Is It Racist To Oppose Free Immigration?

SWL

ElaElaElano wrote: »

Even only going only as far back as five years ago, it was only the 'unskilled eastern Europeans' (ps most Poles/Czechs working here are very much overqualified for the work they're doing) and other migrants to Ireland who bothered to do the menial work. Everyone else was too good for it, apparently. Now that our economy and indeed economies across the world have crashed, people are pointing fingers at them because they're easy targets.

Degenerates are degenerates if they're from Ukraine or Nigeria, Ballsbridge or Ballymun. A mentality doesn't exist because of your nationality, it exists because of who you are the values you choose to follow.

I have a lot of foreign friends living here and frankly, they work a lot fúcking harder than ANY Irish person I know. Still, of course, they're subjected to casual racism a dozen times a week from clueless idiots.

Let's also bear in mind our long history of emigration- to America, to Australia. I wouldn't like to think that our citizens are treated with the degree of disrespect a lot of migrant workers are here in Ireland.

Rubbish

The Irish economy was transformed over a given period; the majority of position was in the services sector. I will assume you are too young to appreciate this. Eastern Europeans were/are in my experience unqualified and unskilled they didn’t do menial or minimum wage work because they feel a duty to Ireland to carry out this work they did it because that is all they are qualified to do. It also pays in their currency terms 4 times the amount it paid here. In other words they could make 40 euro an hour.
So an Irish person earning minimum wage is stuck on the bread line for life. A polish person could live in Ireland and make a professional wage in Poland plus the other benefits such as child care etc. that is why the unskilled and unqualified took those position because they were unqualified and unskilled not all but the majority. In Poland they would have been in the position the unskilled uneducated Irish person is in Ireland on the bread line.

The Irish workforce is very well educated and I don’t blame people who are qualified in a field and work is available in this field to undertaking work that does not mean they believe menial or minimum work is beneath them.

RussellTuring

SWL wrote: »

Rubbish

The Irish economy was transformed over a given period; the majority of position was in the services sector. I will assume you are too young to appreciate this. Eastern Europeans were/are in my experience unqualified and unskilled they didn’t do menial or minimum wage work because they feel a duty to Ireland to carry out this work they did it because that is all they are qualified to do. It also pays in their currency terms 4 times the amount it paid here. In other words they could make 40 euro an hour.
So an Irish person earning minimum wage is stuck on the bread line for life. A polish person could live in Ireland and make a professional wage in Poland plus the other benefits such as child care etc. that is why the unskilled and unqualified took those position because they were unqualified and unskilled not all but the majority. In Poland they would have been in the position the unskilled uneducated Irish person is in Ireland on the bread line.

The Irish workforce is very well educated and I don’t blame people who are qualified in a field and work is available in this field to undertaking work that does not mean they believe menial or minimum work is beneath them.

I don't understand your reasoning here; surely a Polish person living in Ireland and working in a minimum wage job would have much the same expenses as an Irish worker in the same position. They may be making four times what they would back home, but they also have to contend with the much higher cost of living in this country, like everyone who lives and works here. Perhaps I misunderstood and you can clarify this for me.

SWL

RussellTuring wrote: »

I don't understand your reasoning here; surely a Polish person living in Ireland and working in a minimum wage job would have much the same expenses as an Irish worker in the same position. They may be making four times what they would back home, but they also have to contend with the much higher cost of living in this country, like everyone who lives and works here. Perhaps I misunderstood and you can clarify this for me.

You are right to a point - many are/were here for the short term say five years and then move on. but given that you can work in Poland in a minimum wage position or go to Ireland where you can also work in a minimum wage position and get paid more plus other soical benefits then its a no brainer. if a couple save 5,000 Euro in ireland a year that in Polish terms is €100k over five years in Polish terms mortgage free for life.

With an incentitive like that i would work in a minimum position in another country also. the Irish person will not after a five years period be in any position to be mortgage free or even considered for a mortgage

Why are you telling us all this? It was never a mystery as to why they were here..
And the Irish person can be mortgage free aswell, you just have to buy a house in Eastern Europe.

RussellTuring

SWL wrote: »

You are right to a point - many are/were here for the short term say five years and then move on. but given that you can work in Poland in a minimum wage position or go to Ireland where you can also work in a minimum wage position and get paid more plus other soical benefits then its a no brainer. if a couple save 5,000 Euro in ireland a year that in Polish terms is €100k over five years in Polish terms mortgage free for life.

With an incentitive like that i would work in a minimum position in another country also. the Irish person will not after a five years period be in any position to be mortgage free or even considered for a mortgage

To what point exactly? In my original quoted post of yours, you never mentioned their moving home and in fact used Irish childcare as another incentive for immigration, of which they clearly could not avail once they left. My point was simply that while here, they have the same expenses that Irish people here would.

However, since you brought it up, yes they may well indeed leave Ireland and move back home whenever they choose. Just as you may save up a few months wages and live well in Poland for say, a year or two due to the favourable exchange rate. There's nothing stopping you from this, just as there is nothing stopping immigrants coming here and working hard for minimum wage.

thebigbiffo

Nodin wrote: »

You've a few examples of this?

numerous.

Nodin

thebigbiffo wrote: »

numerous.

And they are....?

K-9

Stinicker wrote: »

I think we are very much stuck in the 1950's now. Burdened with debt, Mass Unemployment, Mass Emigration, A corrupt Fianna Fail Government (now gone).

Membership of the EU has been disastrous for Ireland,

We lost our entire Fishing Industry which was worth €150 billion to our economy, we have/had some of the most productive fishing waters in the world, most of the wealth from which went directly into Spanish fishing companies.

We have billions of Euro worth of Oil & Gas which Ray Burke (FF) gave away for nothing, He is a corrupt person and no doubt got millions from the Petroleum companies for this enormous rip-off of our state assets.

We would never have joined the EURO meaning the biggest disaster in our History would never have happened, ie. cheap credit sold into a booming property market, which then collapsed forcing an EU/IMF bailout/bankruptcy.

Interest rates in Ireland now should be around 15% when they are kept artificially low at 3% to suit the German Market.

The negatives far outweigh any positives of the EU and if Ireland was governed properly today we would be a nation more like Norway, Independent and Sheltered from the effects of the global crisis, people would be working and getting by, the Celtic tiger would never have happened and collectively as a Nation we'd be far better off.

I think the Oil and Gas reserves are now trillions apparently, but it has nothing to do with the EU and I don't think people knew about it in 1973.

Fishing was always an under developed resource and countries were stealing our fish long before 1973.

I can't fathom why you think our interest rates would be 15% now.

annascott

giant_midget wrote: »

In theory yes...but in an economy like Irelands is and is going to be for the next couple of years NO...We need to start looking after our own people. This country needs to have some sort of cap on immigration..we do not need un-skilled eastern europeans or criminal nigerians.

Whatever your feelings may be on the great immigration vs economics debate, it is extremely insulting and racist to describe Nigerians as criminals. All Irish are not terrorists. Why should one assume that Nigerians are criminals?

TPD

We're going to be a pretty **** interstellar civilisation if we can't even get ourselves together on earth.

RichieC

Nodin wrote: »

And they are....?

*crickets*

smugchik

smokedeels wrote: »

sigh... nobody else? ok so.... dey took er jerbs!!!!!

To quote Jimmy Carr:

"...He came over here, couldn't speak the language and took your job? That makes you a bit crap then doesn't it...."

southsiderosie

whiteonion wrote: »

You can't have a generous welfare state and be open for free immigration from third world countries, because the costs would be to great and it would destroy the welfare state.

There is a lot of research on this: the more diverse a society is, the less welfare there is, largely because taxpayers don't want public money transfered to the "undesirable".

bnt wrote: »

I have to say I'm getting a bit tired of hearing this old fallacy - "immigrants do jobs that the locals don't want to do". People will take any job if the pay is right, but when large numbers of people come in, willing to take jobs for much less than they used to pay, it depresses wages all around, to the point where governments have to implement minimum wage standards to try to prevent exploitation.

But this was not the case in Ireland during the boom. In 2004, the unemployment rate was under 4%, which in economic terms is essentially zero unemployment. And Spar is never going to pay people 20/hour to make crappy sandwiches. These are the kinds of jobs that a lot of Irish young people, especially college students, used to do, but don't anymore. And now employers in those industries have a preference for foreign workers because they are seen (rightly or wrongly) as more reliable and less whiny than native workers.

Stinicker wrote: »

So now we have a situation in which the social welfare system pays more than the menial work - and you wonder why only immgrants who don't qualify for social welfare are doing them? Menial labour is a commodity, and when there's a chronic oversupply of any commodity, of course its costs come down. That should translate to lower costs for consumers, but does it?

If you want Irish people to take these jobs, then wouldn't the logical reaction have been to lower social welfare benefits in order to make working more attractive than being on the dole? But the government raised welfare benefits from 2002-2010.

Stinicker wrote: »

If companies want to do Business in this country then unless they are willing to hire Irish staff then they have no business here, racism is the most thrown around word these days anyway, if I dislike a person, persons or a whole race then that my choice, Irish people come first in this country and a brief stint travelling abroad might teach you that other countries tend to look after their own and not give two fiddlers about Foreigners.

A country that is as dependent on foreign direct investment as Ireland cannot then close off their labor market. And at the higher end of the labor market, informally, Irish people DO come frist - a lot of non-Irish professionals complain about the "green ceiling" in the labor market, especially within the HSE.

Stinicker wrote: »

We should not be taking in Asylum Seekers and I firmly beleive that both the UK and Ireland would both be far better off outside of the European Union and with our own Independent currency as the UK have maintained. Ireland should revoke EU free movement to the EU Citizens and as necessary withdraw from the EU, it has contributed nothing to our country only ripped us off at the expense of our sovereignty.

Given that Ireland is a signatory to a number of international treaties, they have a legal obligation to take in asylum seekers and provide a bare minimum of care. Ireland takes in far fewer than most other European countries, and has a relatively low approval rate.

And, please, give the EU thing a rest. It is not the EU's fault that Ireland had utterly incompetent leadership which ran the economy into the ground. The economic reforms enacted to meet the euro convergence requirements are part of what sparked the REAL celtic Tiger in the 1990s. And if Ireland had its own currency right now, hyperinflation would be endemic.

keithcan

southsiderosie wrote: »

Given that Ireland is a signatory to a number of international treaties, they have a legal obligation to take in asylum seekers and provide a bare minimum of care. Ireland takes in far fewer than most other European countries, and has a relatively low approval rate.

I don't disagree with some of your sentiments here, but you are in error with your assertions on asylum - and those assertions are as damaging to this debate as are outlandish and rascist comments.

It is NOT true that Ireland takes in far fewer asylum seekers than other European countries. Firstly, nobody can 'dictate' or 'control' how many spontaneous asylum seekers will turn up in Ireland or any other country. The Refugee Applications people in Mount St do not know if tomorrow they will get 5 or 55 asylum applications. At the height of the growth in asylum seekers in Europe in early/mid-2000s, Ireland just like other EU states had high numbers of asylum seekers. They've dropped in many states inc Irl in last few years.

Separately from spontaneous asylum seekers, Ireland is one of only a few EU countries that takes in an allocation of 'Programme Refugees' - these are refugees already in camps in war-torn situations around the world and their transfer to Ireland is facilitated by the UN. Ireland does a good job on this and it is unfair and even misleading to say otherwise.

The high rejection rate of asylum applications is because the vast majority are not genuine, they are economic migrants misusing the asylum process. I support the asylum concept, but surely to God you have to recognise when it is being abused.

southsiderosie

keithcan wrote: »

I don't disagree with some of your sentiments here, but you are in error with your assertions on asylum - and those assertions are as damaging to this debate as are outlandish and rascist comments.

It is NOT true that Ireland takes in far fewer asylum seekers than other European countries. Firstly, nobody can 'dictate' or 'control' how many spontaneous asylum seekers will turn up in Ireland or any other country. The Refugee Applications people in Mount St do not know if tomorrow they will get 5 or 55 asylum applications. At the height of the growth in asylum seekers in Europe in early/mid-2000s, Ireland just like other EU states had high numbers of asylum seekers. They've dropped in many states inc Irl in last few years.

Separately from spontaneous asylum seekers, Ireland is one of only a few EU countries that takes in an allocation of 'Programme Refugees' - these are refugees already in camps in war-torn situations around the world and their transfer to Ireland is facilitated by the UN. Ireland does a good job on this and it is unfair and even misleading to say otherwise.

The high rejection rate of asylum applications is because the vast majority are not genuine, they are economic migrants misusing the asylum process. I support the asylum concept, but surely to God you have to recognise when it is being abused.

Ireland DOES take in fewer asylum seekers, both in absolute and relative terms. The excellent table on page 13 of the linked report shows data from 2005-2009 and ranks countries by # of total applicants and applicants weighted by the population of the receiving country. Ireland is not exceptional on either account. I know that there was a decline post-2004, but small Nordic and Mediterranean countries are picking up much of the burden for Europe. I do not think Ireland deserves to pat itself on the back here.

Refugees are a different issue from asylum seekers because refugee status is effectively determined outside of the borders of the receiving state.

I do not disagree that there were and are problems with asylum fraud in Ireland, but these exist across Europe. Clearly there needs to be more coordination at a EU level when it comes to immigration and asylum, and I think that it would have been a more humane - and sane - policy on Ireland's part to push for EU-level reform than to run the citizenship referendum, which has had a terrible impact on not only the long-term social and political integration of non-EU citizens, but created a legal limbo that the EU court system is now starting to address.

Personally I think immigration is only mildly palatable to the native population if there is the perception that 1) a system exists, and 2) that it works. In Ireland, however, there is an aversion on the part of political leaders to tackle difficult issues head-on; the Irish solution to an Irish problem comes into play. Unfortunately, immigration is something that needs to be managed, and wishing that it would go away will not make it so. The government could have done a much better job with all of this starting in the mid 1990s...but then again given the mess they made of everything else, perhaps we should not be surprised that immigration policy-making has been relatively episodic and haphazard.

keithcan

southsiderosie wrote: »

Ireland DOES take in fewer asylum seekers, both in absolute and relative terms. The excellent table on page 13 of the linked report shows data from 2005-2009 and ranks countries by # of total applicants and applicants weighted by the population of the receiving country. Ireland is not exceptional on either account. I know that there was a decline post-2004, but small Nordic and Mediterranean countries are picking up much of the burden for Europe. I do not think Ireland deserves to pat itself on the back here.

Refugees are a different issue from asylum seekers because refugee status is effectively determined outside of the borders of the receiving state.

I do not disagree that there were and are problems with asylum fraud in Ireland, but these exist across Europe. Clearly there needs to be more coordination at a EU level when it comes to immigration and asylum, and I think that it would have been a more humane - and sane - policy on Ireland's part to push for EU-level reform than to run the citizenship referendum, which has had a terrible impact on not only the long-term social and political integration of non-EU citizens, but created a legal limbo that the EU court system is now starting to address.

Personally I think immigration is only mildly palatable to the native population if there is the perception that 1) a system exists, and 2) that it works. In Ireland, however, there is an aversion on the part of political leaders to tackle difficult issues head-on; the Irish solution to an Irish problem comes into play. Unfortunately, immigration is something that needs to be managed, and wishing that it would go away will not make it so. The government could have done a much better job with all of this starting in the mid 1990s...but then again given the mess they made of everything else, perhaps we should not be surprised that immigration policy-making has been relatively episodic and haphazard.

I don't want to get into an endless debate here, but it is very noticeable that you make a link between making immigration palatable to the native population through showing that a system exists and that it works. You then go on, iMO, to contribute to making the whole thing unpalatable by MISdescribing what happens in Ireland's asylum system, in order to 'prove' your assertion that "The government could have done a much better job ..but then again given the mess they made of everything else..."

You talk about how Ireland takes in fewer asylum seekers. That is plain MISdescription. A country does not TAKE IN asylum seekers. They arrive in the main, spontaneously. As an island nation off the NW coast of Europe, it is bizzare that Ireland gets many asylum seekers at all - how can you deny this obvious point? It talks to a system of people 'asylum shopping' looking for a country whose system might work for their wish to successfully migrate for economic reasons.

You further state that "...refugee status is effectively determined outside of the borders of the receiving state". How therefore do you explain the tens of thousands of refugee determinations that have been made in Mount Street, Dublin 2 and in the equivalent centres in other European cities?

Your comment "Clearly there needs to be more coordination at a EU level when it comes to immigration and asylum, and I think that it would have been a more humane - and sane - policy on Ireland's part to push for EU-level reform...".. Again, that's really poor misrepresentation imo. There is continuous EU co-operation in this area. And guess what, Ireland's last EU Presidency in 2004 was one of the most productive for delivering EU co-operation. This truth doesn't appear to suit your strong prejudice, but what can be done about that...? You may have heard of the Dublin Regulation, which is a very effective manifestation of EU co-operation in asylum processing.

And lastly, your go at the system not working and that "The government could have done a much better job with all of this starting in the mid 1990s...". First off on asylum, the last two Representatives to Ireland of the UNHCR commended Ireland's asylum system. As to the Govt's performance since the mid-90s, remember we went from getting about 10 asylum applications a year to 4,000 in a few years. You would have to be outrageously unbalanced to think that such a huge short-term adjustment would not place a huge strain on ANY european Govt. It took some time, but we got there with a well-resourced and reasonably efficient system, by pouring MILLIONS of taxpayers' money into it. The system, with an objective assessment of each asylum application against the Geneva Convention, may not give enough positive decisions to suit the prejudice of some people, but how many Nigerian people are there out there that are apparently victims of secret cults that want to make them into zombies. Personally, I'd rather see more genuine refugees like the 100 Burmese refugees that Ireland (yes, that awful unfair country) took in and resettled in Castlebar and Ballina and who are now living safe and productive lives after the State authorities worked to help them integrate. BTW I am not involved in any way with any asylum / immigration systems, I just believe we deserve a fair and balanced debate...

cafecolour

I'd say there are far more Irish emigrants living abroad at the very moment then there are foreign immigrants in Ireland.

ostrich

cafecolour wrote: »

I'd say there are far more Irish emigrants living abroad at the very moment then there are foreign immigrants in Ireland.

Thank you very much.