Time for a zero refugee policy? - *Read OP for mod warnings and threadbans - updated 11/5/24*

Twice as many people in Japan are dying than are being born and it's now heading into a big pensions crisis.

The idea that people in Ireland, of all countries, are complaining that the country is "full" and "overpopulated" after our devastating history of famine and mass emigration is really off the wall.

This idea that we can accommodate another couple of million in Ireland because we had that kind of population pre famine times is ludicrous unless we're happy to give up a few hundred years of progress in our living conditions.

Increasing our population by taking in large numbers of the third world with little education and little English won't help any pension deficit.

Likelihood is they will be a drain on the system rather a help. No issue with taking in skilled immigrants who can fill skill gaps and contribute to Irish society

What has population decline in Japan got to do with Ireland though?

Ireland's population is growing. The myth that we need to have a continuous flow of migrants to "pay our pensions" is just that - a myth. The idea that refugees, the majority of whom don't work, will somehow solve a looming pension crisis is one of the most off the wall reasons I've seen for open borders.

All of the issues in your middle paragraph are caused by poor government policies and planning : housing, health service and transport etc nothing to do with immigration. It is literally the job of any government to prepare and plan for a growing population, whether it is growing for natural reasons or through immigration. Analysts and demographers think it is unlikely the Irish population would ever go much above 6m (which might happen by the year 2050 or so).

No; what's legitimately "off the wall" (I can use quotes too!) is advocating for open borders and implying that Ireland has unlimited capacity to absorb asylum seekers and/or refugees. That's the truly insane ideology being propagated around here.

Everybody is aware that the advanced economies in East Asia currently have extraordinarily low fertility rates. This isn't some insider knowledge that only an inner circle is privy to. By contrast, Ireland's fertility rate reached a nadir of 1.64 in 2020 (depths of the pandemic), rebounded to 1.72 in 2021 and increased by another 16% in the first two QRs of 2022. At this point, the country is just below replacement-level fertility. The population grows naturally by ~30K annually. Our demographic trajectory is entirely different to East Asia.

I've explained all this before, but it's been conveniently ignored. With respect to East Asia, I have full confidence in their ability to make the structural changes required to encourage future family formation and to automate their way out of a looming pensions crisis.

Speaking of nonsensical arguments, the famine angle re-surfaces yet again. This is a time when the population of the entire island of Ireland was 8 million (the all-island population is 7M in 2023), but most of our unfortunate ancestors lived in, what would rightly be construed as squalor and immense deprivation by the standards of today. It's truly embarrassing stuff that this needs to be pointed out repeatedly.

We have to stand up to this 1930s Germany style speak and take everybody - show the world how important we are!

Can't tell if serious these days. Too many crazies out there.

Look at the numbers though : 900 orders one year, 1400 the next. By all means carry out all the deportations, but this is hardly a burning issue or crisis for the country.

To put those numbers in perspective, 120,000 people moved to Ireland up to April 2022 and 60,000 emigrated. Also, the report makes clear that quite a few of these deportation orders have nothing to do with refugees or asylum seekers e.g. students overstaying their visas, marriages of convenience, people working in the black economy etc.

Why would you blame hotels for taking advantage of government incompetence.

If your hotel was empty most of the year round and someone offered you a load of money then you would take it.

The figures are from April 2021 to April 2022 and relate to the movement of 'all' people in and out of the country (I think around 25,000 Ukrainians had arrived in Ireland by that point and are included in the figures.

My point is about deportations though. As we can see, the whole area of illegal or invalid immigration is not a particularly big issue in the context of overall immigration and emigration. By all means, deport those who have a deportation order issued against them, but we're talking about a couple of thousand of people a year at most (and many of these mightn't even be asylum seekers.....people who have overstayed their work or student visa, people working in the black economy without documentation and paying taxes etc).

As the report also mentions, people who have had their asylum claim rejected often just leave the country without needing to be deported and simply move on elsewhere.

The numbers in that are astounding to be honest....

Especially non EU countries such as Brazil, India, Mexico etc..

No wonder we have a housing crisis. Less houses built than new PPS numbers for Brazilians and Indians alone 😮😮