Immigration Debate - Mature comments only please

Fursey

Zambia232 wrote: »

Once upon a time I was paid 4.25 an hour in a shop.

I moved abroad for a while and was paid 10.50 an hour to move rubbish.

I worked every hour my boss wanted me to an every task asked of me I was so amazed to received the cash.

My point being of course they work hard.

It appears through that being a successful economy leads to mass Immigration and the potential small diluting of irish culture so we either embrace it or slam on the brakes and live in 1980 - 90 for the rest of our lives. If we make Ireland a nice place to live its only logical other people will want to live here.

One day the poles will get pissed of with hoards of some other nationality pouring through their boarders into their blooming economy.

It's more about controlling the numbers coming in IMO - turning areas into places where the Irish end up minority is just not on.

I notice that in this State some 16,000 more people signed on the dole since 1st January yet some 22,000 people arrived here from abroad and claimed a PPS number!:mad:

From what I can gather BTW Belfast has a tiny number of immigrants compared to Dublin - if you lived down here things might not look so rosy.

Fursey

View wrote: »

Voting for or against the Lisbon Treaty is not going to effect whether immigration happens, as the Lisbon Treaty doesn't say anything about it.
Freedom of Movement (of EU citizens) has been one of the basic principles of the EU (and its immediate predecessors) since the 1950s.

It is a concept that would prove almost impossible to change - care to speculate what the response from the other EU leaders would be were Bertie to ask for it to be changed because some people here have hang-ups about the citizens of other EU states that are living here?

(Personally, I'd doubt that most Irish people would vote in a referendum to change the principle when it was pointed out it would mean Irish people would no longer be free to move/live around the EU)

But there isn't free movement of workers in the EU anyway and IMO nor is there likley to be.

We voted on Nice on the clear understanding given by senior Irish politicians that Mass Immigration would not be the result - yet it was.

berliner

View wrote: »

Voting for or against the Lisbon Treaty is not going to effect whether immigration happens, as the Lisbon Treaty doesn't say anything about it.
Freedom of Movement (of EU citizens) has been one of the basic principles of the EU (and its immediate predecessors) since the 1950s.

It is a concept that would prove almost impossible to change - care to speculate what the response from the other EU leaders would be were Bertie to ask for it to be changed because some people here have hang-ups about the citizens of other EU states that are living here?

(Personally, I'd doubt that most Irish people would vote in a referendum to change the principle when it was pointed out it would mean Irish people would no longer be free to move/live around the EU)

99% of Irish people only go the the uk so the eu has no effect.I hate the whole eu project.It stinks to high heaven.:mad:

Mike...

berliner wrote: »

99% of Irish people only go the the uk so the eu has no effect.I hate the whole eu project.It stinks to high heaven.:mad:

+1
Agree, the whole EU thing is starting to show it's true colours,
Heard the newstalk debate on Lisbon, must say LIBERTAS presented a proper case, all the FF nomination to talk up could do was say that Libertas and "their friends in Sinn Fein were fools", again some A1 rethoric from FF, seems to me if you want to get something passed in Ireland all you need is SF on the other side

fly_agaric

*mono* wrote: »

+1
Agree, the whole EU thing is starting to show it's true colours,

LOL, I thought we Irish loved* the EU!!:D

*until the streams of cash dried up and were replaced by streams of economic migrants.

johnnyskeleton

berliner wrote: »

99% of Irish people only go the the uk so the eu has no effect.I hate the whole eu project.It stinks to high heaven.:mad:

Sounds like nonsense to me. Maybe the type of person who says "I won't eat that foreign muck or be bothered to parle vous francais" will only go to the UK, but loads of Irish people go to Germany, France, Belgium etc, and you'll find others in every other European Country. This could be for a few years or it could be for life.

This , if I'm reading it correctly puts about a quarter of Irish migrants going to the UK, and it puts the amount going to the 27 Country EU as higher than going to the UK.

This is of course not to mention the massive impact the EU has had on our economy, infrastructre, culture, environment, and laws (now more consumer/employee friendly than ever), and that we are now part of a major world power as opposed to being a poor, tiny island. We are still governed by corrupt politicians, but at least the EU ameliorates some of their negative effect.

And of course, you can go on holidays anywhere in the EU cheaply and easily, and Sweedish, Dutch, Italian and Polish girls are all free to come here as they please.

So, whatever about the global effects of the EU, it is the best thing that ever happened to Ireland, and while I'm open to hearing the debate on the Lisbon treaty, I would need something more solid than Gerry Adams saying "It gives us less power and we had very little say in the drafting of the treaty".

/rant

Zombrex

Fursey wrote: »

I notice that in this State some 16,000 more people signed on the dole since 1st January yet some 22,000 people arrived here from abroad and claimed a PPS number!:mad:

And ... ?

Are you suggesting that the 22,000 theoretical jobs that were filled by migrant workers should be going to the 16,000 who are on the Live Register (the Live Register is not a measure of unemployment by the way)

A leaving cert business studies student could explain the flaw in that type of kindergarten economics.

If an American jeans factory in Donegal closes the workers and their families there don't all just pack up and move to Cork to work in a new call centre or a McDonalds that is being filled with migrant workers.

The future economic issues facing the country are a little more complicated than that.

Zambia

Fursey wrote: »

From what I can gather BTW Belfast has a tiny number of immigrants compared to Dublin - if you lived down here things might not look so rosy.

Lived in Dublin long enough. I never said thing where rosy.

But you are correct in comparisson to Dublin, Belfast does have a small number of immigrants. To explain this Google "racist capital of europe"

View

Fursey wrote: »

But there isn't free movement of workers in the EU anyway and IMO nor is there likley to be.

Lots of workers move around the EU freely already. With the exception of citizens from some of the newer states (which are "in transition" for 10 years or so), EU citizens have a right to take up a job in any EU state that they want.

Fursey wrote: »

We voted on Nice on the clear understanding given by senior Irish politicians that Mass Immigration would not be the result - yet it was.

The Nice treaty, like the Lisbon treaty, did not alter the principle of free movement of people. If any EU economy performs strongly resulting in lots of job vacancies, these are there to be filled by any EU citizen and you get the migration of EU citizens to fill the vacancies.

It just happened to be our turn this time - in the past we were the ones migrating to other member states (mainly the UK) to fill the vacancies. Mind you people complained even more when their friends and families were leaving in droves - I guess it just goes to show people will always find something to complain about

View

berliner wrote: »

99% of Irish people only go the the uk so the eu has no effect.I hate the whole eu project.It stinks to high heaven.:mad:

True, historically the majority have gone to the UK but that doesn't mean a minority haven't gone elsewhere (Me for one!).

As for the UK, they would have been perfectly entitled at any stage to refuse to accept immigrants from Ireland (up to the accession of Ireland and the UK to the European Communities (EEC/ECSC/EAEC) in 1973). I doubt it would have proved electorally unpopular for British politicans to ban immigrants from the RoI had they so choosen. All they would have had to do was wait for an IRA bomb in the 70s, and banned all immigrants from the RoI on "security" grounds, and we'd have been so far up sh*t creek it wouldn't have been funny.

berliner

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Sounds like nonsense to me. Maybe the type of person who says "I won't eat that foreign muck or be bothered to parle vous francais" will only go to the UK, but loads of Irish people go to Germany, France, Belgium etc, and you'll find others in every other European Country. This could be for a few years or it could be for life.

This , if I'm reading it correctly puts about a quarter of Irish migrants going to the UK, and it puts the amount going to the 27 Country EU as higher than going to the UK.

This is of course not to mention the massive impact the EU has had on our economy, infrastructre, culture, environment, and laws (now more consumer/employee friendly than ever), and that we are now part of a major world power as opposed to being a poor, tiny island. We are still governed by corrupt politicians, but at least the EU ameliorates some of their negative effect.

And of course, you can go on holidays anywhere in the EU cheaply and easily, and Sweedish, Dutch, Italian and Polish girls are all free to come here as they please.

So, whatever about the global effects of the EU, it is the best thing that ever happened to Ireland, and while I'm open to hearing the debate on the Lisbon treaty, I would need something more solid than Gerry Adams saying "It gives us less power and we had very little say in the drafting of the treaty".

/rant

Tiny per cent of irish go to europe because we're an anglacised nation so we go to uk/usa/australia etc. We could have borrowed the money to build our infrastructure on the money markets without the strings attached that the corrupt EU imposed.This EU money argument is bogus.

djpbarry

berliner wrote: »

We could have borrowed the money to build our infrastructure on the money markets without the strings attached that the corrupt EU imposed.

Is that right? Could you outline exactly how this could have been achieved?

View

berliner wrote: »

Tiny per cent of irish go to europe because we're an anglacised nation so we go to uk/usa/australia etc. We could have borrowed the money to build our infrastructure on the money markets without the strings attached that the corrupt EU imposed.This EU money argument is bogus.

At one stage in the 80s, we were borrowing money to pay the interest we owed on the national debt every year - that's right, to pay the interest (not the debt itself). Saying we should have borrowed more is akin to telling an alcoholic he should take up heroin to help him get over his alcohol problem..