anyone listen to that one at around the 5 minute mark? She was a disgrace to the people of Ireland. There are certain ways to address things.. Her scanger accent didn't help her case either.

Wertz

lol
"I wasn't racist until they all came here"

Scanger accent or not, she's entitled to her POV. Besides the intended audience for that show wouldn't be much able to tell what or where her accent was....the fact that you passed remark on it perhaps shows an intolerance to certain social classes in this country....much like her intolerance to immigrants no?

Well balanced article I thought.

Dyr

PDN wrote: »

Social cohesion? As when we were all poor, ignorant and dominated by the Catholic Church - but we stuck together by reminding each other how we hated the British?
.

reading angelas ashes again? :rolleyes:

look, its just the way of the right thinking people who run this place that they have to ape whatever it is the brits and europeans were doing ten years after they did it. must keep up with the jones' even when the jones realise it was balls up

dlofnep

Wertz wrote: »

Scanger accent or not, she's entitled to her POV. Besides the intended audience for that show wouldn't be much able to tell what or where her accent was....the fact that you passed remark on it perhaps shows an intolerance to certain social classes in this country....much like her intolerance to immigrants no?

I'm not intolerant to anyone. I was highlighting that they tried to find the most ignorant and awful sounding person on the street to argue the case against immigration. I'm sure they went around to dozens of people, but opted to use the one who had the most dramatic things to say.

Bob in Belfast

super_furry wrote: »

"Ah sure it'll never happen to us. If we ignore it, it'll just go away."

The alarming thing is the lack of will to even debate the issue on any level for fear of being labelled as racist.

RACIST:)

PHB wrote: »

Yep, that's why our economies are suffering and the economies which wouldn't let immigrants in are doing great .... oh wait

:rolleyes:

Yes because the British historically have an excellent record on deciding what is best for Ireland:rolleyes:

Conor108

ronoc wrote: »

Yes because the British historically have an excellent record on deciding what is best for Ireland:rolleyes:

ZING!:D

Supercell

I think it would be a bit rich for Ireland to outright ban immigration from certain places given our history since the famine years, however I think as a small country we need to have some sense of scale as to what we can sustainably cope with, we clearly cannot cope structurewise with the amounts coming in recently- witness the "white flight" from some areas of west and north Dublin (surely the ghettos of the future).

I'd be in favour of some kind of points based scheme that attracts the best and brightest to here and maybe a some kind of diversity lottery like the yanks have to bring others that have no obvious benifit to us (in terms of skills in an area there is a shortage of here) but nevertheless will enhance us culturally.

The_Conductor

Longfield wrote:

I think it would be a bit rich for Ireland to outright ban immigration from certain places given our history since the famine years.

I disagree. Its not that long ago that I was refused a summer job in Germany, by a well known multinational, on the basis that they did not want Turks or Irish. Similarly- I have been delibertly tripped up in the street and robbed, just for being white. You cannot have an open door policy from anywhere whatsoever. Certainly- you can bring in your points based scheme- akin to what they have in Australia or New Zealand- but it is naive in the extreme to think that even with this that its being racist to not insist on implementing quarantines and medical examines for people from certain countries or regions. If you think this is racist- think about Ellis Island- where the Irish used be quarantined before they were allowed to disembark at New York, along with the detention ships off Darwin etc.

We cannot blame immigrants for our floundering health system- however we insist on implementing measures to try and safeguard the health of the general populace (I'm thinking multiple resistant TB and other diseases such as Polio that we once had wiped out- but are increasingly making a reappearance in certain communities).

Re: Immigrants and bizzarely high numbers of road deaths- whacking up road signs in Russian, Polish, Latvian and god only knows what other languages- is an exercise in futility. Its the exact same thing as happens in Spain- our Irish consulate there repatriates very high numbers of road fatalities (over 1 a week) back to Ireland. People when away from home do take chances that they would not necessarily take in their own countries. This can only be addressed by delibertly targetting the at-risk groups. However everyone is so scared of being tarred as racist- that blabbering about warning signs in multiple languages is all that comes about. I don't read Russian- if a large sign in high-illumination painted Russian stares at me over a hedge in Co. Meath its a distraction I can certainly do without.

I don't see that there is a right and a wrong here- and I also do not see that we owe anyone anything. We were not well treated anywhere after the famine years- and if you think we were, you are looking through rose coloured lenses. We were the navies that built much of Britain, including its undergrounds and its railways. We were the underclass only good for manual labour- if at all, in the States. Our only friends were those who were also staunch Catholics- the Poles, the Italians the Spaniards- we stood together in our faith, and nothing else.

Times do change........

Giblet

Next person to post rolleyes as the only response gets banned. If you can't make a point, don't post.

Supercell

smccarrick, I'm not entirely sure of the point you are making?
Either you are for some immigration restriction or not, your post is a bit unclear?

I don't think banning people from one place or another is the right approach, but I do think we need to make sure the people we are inviting to our shores are a benefit to our country rather than burden.

I certainly agree that if these people come from areas with higher levels of some diseases than here than health screening should be necessary for our own citizens safety.

mike65

Fupps sake this is the same as the last hundred threads Darkman2 started on this topic

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/search.php?searchid=503074

Mike.

darkman2

Kevin Myers brings it up in the Irish Times every day - I dont see you having a go at him;) Besides I have not started 100 threads on immigration anyway.




Its a serious issue though and probrably the most serious and difficult one we have to try and address now, not later. On a previous point - what I meant by 'social cohesion' being put at risk is that our communities in the Republic have generally got along very well with a couple of bumps in the road. We dont have mass riots between different groups and we generally are a happy and content little nation - seemingly always even when we were dirt poor! We still are but for how long can we sustain it with these numbers of immigrants relative to our size? Like I say look at France and the UK.

mike65

Republic have generally got along very well with a couple of bumps in the road. We dont have mass riots between different groups and we generally are a happy and content little nation - seemingly always even when we were dirt poor

Apathy!

Mike.

0ubliette

PDN wrote: »

Thank God this country has changed from the cultural, intellectual and economic backwater it used to be.

James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Patrick Kavanagh, Francis Bacon et al all say hello. We may have been poor back i nthe day, but cultural and intellectual backwater we certainly were ****ing not. Think before you post in future, thanks.

Can anyone give a breakdown of what the bbc show says? I dont listen to podcasts as i find i have better things to do with my time, like poking dog **** with a stick.

Terry

:rolleyes:

Serously though, we have messed up.
We allowed hundreds of thousands of people come here unchecked.
We don't have the infrastructure to accomodate them and this is going to lead to ghettoism.

I've said this many times here and people have accused me of over-reacting. Give it time and then come back and suck my balls, bcause I will be proven right.

Integration is the only way forward.

Edit: I meant to quote Giblet there for teh funneh.
Fúck it. I'm off to the pub.

mike65

James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Patrick Kavanagh, Francis Bacon et al all say hello. We may have been poor back i nthe day, but cultural and intellectual backwater we certainly were ****ing not. Think before you post in future, thanks.

And they left or rather had to leave as did so many of Irelands best writers. Why? cos they were under the cosh of the crosier.

Mike.

Bob in Belfast

mike65 wrote: »

And they left or rather had to leave as did so many of Irelands best writers. Why? cos they were under the cosh of the crosier.

Mike.

Patrick Kavanagh never left Ireland.

mike65

He did but came back after London did'nt work out for him. Anyway you know the point I'm making - the Irish branch of the Catholic Church was so civilised it drove out the creative for generations. Still, it gave those who left a greater fame and acclaim than if they had stayed.

Mike.

herbieflowers

true and all those writers' works were indelibly Irish...it provided the perfect inspiration, haha!

PDN

darkman2 wrote: »

Its a serious issue though and probrably the most serious and difficult one we have to try and address now, not later. On a previous point - what I meant by 'social cohesion' being put at risk is that our communities in the Republic have generally got along very well with a couple of bumps in the road. We dont have mass riots between different groups and we generally are a happy and content little nation - seemingly always even when we were dirt poor! We still are but for how long can we sustain it with these numbers of immigrants relative to our size? Like I say look at France and the UK.

The lack of mass riots does not make cohesion. Religious minorities were treated like second class citizens and were too powerless to do anything about it (a legacy of this still remains in the Catholic domination of education).

We were not happy and content. Millions of us had to leave our little country to find jobs.

Dyr

mike65 wrote: »

He did but came back after London did'nt work out for him. Anyway you know the point I'm making - the Irish branch of the Catholic Church was so civilised it drove out the creative for generations. Still, it gave those who left a greater fame and acclaim than if they had stayed.

Mike.

you're saying the catholic church ran joyce, kavanagh, bacon, wilde etc out of ireland? Any proof of that handy?

Hydroquinone

herbieflowers wrote: »

true and all those writers' works were indelibly Irish...it provided the perfect inspiration, haha!

Oscar Wilde's work was indelibly Irish?
Is that sarcasm?
The only person who was more of a West Brit than him was Wellington.

Bob in Belfast

Hydroquinone wrote: »

Oscar Wilde's work was indelibly Irish?
Is that sarcasm?
The only person who was more of a West Brit than him was Wellington.

'An Irish airman foresees his death'?
That's 'Irish'

aphex™

I find it funny how people who arrive here with nothing end up on the same rung of the ladder as the working class Irish i.e. People who've been fairly well established here for generations

Take up the offer of a free education people and almost none of this will affect you!! FFS!!

Dyr

Oscar wilde wrote that? :eek:

Bob in Belfast

Bambi wrote: »

Oscar wilde wrote that? :eek:

Yeats did sorry me a little bit drunk.

mike65

Bambi

The atmosphere was not exactly condusive to creative thinking when pretty much everything was under a close gaze, look what happened to someone like Edna O'Brien and her novel The Country Girls. Its not an earth-shaking piece of prose but she got hammered from the pulpit up and down the country while copies were actually burned in public.

Francis Bacon was gay and a radical artist what chance would he have had if he stayed? It should said he was banished by his fathers conservative attitudes, not the churchs' but John Charles McQuaid was the Archibishop of Dublin when he would have been producing works that proberbly had the bishops doing head twirls.

The social/political evironment was suspcious of "art" that was'nt sanctioned by the Catholic church. Even Bob Geldof got flack only 30 years ago.

Still thats an era that will never return.

Mike.

HollyB

super_furry wrote: »

"Ah sure it'll never happen to us. If we ignore it, it'll just go away."

The alarming thing is the lack of will to even debate the issue on any level for fear of being labelled as racist.

It is very easy for certain groups to hide behind accusations of racism whenever serious concerns are raised about immigration issues. It's an excellent defence.

I remember in the run up to the Citizenship Referendum, a "No" pamphlet was literally shoved into my hand, filled with drivellish sob-story rhetoric about two little babies being born side by side in a hospital but one of those poor little babies would be born entirely without rights, and without a nationality - all it needed was an accompaniment played on a teeny, tiny violin. The Referendum was racist, the Minister for Justice was racist for having dared to suggest such an amendment, everyone who voted in favour of the Referendum was racist, etc.

Now, all deportations are racist, even if those being deported have exhausted the asylum process and failed to qualify for permission to remain.

If every single story told by an asylum seeker, regardless of how implausible or contradictory, is not swallowed hook, line and sinker and the asylum seeker in question is not immediately granted residency and full citizenship, then it's because the immigration authorities are racist.

The denominational schools have had the right to give priority to members of their own denomination and to protect their ethos for years, a right protected under the Equal Status Act, but now this is apparently racist because children not of the particular denomination, who happen to be foreign nationals, are having to wait until the children who are members of that denomination are accommodated.

The racism card is being played so frequently that it's starting to lose its impact. It's like the boy who cried 'wolf' - if racism is cried at every turn, and used as a defence against every possible reservation about immigration, then there is a risk that genuine cases of racism will be ignored.

OPENROAD

Terry wrote: »

:rolleyes:

Serously though, we have messed up.
We allowed hundreds of thousands of people come here unchecked.
We don't have the infrastructure to accomodate them and this is going to lead to ghettoism.

I really do hope the Americans round up all the illegal Irish in the US and send them packing


As for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants here, the majority I am sure are making a great contribution to the country.

However we are a small country and as our government couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery we should limit numbers. But it is the same elsewhere, so I hope we don't complain when the door is shut on us.

thefinalstage

Integration is wrong for two reasons.

1. Some would get large houses and some would get small. The people who get small ones would cry discrimination.

2. Where are all of these houses, school places etc. going to come from?

Mr.Micro

Ireland has created great wealth for many in the last 10 to 12 years and the population on the whole has benefited. Much of that wealth in recent years was created in part by construction and the housing boom whereby a great many ordinary people could make a lot of money by selling their homes ,build a new one and still have plenty left over. That stage is gone for now, but there is still plenty of money out there, so of course there will be mass immigration as we are now seen as a rich country. I do not have a lot of faith in the Government to handle this delicate situation if there is a major downturn(I am not convinced that will happen) and future immigrants may be left disenchanted. Too long the Government here has slavishly followed the UK policies on such matters. Wait to see what the UK does. I suspect if the economy slows down then the economic migrants will as well, as both are directly related,and those that tough it out here will be assimilated into the population.

thefinalstage

Just as an aside. Anybody think that the government wants a down turn in the economy to remove a large number of foreigners from the country free of charge?

HollyB

thelastangryman wrote: »

Just as an aside. Anybody think that the government wants a down turn in the economy to remove a large number of foreigners from the country free of charge?

Would that actually work?

Nevyn

HollyB wrote: »

The denominational schools have had the right to give priority to members of their own denomination and to protect their ethos for years, a right protected under the Equal Status Act, but now this is apparently racist because children not of the particular denomination, who happen to be foreign nationals, are having to wait until the children who are members of that denomination are accommodated.

Wrong, schools were made exempt from the equal status act due to how fúcked up the system is here.

Hydroquinone

thelastangryman wrote: »

Just as an aside. Anybody think that the government wants a down turn in the economy to remove a large number of foreigners from the country free of charge?

I'd say not. Anyone who's old enough to be in government today knows only too well what a drastic state the country was in before the Celtic Tiger started up. Who wants to go back to that?

OPENROAD

Hydroquinone wrote: »

I'd say not. Anyone who's old enough to be in government today knows only too well what a drastic state the country was in before the Celtic Tiger started up. Who wants to go back to that?

Exactly boat loads of Irish leaving daily, living off social welfare in UK and getting free houses and BMWs.

HollyB

Thaedydal wrote: »

Wrong, schools were made exempt from the equal status act due to how fúcked up the system is here.

The various religions set up schools to educate members of their own denomination. To prove the need for a new Catholic school, the parish priest must furnish evidence that enough children are being baptised - not born - in his parish to justify it.

Why, then, is it so unreasonable that the same school give priority to the baptised Catholics it was set up for?

Hydroquinone

OPENROAD wrote: »

Exactly boat loads of Irish leaving daily, living off social welfare in UK and getting free houses and BMWs.

How many people on the dole in the UK do you know who got a free BMW, then?

OPENROAD

Hydroquinone wrote: »

How many people on the dole in the UK do you know who got a free BMW, then?

my mistake,its a Mercedes in the UK, the BMWs are in Ireland;)

thefinalstage

HollyB wrote: »

Would that actually work?

Yes. If there is no money to repatriate the economic migrants will up sticks.

Hydroquinone wrote: »

I'd say not. Anyone who's old enough to be in government today knows only too well what a drastic state the country was in before the Celtic Tiger started up. Who wants to go back to that?

I'm not old enough to talk about that period but my parents say it was bad indeed. All I'm saying is the government will accept everyone, take the economic boom than see a lot of them leave and get a boost to the air line industry. Its all linear.

HollyB

thelastangryman wrote: »

Yes. If there is no money to repatriate the economic migrants will up sticks.

What about welfare tourists?