What are your views on Multiculturalism in Ireland? - Threadbanned User List in OP

I'm curious, how does a nation end up with colonial guilt despite never having colonies?

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119005126#Comment_119005126

By importing it on the back of the identity politics of those that did. Not unlike the politics of multiculturalism. Either of the US flavour based on centuries of appalling treatment of non White minorities that was papering over the cracks, or the fallout from empire among European powers, who had to deal with it in similar terms. There were no historical reasons for the growth of Irish multiculturalism, unlike in nations like France, Germany, Britain and others who had overseas colonies, where people from those colonies had colonial connections to the imperial nation and moved there, or were moved there because of economics. The economics of people from poorer nations moving to the richer ones and the richer ones looking to build a cheap labour force, particularly after WW2 and the fall of those empires. In the UK the Afro Carribean and Indian folks, in Germany it was the Turks. More latterly conflict and poverty in the ME and Africa made the EU the "promised land" for many and once you made landfall within the EU and became "official" you were essentially free to travel within the EU. Ireland at the edge of Europe, but with a booming economy, one of the most generous social supports in the world and jus soli citizenship made her extremely attractive. Even with the latter loophole closed it still is.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119005276#Comment_119005276

Guilt by association. Instead of colonial guilt, it has become "white" guilt.

No different from the pushing of white privilege as if something can be assigned by ethnicity, rather than personal circumstances. Naturally, there's no such guilt extended to peoples of other ethnicities, even when those ethnic groups have lived in Western nations for extended periods. Nah. White people are collectively responsible (unless you're an activist or advocate of this nonsense, in which case, you're enlightened and your guilt is less.) Nor is there any similar guilt extended to other ethnic or cultural groups for their own colonialism, participation in slavery, genocide, or whatever. Nope. White people are the special target in the world to be responsible for everything that has gone wrong.

Roughly a decade ago, I remember some walk-in courses by Trinity college Dublin. They had students wandering around on the streets outside promoting the courses, and approaching people "at random". The courses were free, held in the college grounds, and out of curiosity, I went with them. Courses in White Privilege, race theory, and women's studies. Organised and presented by various Professors and student groups, all presenting guilt by race or by gender, using research that had been shown to be biased, but stating all these opinions as fact. Any suggestion of resisting the course material, and they asked you to leave, as being disruptive. haha.

That's where a lot of this shite has come from. Our education system, from teachers or professors who have bought into the American BS. Naturally, there's no interest in fact checking the information, or considering what kind of society such beliefs create...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119005484#Comment_119005484

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119005276#Comment_119005276

I don't know, I'm still not seeing it

It's like ye are trying to assign something to explain openness and compassion that are not those and instead trying to come up with other explanations that make little sense.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119005523#Comment_119005523

The entirity of the arguments for multiculturalism from the start of this thread haven't changed:

1) Charity

2) Exoticism

3) The Irish were migrants once.

4) It just is. The "natural order". Nothing to see or debate.

You've just repeated (1) again. You claim other explanations make little sense and point to "Openness and compassion" as one that does? Yet the other explanations can be quantified, expanded upon, referenced and show consistent and apparently intractable trends in every single other EU nation that has run this experiment."

Openness and compassion" sound great, but they're just buzzwords in practical terms and in dealing with the realities are about as useful and informative as "thoughts and prayers", but handily they do have the advantage like thoughts and prayers in that they require no explanation or justification and for many it's also being seen to be Doing the Right Thing(tm).

"Openness and compassion" had feck all to do with the non EU influx of people into Ireland in the 90's and early 00's. It had everything to do with a booming economy, generous social supports, lax border controls and an easy path to citizenship by giving birth here. It's remarkable how when we didn't have those factors in play we weren't "multicultural" in the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's unlike other nations in Europe. Did we as if by magic gain "openness and compassion" in the late 90's?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119005767#Comment_119005767

I was referring to the colonial guilt argument. Apologies if that wasn't clear.

JupiterKid

Well, I’m a couple of years older than Klaz and about 7 or 8 years younger than Wibbs and I distinctly remember a few non-Irish in our leafy middle class suburban Castleknock estate back in the 1980s.

One was an Indian family who moved into our street in the mid-1980s (the father was a doctor) and my late mum called into them with a cake to welcome them to the neighbourhood, as did our other neighbours at the time. They were fully integrated and there were no issues. Likewise, we had German neighbours who moved here in the late 1970s who were good friends of our family and were the same age as my parents (born during WW II) and were also fully integrated. Another family who we are/were friends with were an Irish guy married to a German lady with four kids and as “integrated” as you could get.

Back in the 1980s there were also quite a few ex-pat Germans and other Continentals such as the Dutch and French who moved to Ireland to retire or for the (then) much slower pace of life and often lived in the country with few issues. A few Americans and Canadians came over here in the 1970s and 80s as well.

My late father also had a good friend from his early 1960s Belfast college days (they were in college together) who was a black guy from Ghana who settled in Northern Ireland and married a local NI woman and had a family. Unusual at the time for sure but there were certainly a small number of non-Irish successfully living and settling down in Ireland. My father’s partner who he met seven years after my mum died suddenly and tragically, is an Italian lady originally from Rome who came here in her early 20s in the early 1970s and found Ireland to be a culture shock, especially the food offerings... 😁

It also must be remembered that Ireland had high levels of emigration in the 1980s and well into the 1990s of young Irish - both my older sisters left our shores in 1989 and 1993 respectively to find work opportunities abroad that were simply not available to them here.

My point is that Ireland was already changing - albeit very slowly from completely mono-cultural to a more diverse ethnic make up - before large-scale immigration began in the second half of the 1990s. I think a key issue here is how fast immigration takes place, the numbers involved and how willing the immigrants are to integrate with the host society - and how willing the host society is in accepting them.

Breifne Blue

There needs to be a cap on immigration, asylum seekers and refugees. The numbers are too high and the housing is not there.

Please go on Daft.ie and tell me where there housing is for thousands extra people coming in. There is 8 houses for rent in my own county, 8! Barely anything available out there nationally. Hotels and BnBs full up with Ukrainians and asylum seekers.

The free for all must end for everyone's sake, even the immigrants already here.

Doc07

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119006287#Comment_119006287

Not bad. Swap daft.ie for the UK equivalent website and that is almost word for word one of Dominic Cummings manifesto snippets for convincing the north of England to vote Brexit

Strumms

Housing isn’t here

public transport isn’t here

healthcare isn’t here

the finances arnt here…country is in three quarters of a trillion euros debt.….This is the equivalent of 50% of GDP or 89% of GNI..

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119006336#Comment_119006336

While I think Brexit was the wrong answer to the problems of the UK... was Cummings wrong in what he claimed? (No, I'm not supporting him).

The point being that the UK has had serious problems with immigration and their non-native population for decades... with most people ignoring the problem while welfare dependence increased, crime or social unrest also tended to increase among BAME populations, along with ever increasing demands for equality, while seeking to elevate certain groups over others.

There were a lot of muppets involved in making Brexit happen, but that doesn't take away from the serious issues the UK has had with lack of integration or assimilation.

So, I'm curious.. rather than Brexit what would your solution to the UK problems with their significant non-native population, and rather high rates of immigration (both legal and illegal)>?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119006287#Comment_119006287

Could be largely fixed overnight if AirBnB was banned.

There's a user on the Galway forum tracking whats on Daft vs ABNB for the last few years. Suffice to say all Galways accomodation problems would disappear overnight if that service, and other short term letting services, were banned.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058063772/airbnb-and-covid19

Indeed, it looks like the govt have finally decided to take some action in this area to force properties back into long term letting

https://www.thejournal.ie/short-term-accommodation-5753281-May2022/

https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2022/0430/1295347-short-term-letting/

Doc07

I don’t have a solution, not sure if there is a solution or even if ‘a solution’ is needed for UK (or Irish)immigration. Resources should be managed and planned for and money should not be publics money should not be handed out willy nilly and it is not racist to point that out. However,Cummings cleverly targeted the disenfranchised unemployed and low wage council estate folk and he knew full well their circumstances had feck all to do with ‘those bloody foreigners’

TomTomTim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119006287#Comment_119006287

I remember doing a search in a certain county on the West coast a few months ago, and 5 results came up, and 2 of them were for a neighboring county. It's a genuinely abysmal and bleak situation, that the comfortable and the political class honestly don't seem to give a damn about. When you see stuff like this and the lack of wider care for the problem, you really start to understand how many uncaring narcissists we share a nation with.

Kaybaykwah

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119005029#Comment_119005029

Yes, thank you for adding to what I wrote about the lack of a foreign population in decades preceding the Celtic Tiger years. My First experience of Ireland was a trip I took in 1981, and I then returned to live in Dublin for a year in ‘87, ‘88.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119005876#Comment_119005876

I’m sixty-one, and back in the eighties, I had a lot of friends from France, England , the US, Canada, Germany living in Dublin.

The food offerings were bizarre to say the least. I remember every salad had mayonnaise, etc…

One of my regular treats was to pick up from a Chinese Takeaway on Dorset St. There were a couple of Italian chippers around, and vomit inducing Abrakebabra was a poor excuse for Middle Eastern fare. I had a room in a house in Donnybrook that was rented by a German professor of Economics at UCD. He used to pack his car with tons of cured sausages whenever he traveled to Germany. The offer for food products was very limited then compared to what I was used to in Montreal. So, Dublin and Irish cities havve become somewhat more Continental with the advent of European Nationals, which I find more attractive now, and this doesn’t take away from the Irish experience. In fact, I used to be asked how I felt about the poverty and limitations of life in Ireland, but apart from the obvious economic shortcomings, my impression was that the only thing missing was more ethnicities to give the country a little Oomph.

Again, this doesn’t take away from the Irish experience, but rather enlivens it. All the big cities worldwide have contributors of varied backgrounds, and are enriched by it. If Dublin had remained less cosmopolitan, it would be less attractive to newcomers, and vicer-verser, goes doubt saying. Duh.

TomTomTim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119006401#Comment_119006401

You're just relying on cheap stereotypes to suit your worldview. Low wage natives are certainly harmed by mass immigration all the same, as they've more competition in the market meaning that wages are lower. So then they are on lower wages, and have more competition for housing, which means that housing costs more. You can hold all those views without hating foreigners. As is often said on this thread, the state are to blame not the immigrant, but I suppose to you the plebs aren't capable of such thought?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119006401#Comment_119006401

Except, "those bloody foreigners" did have some connection to the circumstances of the council estate folk, the unemployed and generally speaking the working class in general.

In all western countries, the majority of immigration over the last few decades has been related to unskilled or lowly skilled/educated workers. Who, need to find jobs for themselves, which increases the competition on such positions across the country. Great for the companies, pretty bad for the industrial workers, who relied on those jobs to support their families. You should take a long look at Northern England, for example, which contained most of the mines, whose workers after their closures, ended up in the low-end manufactory positions. There's a reason that Northern England is so damn poor and rundown.. as those factories closed down over time, but the immigrant populations remained, further increasing the drain on welfare or other social supports that the council folks or working class needed for themselves.

None of this is hard to understand... but people like yourself, go out of your way to ignore the impact of immigration on a country. It's like as if you think immigrants will simply leave when there's no work around.. except they don't. They stay, they claim welfare supports, and they compete with the native population for the limited number of jobs that do open up.

There's an ocean of bitterness in England (and Scotland) for how the lower income groups have been treated... and it's understandable that a politician would seek to tap into that.. and he wasn't wrong in doing so. TBH it's the kind of thing that needs to be shouted from the rooftops, so that we might start looking for solutions, rather than pretending everything is fine.

I don’t have a solution, not sure if there is a solution or even if ‘a solution’ is needed for UK (or Irish)immigration.

Hold on... you don't think the UK needs to find a solution to it's "diverse" population, who feel no loyalty or allegiance to British culture, and are experiencing a near constant rise in social unrest or crime?

What? Just pretend it's not happening, or pass all the responsibility for it happening on to racist white people?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119006421#Comment_119006421

 If Dublin had remained less cosmopolitan, it would be less attractive to newcomers, and vicer-verser, goes doubt saying. Duh.

Except that it's not true. Duh.

People have been coming to Ireland for decades, exactly because it wasn't "cosmopolitan". It's the reason Irish pubs are sought after throughout the world. That taste of Irish culture. Same with our traditional music scene, or the quaintness of our towns/cities, or the friendliness of people. There was no need for Dublin or any Irish city to be more cosmopolitan for it to remain a popular destination. After all, nearly everything that attracts tourists here is related to our unique culture, rather than being blandly the same mishmash of other cultures.

Anyway, even today, if someone was seeking a cosmopolitan city in Europe to visit, you really think they would choose Dublin over Berlin, Paris, Milan, Amsterdam, Munich, London, Copenhagen, etc. TBH out of the European capitals or major cities, I suspect Dublin would be listed very low on a scale for being cosmopolitan.

Competing with other European nations for being cosmopolitan would get Dublin nowhere.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119005876#Comment_119005876

Oh there were some non locals about the place, but they were spread out and numbers were small and a goodly proportion of them came here for existing work and a fair number were married to locals. As you note the sudden influx and numbers and speed of change was unprecedented and all too similar trends are kicking off already even at this early stage. The vast majority of non locals living in Ireland are actually from other EU nations, so majority White, from mostly liberal democracies, ostensibly "christian" and more likely to integrate, if nothing else but for the basic reason of not standing out. Yet who are - and like everywhere else in Europe - most likely to be at the disenfranchised end of society? But apparently, this time, Ireland alone, will learn from other's mistakes and be the complete outlier in the European multicultural experiment.

Doc07

I only said I’m not sure what / if a solution is needed I wasn’t that definitive in fairness.

Are poor white people who genuinely want to work losing out to low paid/ semi or unskilled migrant workers on a large scale (in Ireland or UK) ?

Are young white Irish couples looking to buy or rent genuinely on any large scale losing out to low skilled migrant workers?

The above are real questions, I have an idea about the answer but I’m still open to any facts or wisdom.

I’m white and not guilty about it. Maybe it was hard work or maybe it was white privilege but in my 40’s I’m comfortable and feel lucky while still taking a good hammering from the tax man. I’ve lived in a bedsit in my 20’s some (not all) on social welfare would turn their nose up at and some (but maybe not all ) social justice warriors would go mental if an immigrant had to live in. I also worked in our largest direct provision centre and genuinely believe the conditions (food, accommodation etc) there were excellent).

So far in my life which includes about 20years of large scale immigration into Ireland the immigrants haven’t been the main dippers into my pocket.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119006421#Comment_119006421

apart from the obvious economic shortcomings, my impression was that the only thing missing was more ethnicities to give the country a little Oomph.

And we're back to number 2 on my list; exoticism. And the old saw of different foodstuffs. Even there I know a lot of Irish people who eat sushi today, something that would have been seen as a trial by torture segment on the Late Late Show back in the day 😁 and it didn't require thousands of Japanese folks coming to live here. It was part and parcel of the country opening up to ideas, rather than people. I mean there are a lot more Nigerians than Japanese living here and significantly more Polish people and you don't hear too much about Irish people chomping down on Nigerian or Polish fare.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119006508#Comment_119006508

Are poor white people who genuinely want to work losing out to low paid/ semi or unskilled migrant workers on a large scale (in Ireland or UK) ?

Let's stick with the UK since your OP was about Brexit... yes?

Equality. Discrimination is illegal, so a migrant has the same opportunities to seek employment as a native person... so.. if jobs are limited (as few new companies open up in a slowed/rundown economy), wouldn't it make sense that the increased competition would cause them to lose out? Especially when there are State sponsored/supported schemes to place minorities in jobs in preference over native groups. Positive discrimination and all that craic.

And does it make sense to further increase the population of similarly low skilled workers driving up the demand for those positions?

Are young white Irish couples looking to buy or rent genuinely on any large scale losing out to low skilled migrant workers?

I have no idea. I didn't put forward any argument about housing/renting. Still, there are a load of threads on CA about the housing crisis.. you could read a few of them to find out.

So far in my life which includes about 20years of large scale immigration into Ireland the immigrants haven’t been the main dippers into my pocket.

Nope. That would be our glorious politicians.. but the truth is that you are taxed, and the government allocates that revenue to a variety of expenses. Of which, immigrants are part of.

The range of NGOs in this country is staggering... all supported by the government and your taxes. Just as disadvantaged or minority groups can be given extra social/welfare supports based on ethnicity or cultural background rather than individual circumstances, which also comes from what you were taxed.

I'm not any kind of foaming in the mouth hater of immigrants. I see controlled and properly management immigration as being a benefit to a country. The problem is when feel-good measures are implemented rather than properly researched and long term considerations.

Doc07

Some good points there.

jist on this though ‘ Positive discrimination and all that craic.’

Forgive me for not focusing on the UK and Maybe I’m naive but I have never heard of any systematic evidence or even anecdotal examples of Irish people not getting jobs in for example garages, McDonalds or Centra/Spar due to immigrants being favoured. And I worked in most of the above while in school and college.

Did the NHS ever get the £350 million a day extra promised from the Brexit campaign?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119006590#Comment_119006590

Um, we were talking about the UK remember?

People are biased. It's simply the way the world is. If you're being told that minorities have been discriminated against, isn't it possible that you might hire someone to offset that bias in society? Which is exasperated, if you belong to a group that advocates minority rights, so the bias remains even when it's illegal to do it.

Naturally, that goes both ways with discrimination and bias.

Oh, have a gander at this... related to the UK, but should give some insight into positive action, which is essentially the same as positive discrimination.

https://www.lewissilkin.com/en/insights/positive-action-speaks-louder-than-words---five-principles-for-employers

In reality, of course, targets are more easily set than met. You may need to take other steps to help develop a pipeline of potential candidates and work with a range of recruiters who can help you source a more diverse pool. It may be helpful to talk about aiming for a better gender or ethnic balance, rather than the need to identify suitable female/BAME candidates, and to explain the purpose behind adopting targets and how diverse companies perform better. 

Kaybaykwah

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119006495#Comment_119006495

You just missed the chance to not counter your argument by highlighting the ubiquitous Irish Pub scene worldwide. Duh.

Breifne Blue

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119006390#Comment_119006390

Well let's be honest we've been hearing the same stuff about Airbnb for several years now and they haven't tackled the issue so I'm sceptical.

And if they did actually ban AirBnB they would probably move over to a similar platform or more likely sell up their property.

Don't think it's going to make a dent in lack of rentals.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119006772#Comment_119006772

Have to wait and see I guess

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119006732#Comment_119006732

You really don't think very much when writing something, do you? Irish pubs abroad follow the same theme of Irish culture associated with traditional Ireland.. not being cosmopolitan. Otherwise they wouldn't be going to an Irish pub, they'd be going to a cocktail bar, sports bar, or something similar.

Missed the chance to not counter my argument? haha... Duh, right back at you. Oh, and I do notice you've failed to a counter my previous posts to you. Deflecting doesn't count.

Breifne Blue

.