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

OPENROAD

thelastangryman wrote: »

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



Just like the Irish went to where the work was.

thefinalstage

HollyB wrote: »

What about welfare tourists?

They would most likely run as well. Is that the actual term used for them? I thought ti was leeches?

Romero

HollyB wrote: »

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?

So True! its not the churches fault that there are not enough schoold for the influx of non-catholics, if the schools are built on Church owned grounds and gets some funding from the church, then they should allow the school to pick catholics children over non-catholics, in fairness my local primary schools take in its fair share of non-catholics, We even have one emmigrant woman who comes in with the face covered bar the eyes and she scares small children, don't see her intergrating into irish society. As the op has stated we are going to end up in a similar mess as the french and the english, as our government has failed to learn any lessons from these two failures of integration.

HollyB

thelastangryman wrote: »

They would most likely run as well.

Why? Unless the dole, child benefit, rent allowance, etc, is either lowered or barred to non-Irish nationals, then a welfare tourist may not feel that they have any need to leave.

Of course, they may find a more profitable country to move to.

Macker

darkman2 wrote: »

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.

Although you make some valid points I don't think Mr. Myers works for the Times no more ,it's all in the detail my friend .

edit for mong spelling

thefinalstage

HollyB wrote: »

Why? Unless the dole, child benefit, rent allowance, etc, is either lowered or barred to non-Irish nationals, then a welfare tourist may not feel that they have any need to leave.

Of course, they may find a more profitable country to move to.

If the country truly goes to hell than the Irish will be looked after first due to increased xenophobia amongst the general populace. Thus the politicians will be increasingly xenophobic and the Irish are given what little there is first.

HollyB

Romero wrote: »

So True! its not the churches fault that there are not enough schoold for the influx of non-catholics, if the schools are built on Church owned grounds and gets some funding from the church, then they should allow the school to pick catholics children over non-catholics, in fairness my local primary schools take in its fair share of non-catholics, We even have one emmigrant woman who comes in with the face covered bar the eyes and she scares small children, don't see her intergrating into irish society. As the op has stated we are going to end up in a similar mess as the french and the english, as our government has failed to learn any lessons from these two failures of integration.

As most Catholic schools do, once they've taken care of their own - going above and beyond the call of duty in some cases. Take one in Balbriggan, for example.

Breda O'Brien, The Irish Times, 8 September 2007 wrote:

St Teresa’s national school, the largest primary school in Balbriggan, is a typical example. It is a Catholic school with about 480 pupils. From senior infants to sixth class, it has about 100 children of non-Irish origin, or newcomer children. Seventy per cent of that 100 are black. Because the school took an extra class of junior infants this year to help out in the crisis, it has about 90 children in those classes, of whom about half are black and one-third are non-Roman Catholic.

If it was a case that they gave priority to a white non-Catholic over a black Catholic or a black non-Catholic who had been on the waiting list longer (unless the white child has a sibling in the school, of course) then a case might be made for racism.

HollyB

thelastangryman wrote: »

If the country truly goes to hell than the Irish will be looked after first due to increased xenophobia amongst the general populace. Thus the politicians will be increasingly xenophobic and the Irish are given what little there is first.

Would that be legal under EU law? Don't EU citizens have to be treated equally?

super-lloyd

Personally I currenty leave in Australia, a country were there are heaps more immigrant than in France (where I leaved before) and probably Ireland I suppose.

Well I never saw such a peacefull, harmonious, racism free country. It's awesome and it all worked out nicely. Now I really wonder why most European country have such "immigration problem" while Australia which has much more immigrant worked out so well....

Other thant that it's true that planning is important and that Australia is filterig its immigrant (but it not always he case)

OPENROAD

HollyB wrote: »

Would that be legal under EU law? Don't EU citizens have to be treated equally?

I would assume they would be treated equally just like we would be in say the UK in a similar situation.

thefinalstage

HollyB wrote: »

Would that be legal under EU law? Don't EU citizens have to be treated equally?

If the country goes to hell as is the scenario here we could easily close our borders and just say we are looking after our own. Think Germany.

HollyB

thelastangryman wrote: »

If the country goes to hell as is the scenario here we could easily close our borders and just say we are looking after our own. Think Germany.

Would we need to leave the EU for that?

thefinalstage

HollyB wrote: »

Would we need to leave the EU for that?

No. We never have to accept what the EU proposes. Look at Britain, they still have there own currency.

OPENROAD

HollyB wrote: »

Would we need to leave the EU for that?

What do you think?

OPENROAD

thelastangryman wrote: »

No. We never have to accept what the EU proposes. Look at Britain, they still have there own currency.

Your on the wind up, right?

HollyB

OPENROAD wrote: »

What do you think?

I would imagine that yes, we would need to leave the EU if we were to pull back on the equal treatment of EU citizens, free movement or anything like that, but I don't know the answer for certain so I asked.

OPENROAD

HollyB wrote: »

I would imagine that yes, we would need to leave the EU if we were to pull back on the equal treatment of EU citizens, free movement or anything like that, but I don't know the answer for certain so I asked.

Well you are right we would have to leave EU.

I think we can close our borders on public health grounds or public security grounds.

But EU citizens have the same rights as we would have.

thefinalstage

OPENROAD wrote: »

Your on the wind up, right?

Well you obviously can't close them per say but you could put in so much red tape as to make it undesirable.

OPENROAD

thelastangryman wrote: »

Well you obviously can't close them per say but you could put in so much red tape as to make it undesirable.

Like what. You can't, we are signed up to the whole EU thing, end of.

You refer to the UK. Well John Major negotiated an opt out of the single european currency.

Hydroquinone

OPENROAD wrote: »

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

What in the name of God are you waffling about?

OPENROAD

Hydroquinone wrote: »

What in the name of God are you waffling about?

On the wind up, you are a bit slow tonight.:)

Hydroquinone

There's a lot of it about, it seems.
All you wind up merchants should wise up - there's only one finger movement in the difference, after all
I'll leave it to your imagination which finger I mean.

darkman2

Macker wrote: »

Although you make some valid points I don't think Mr. Myers works for the Times no more ,it's all in the detail my friend .

edit for mong spelling

Your right. He works for the indo now. My mistake.

DublinWriter

Irish people complaining about immigration - anyone else choking on the irony?

SimpleSam06

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?

The driving purpose of the government at the time wasn't the good and welfare of the nation, it was basically that the people in government not be among the huddled masses. What makes you think it has changed since then?

justcallmetex

PHB wrote: »

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

Statement like that needs some kind of supporting evidence. wha u got?

justcallmetex

DublinWriter wrote: »

Irish people complaining about immigration - anyone else choking on the irony?

ME

SimpleSam06

justcallmetex wrote: »

Statement like that needs some kind of supporting evidence. wha u got?

Hes mixing up correlation and causation there. Economies do great, then loads of migrants show up. Not loads of migrants show up and then economies start booming.

daniel3982

Send me back, I'm a dirty, sponging, immigrant bast*rd taking advantage of Irish services and hospiltality (or is it ok for me because I hold a British passport and not a Polish/Lithuanian/Czech one?).

justcallmetex

daniel3982 wrote: »

Send me back, I'm a dirty, sponging, immigrant bast*rd taking advantage of Irish services and hospiltality (or is it ok for me because I hold a British passport and not a Polish/Lithuanian/Czech one?).

I think a lot of people would like that. There seems to be a lot of people out there who want the old days back with a mono cultural mono religious Ireland with our recent economic success intact. At least we're still a nation of dreamers.

Wertz

dlofnep wrote: »

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.

Okay fair enough, that comment was a bit off the cuff on my account.
I'd be more of the opinion that they went to an estate, probably a council estate where "people on the ground" (I hate that phrase) that are currently affected by apparent immigration problems in the area than people in the €500K pads out on the shoreline are...but it's something that's going to affect all but the super rich in the deacdes to come.

Laslo

super-lloyd wrote: »

Personally I currenty leave in Australia, a country were there are heaps more immigrant than in France (where I leaved before) and probably Ireland I suppose.

Well I never saw such a peacefull, harmonious, racism free country. It's awesome and it all worked out nicely. Now I really wonder why most European country have such "immigration problem" while Australia which has much more immigrant worked out so well....

Yeah, wouldn't it be great if we could all be like Australia. Where the native Aborigines have been subjugated for generations and race attacks are commonplace.

Wertz

Just read the rest of thread; to people suggesting we "close" our borders should the economy go pear-shaped, tell me exactly what that achieves.
To quote my first post in the thread, barring stable doors is no good to us now, ie. it's too late; by the time the economy turns bad (assuming that that happens) most of those immigrants, be they EU or non-EU will have laid down roots here, will have kids that were born and raised here, etc, fair enough some will return to their own countries....what do we do with the rest? Round them up at gun point and frog march them to the airport? Obviously not. But all those people who had gainful employment back when times were better, who perhaps paid taxes and insurance now have no job, no means of income...but they still have outgoings and families to feed...so it's off down the social welfare office.
It's already happening. I had cause to visit my local office a month or so back (times are getting tight in construction) and apart from the usual selection of Irish layabouts waiting on their brew, nearly all the remaining people waiting in line were not Irish. That is only going to worsen; you're deluded if you think otherwise. We can' just turn around and put a sign up in the dole office saying "Irish Only", we can't even try and be underhand about it; it's outright discrimination.
Now how does our already labouring social welfare system cope with the extra payments that need to be found? Cutbacks someplace else? Raise taxes? What suffers then? An already supposedly underfunded (read mismanaged) health system? An already lacking education system? What?
Or do we start borrowing ourselves back into a situation of national debt?
Of course this is all hypothetical and somewhat rhetorical...the simple fact is that no-one in government or the civil service has had the foresight to consider that this might become a major issue in the future when all that stamp duty revenue and corporation tax has dried up, they jst assumed that we open our borders and everything will be rosy forever.
The country possibly heads back to the dark old days except now we also have new social problems, coming from our newfound ghettoes and ethnic minorities, crime, social unrest, who knows what? I'm a real optimist eh?

Also to anyone harping on about the irony of us giving out about immigration; the major difference about when we all had to emigrate was that we went to work and to work only...most countries except the UK did not hand us social welfare/housing if things turned rough...you either worked, wenmt home or starved and went homeless. It's not the same as the cakewalk immigrants and asylum seekers face upon arrival to this island.

Pete4779

PHB wrote: »

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

True. Norway for example is completely ****ed. As is Iceland. And Denmark.

SubjectSean

Wertz wrote: »

Also to anyone harping on about the irony of us giving out about immigration; the major difference about when we all had to emigrate was that we went to work and to work only...most countries except the UK did not hand us social welfare/housing if things turned rough...you either worked, wenmt home or starved and went homeless. It's not the same as the cakewalk immigrants and asylum seekers face upon arrival to this island.

Absolute bollocks. The Irish have been involved in welfare fraud or criminality at every location in the diaspora. Irish people giving out about immigration isn't just ironic it's profoundly hypocritical.

SimpleSam06

SubjectSean wrote: »

Absolute bollocks. The Irish have been involved in welfare fraud or criminality at every location in the diaspora. Irish people giving out about immigration isn't just ironic it's profoundly hypocritical.

When you can tell the difference between a small country recovering from decades of severe depression and a large continent with enormous resources, and their relative ability to absorb immigrants, you can come back and talk about bollocks. We don't owe anyone a damn thing, and we certainly don't owe any favours to any economic migrants.

Latchy

SubjectSean wrote: »

Absolute bollocks. The Irish have been involved in welfare fraud or criminality at every location in the diaspora.

Some more than others

Irish people giving out about immigration isn't just ironic it's profoundly hypocritical.

Absolutely

Wertz

Sorry, I can only speak from personal experience of my brief emigration and that of some friends; I went illegal in the US a few years back. I found work for a while doing what Americans wouldn't do, but lacking any sort of legal status or an SSN most employers just weren't interested and those that were were paying f*ck all. I eeked it out and when I could do so no longer, returned home. Out of 5 of us that went only 2 remained (through marraige to citizens). Both now hold down jobs legally but if they lose that job it's find another one or f*ck off; the yanks aren't interested in giving you social welfare....hell they'll barely give it to their own nationals. Even if I had been on a work visa I wouldn't have gotten any much help.
To commit welfare fraud, there must first be a system to defraud that'll pay out for more than a few months, barring foodstamps. You sure as hell don't get rent allowance, child benefit, medical cards or a myriad of other handouts we see fit to furnish people with here. Since the US was Ireland's destination of choice, I feel my statement is accurate unless you can prove otherwise. I can't speak for Australian welfare system.
I will however agree that benefit fraud was a mainstay of a lot of emigrants that chose the UK as their new home.
....and obviously you're going to get criminality everywhere to some extent, particularly amongst poorer immigrants....just like we're seeing in Irelan now and IMO will see a lot more of in the years to come.

....and that leads to another point: we let all and sundry in here with not even a check on criminal background? Even the yanks aren't that dumb...

HollyB

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

When you can tell the difference between a small country recovering from decades of severe depression and a large continent with enormous resources, and their relative ability to absorb immigrants, you can come back and talk about bollocks. We don't owe anyone a damn thing, and we certainly don't owe any favours to any economic migrants.

That's an excellent point. Ireland is a comparatively small country; there are limits to the number of immigrants the country can cope with.

EU citizens have the right to come and go as they please, but much stricter controls should be enforced regarding non-EU immigrants - for example, work visas should be granted only if there are no suitably qualified EU citizens and employers should have to prove that they made every reasonable effort to recruit EU applicants.

If 2,000 people are here illegally and subject to deportation, those 2,000 people should be deported - not just 40 of them.

HollyB

Wertz wrote: »

....and that leads to another point: we let all and sundry in here with not even a check on criminal background? Even the yanks aren't that dumb...

Absolutely. And if an immigrant is breaking the law, he or she should be deported.

Latchy

Wertz wrote: »

I will however agree that benefit fraud was a mainstay of a lot of emigrants that chose the UK as their new home.

It was not uncommon in the grapevine during 70s and 80s to hear some returning irish immigrants boast about how they were signing on at several different dole offices in London .Some would even tell about how they got married (for a day ) to an african at a registry office for the sum of between £500/1000 .It wasn't just the irish who were involved in these scams, far from it but if anyone can recall Roger Cook were in one of his programmes about 7 years ago ,he exposed some irish people in London involved in scams as mentioned above and how their greed eventualy caught up with them .

Hydroquinone

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

The driving purpose of the government at the time wasn't the good and welfare of the nation, it was basically that the people in government not be among the huddled masses. What makes you think it has changed since then?

What makes you think I think it has?

I was doubting the idea that the government was engineering a downturn in the economy to get rid of foreigners, that's all.

HollyB

Hydroquinone wrote: »

What makes you think I think it has?

I was doubting the idea that the government was engineering a downturn in the economy to get rid of foreigners, that's all.

A downturn in the economy could also be politically disastrous for those in office at the time.

A large percentage of the immigrants who are in the country at present are likely to remain. It's the immigrants who could potentially arrive in the future that the government may wish to dissuade.

OPENROAD

Wertz wrote: »

?

Also to anyone harping on about the irony of us giving out about immigration; the major difference about when we all had to emigrate was that we went to work and to work only...most countries except the UK did not hand us social welfare/housing if things turned rough...you either worked, wenmt home or starved and went homeless. It's not the same as the cakewalk immigrants and asylum seekers face upon arrival to this island.

Yup and most immigrants here like when the Irish went abroad, do so to work and better themseles. Are you suggesting that we Irish are unique or something. The Irish are the only hardworking people, next you will be telling me that all Catholics are Irish. Come on !! You are going to get immigrants who will be here who will milk the system, just like some Irish who went to the UK did the same. They got social payments, free housing etc,. and then would go down the pub and slag off the English. You know times were tough in the UK, what would your reaction had been if the English had decided, we are not going to take any more Irish.

OPENROAD

HollyB wrote: »

That's an excellent point. Ireland is a comparatively small country; there are limits to the number of immigrants the country can cope with.

EU citizens have the right to come and go as they please, but much stricter controls should be enforced regarding non-EU immigrants - for example, work visas should be granted only if there are no suitably qualified EU citizens and employers should have to prove that they made every reasonable effort to recruit EU applicants.

If 2,000 people are here illegally and subject to deportation, those 2,000 people should be deported - not just 40 of them.

Nice to see you have got your head around the fact that EU citizens can come and go as they please. Well done.

justcallmetex

fcuk it the thing people opposed to emigration to this country are concerned about is that they may have to pay a little more in tax to keep families out of poverty in their own country.

Seems to me we're too fcukin greedy to give a **** about the poor. emigration is not the issue here.

The_Conductor

justcallmetex wrote:

fcuk it the thing people opposed to emigration to this country are concerned about is that they may have to pay a little more in tax to keep families out of poverty in their own country.

Seems to me we're too fcukin greedy to give a **** about the poor. emigration is not the issue here.

Between PAYE, Class A PRSI, compulsary Contributory Superannuation and other deductions- I pay a little shy of 56% of my income in various taxes and surcharges. I also voluntarily help run a charity that provides educational opportunities in third world countries. Grow up and open your eyes. Its not black and white out there- not everyone who is worried about immigration to this country is a greedy rich fcuk who doesn't care about the poor. Come back after you've served in APSO and moan about the ingrates if you feel like it. Moaning that people who are worried about immigration are simply being greedy- is even worse than the idiots on soapboxes bleating racist crap. Its not a black and white world. People naturally will try to avail of whatever opportunities are out there. Ireland is widely seen as being a "soft-touch", where people have more money than they have sense. There have been several infamous incidences of advertisements to this end along with tips on how to get here widely published in otherwise reputable newspapers- and I'm not talking solely about those published in Lagos. To be honest- with the obvious exclusion of two interviewees in the BBC piece- it was and is quite a balanced piece of journalism. You're not racist to want to try to take care of the less-well-off in your own country, over and above those blow-ins (I would also include those who left this country years ago and didn't experience this country in the 1980s but now want to come back here with rose-tinted lenses in the blow-ins category). I am not racist. I am appalled at the poverty I see every single day of the week- not even 100 yards from Dail Eireann. Its the likes of you who are trying to say that I must be racist, because I endorse some manner of controls on immigration into this country. Go to hell.

johnathan woss

To those talking about irony, etc etc

The Irish that emigrated went mostly to either
a) large, relatively young countries that were largely composed of immigrants, and that had large amounts of untapped land and resources and a need for labour (think the US, Canada, Australia)

b) Britain, which for most of the period was the same country anyway, which has an unique historical link with Ireland, which has always required Irish labour and birth rates, which was crying out for Irish soldiers(at times the British army has been 50% Irish), which was crying out for Irish labour to help rebuild cities after WW2, etc etc etc


Ireland is a small country that by the most extremely conservative estimates has taken in over 10% of it's population in immigrants in a very short period of time.
Most of these immigrants are from countries with no historical or cultural link to Ireland whatsoever.

If you can show how the two situations are similar, and hence show how Irish people worrying about the current immigration is "ironic" or "hypocritical" or whatever, I am all ears.....

Wertz

OPENROAD wrote: »

Yup and most immigrants here like when the Irish went abroad, do so to work and better themseles. Are you suggesting that we Irish are unique or something. The Irish are the only hardworking people, next you will be telling me that all Catholics are Irish. Come on !! You are going to get immigrants who will be here who will milk the system, just like some Irish who went to the UK did the same. They got social payments, free housing etc,. and then would go down the pub and slag off the English. You know times were tough in the UK, what would your reaction had been if the English had decided, we are not going to take any more Irish.

Most yes, all no. I don't have figures to hand but I'd be of the opinion (however unpopular that opnion might be) that we and the UK have more than our fair share of welfare tourists, given our genorosity on that front.
Since neither we nor the UK have bothered to keep accurate tally on recent immigration figures, I'd be hard pressed to back that up with stats. Commonsense though that if your own country's average wage is bettered by the sum you get for sitting on your backside on these islands, you're invariably going to get a lot of people taking advantage of that fact (and who could really blame them?)...

...and in the event of economic downturn, a 'run' on our social welfare resources could be the result. We're already facing a crisis in non-contributory pensions in coming years....pile more demand on top of that and we're maybe left with people who worked and paid taxes through times of hardship for decades being shortchanged both economically and in terms of healthcare to meet the needs of those who only landed here because times were good and have decided to remain because the nation's coffers bankroll them.

WRT to your point on the UK doing it to us; had they done, could we really have blamed them? After all this was all at the same time as our countrymen were waging guerilla warfare on them on a few fronts (the economic front being one). The difference is with the UK is that their economy was/is a fair bit larger than ours, even per capita (I'm only going on recent GDP figures here mind), so they could absorb it. We can...for now. I'd hope that would remain the case. The maths don't add up to me, (only a layman's viewpoint though).

Anyway the argument is moot. It's too late to do a damn thing about it no matter whther you're for or against doing anything about it.

OPENROAD

Wertz wrote: »

Most yes, all no. I don't have figures to hand but I'd be of the opinion (however unpopular that opnion might be) that we and the UK have more than our fair share of welfare tourists, given our genorosity on that front.
Since neither we nor the UK have bothered to keep accurate tally on recent immigration figures, I'd be hard pressed to back that up with stats. Commonsense though that if your own country's average wage is bettered by the sum you get for sitting on your backside on these islands, you're invariably going to get a lot of people taking advantage of that fact (and who could really blame them?)...

...and in the event of economic downturn, a 'run' on our social welfare resources could be the result. We're already facing a crisis in non-contributory pensions in coming years....pile more demand on top of that and we're maybe left with people who worked and paid taxes through times of hardship for decades being shortchanged both economically and in terms of healthcare to meet the needs of those who only landed here because times were good and have decided to remain because the nation's coffers bankroll them.

WRT to your point on the UK doing it to us; had they done, could we really have blamed them? After all this was all at the same time as our countrymen were waging guerilla warfare on them on a few fronts (the economic front being one). The difference is with the UK is that their economy was/is a fair bit larger than ours, even per capita (I'm only going on recent GDP figures here mind), so they could absorb it. We can...for now. I'd hope that would remain the case. The maths don't add up to me, (only a layman's viewpoint though).

Anyway the argument is moot. It's too late to do a damn thing about it no matter whther you're for or against doing anything about it.

A well put across argument imo, and I agree with many if not all of your points. It is clear in particular with the UK that they have no indication of the real numbers. As to whether the UK could absorb the numbers, while I agree to a large extent with you, immigration and Irish are included in this would put pressure on services in the UK. My problem is that some Irish are all in favour of say allowing the illegal Irish in US to stay but will have zero tolerance on illegals here which I would agree with, zero tolerance for all illegals in US and here unless a valid argument can be put across by individuals. Their are some people that don't realise that many of our roads have been financed by British,French,German taxpayers and those that do know don't mind taking the money but don't want immigration from EU countries here. That's what really bugs me.