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

According to Helen...we'll be all the richer for it

The Ukrainian refugees are almost entirely women and children, very few men, a lot of quite educated people. I haven't met any of them so far who would be looking to work on a building site.

At least ye are finally giving up the facade of believing in integration.

Wibbs, it reminds me of the Student Union socialist types (ages 20's, 30's,40's +) that say that Communism/Marxism was never properly implemented but that WE (i.e. the ego-driven speaker and their ilk) are so much smarter and can get it to work. This time.

Or that we just need a new type of Marxism/Socialism/Communism to prevail. And that their version WILL work damnit.

You can't hold it against the youth for being idealistic, even though I was never into such idealism at their age, but the problem with many of these types is that they never grow out of it. There's people in their 50's & 60's who believe in these fair tales, the same type of people who mock the religious for believing in something that can't be proven or disproven, when their own beliefs have been disproven many times over. Unearned hubris is a common trait with so many people on that side of the isle.

We’re not importing more to be downtrodden and disenfranchised in the first place, that’s why I made no mention of skin colour or ethnicity or culture or anything else. There’s plenty are already downtrodden and disenfranchised and anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism measures haven’t done anything to address their circumstances. All they’ve done is make the same people even more resentful and bitter than they were already, and without immigrants and other people who aren’t like them, who else are they going to take out their frustration on only each other? Always looking for ways to differentiate themselves as being superior in some way to other people, and play the victim when questioned about why they haven’t done anything for themselves.

I don’t imagine education on it’s own is the solution, and I don’t think it’s driven by racism either to be honest. I think it’s just driven by people who elevate people who are like them, and they don’t care much for people who aren’t. It’s apathy more than anything. People here arguing to keep immigrants who haven’t the means to fend for themselves out of Europe are using people already living in poverty and misery as a means to say we should help those people first. I might think they had a credible argument if they were actually trying to help those people already, but according to your own characterisation that would make them lefties or dreamers or basically anything that you view negatively, and they couldn’t be having that, cos that’s icky.

I do agree there are cultural and internal aspects in play, and clearly there are similar cultural and internal aspects in play for all groups when statistics are used which don’t represent the true numbers of people who are unemployed or not in the labour market. Expressed the figures as percentages hides the true numbers of those who are unemployed, etc - far more people unemployed who aren’t immigrants, in run-down shitholes which Government will piss money down the drain on regeneration schemes to put money in their friends pockets than anything these schemes will do for the people living in those areas.

Simply put - the political will isn’t there, and politicians don’t care about whether these people do or don’t vote, they only care about the people who are like them too!

As for any ideas that we can’t talk about whatever, I disagree, the last 400 or so pages in just this thread alone would definitely suggest otherwise. There’s nothing stopping anyone talking about whatever they want, everyone has an equal right to freedom of expression. What they’re lacking is the ability to compel anyone to agree with them.

I sort of agree with you, the Welfare State isn’t helping, and it doesn’t help anyone in those circumstances. I do think the same money that’s spent on perpetuating the issues could be better spent on providing actual supports and resources that would encourage and motivate people to better themselves.

That’s an almost Herculean task though when you’re surrounded by people who would accuse you of having notions if you tried to better yourself, because they like the misery. What would they have to complain about if they weren’t miserable?

I think the problem is only going to get worse too. People once worked to work towards something, renting a house, then owning a house, building towards something, but with the state of the country at the minute the incentive to work hard isn't the same as it once was, because you work hard to get nowhere nowadays. Renting is becoming a luxury, while owning was once seen as a standard thing, and not a long shot. I know I'm personally in that situation at the minute, and I'm finding it hard to motivate myself to slave away while I'm not going anywhere. I'm sure a lot of younger people are thinking the same thing, and might decide that a life on the dole is better than current 9-5 living, and I can't really blame them for that.

Why couldn’t you blame anyone who thinks like that? Anyone who imagines they’re better off at the mercy of the State is entirely responsible for thinking they’re better off in that position than they are trying to better themselves. It’s short-sighted and immature, but there aren’t that many people will actually care either way.

The vast majority of people still continue to work towards something and the vast majority of people will continue to work towards the kind of life they want for themselves and their families. There really aren’t a lot of young people thinking that they’d be better off on the dole, because they look at people on the dole the same way you do - you’d be on it already if you actually thought you’d be better off.

We didn’t import any anyone, and those people who were granted refugee status at the time weren’t intended to be downtrodden and disenfranchised. Direct Provision was only ever supposed to be a short term measure when it was introduced, but the numbers of refugees soared, with the referendum making no difference at all. Nothing magic actually happened, it was just the figures got fudged, as Govt departments are wont to do with all sorts of statistical data -

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IRL/ireland/refugee-statistics

Compare that with unemployment trends for the same period -

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IRL/ireland/unemployment-rate

It’s not a social experiment, it’s by design. In times of “prosperity”, everyone’s welcome. In times of austerity, people start pointing fingers, and that’s why I argue that it’s not driven by racism. Race or ethnicity or culture really has nothing to do with it. It simply comes down to which groups in society are the easiest targets for anyone to vent about, who do they consider a burden on society, who’s depriving them of their entitlement to prosperity? It doesn’t delineate neatly along political lines of left or right, liberal or conservative - everyone’s a target when some people feel they are being deprived of the things they feel they are entitled to.

As far as the Ukrainian refugee situation goes, I don’t have much to say about it to be honest because I’m just not that heavily invested in it, other than to agree with you that balls were dropped all over the shop, from the Government’s handling of the situation, to NGOs handling of the situation. It’s bad already, and it’s only going to get a whole lot worse. I found myself asking “what did they expect?” when I read this article the other day -

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/13/stop-matching-lone-female-ukraine-refugees-with-single-men-uk-told

I haven’t seen anything like this thread ever on RTE or in the national media or anything else, and I’m not going to lie I wouldn’t watch it, same as I didn’t watch the Presidential posturing when Peter Casey trolled the nation. Trump-lite is all he was, and he disappeared when it was made clear to him after numerous attempts to get into politics, that he just wasn’t wanted.

I have no doubt you’re not so thin-skinned as PC that being called a racist by people who’s opinion you don’t care all that much for in the first place, that you would genuinely find them the least bit offensive, let alone the notion that you could possibly be humiliated into silence! The idea itself of you being humiliated into silence because some idiot calls you names is laughable. That’s why I don’t accept it as a reasonable defence of the idea that we can’t talk about these things. A far more reasonable conclusion as to why there’s no “debate” in the national media, and why it’s only an issue confined to the nuttier corners of the Internet, is because there’s just no appetite to pay any attention to people in Ireland who express those sort of sentiments. It just looks like it’s aping politics in other countries that really doesn’t apply in this country.

What?? Are we paying for their cars too? 😂💀