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

Well whatever way you fall on the political spectrum you still have the option to vote against any party. So rather than just vote no 1 for your preferred candidate go down the line to vote against any parties that you don't like. If you want to vote independents vote for them all in descending order of your choice. If you are happy with the current situation then vote to continue it by choosing SF/FFG/PBP/Soc Dems depending on how strongly you feel about this issue.

Well it's almost like you're making my point for me though. Violence at football matches is actually less prevalent now, by your own words — so I'm confused as to why it has improved if immigration has increased?

In any event, what was the context of these attacks? I mean, English football fans don't exactly have the benefit of doubt on their side when it comes to this kind of stuff.

Irish fans regularly go to rugby matches at the Stade de France right? Irish fans tumbled around France rightly during the Euros there, right? For whatever reason, these gangs of "a certain demographic" must take a day off here and there.

Yes but that was the extreme narrative I was responding to. Yours is more reasonable, but doesn't exactly portray a story of Paris that could not be said about many other cities and indeed Paris itself historically — which has always had poor areas (people just didn't see them because there was no/less tourism and constant videos of every event from smartphones).

From that, people have developed a romanticised notion of Paris, and from that the idea that it's the migrants who have ruined this romantic caricature. Paris has had rough areas for a long bloody time, and France generally has always been a country that flirts with upheaval. If tourism existed the way it does now down through the years, do you think people would be walking through streets of happy contented white French smiling at you from their kiosks laden with fresh artisanal cuisine with the background music of an accordion? What would smartphones and mass media coverage and constant access to tourists have shown us?

But the difference is now that people want to make out that it's the black people and the Arab people who have sh*t over everything that was Utopian once in Paris. It's a lazy argument that is unfortunately treated as a reasonable one by many.

I don't know how many European cities you have been in, but there are plenty of dodgy areas, in most of them!

The chances of being dipped in Dublin are massive, and they target the obvious tourists around town.

Massive chance of being dipped in Barcelona and Rome also actually. Taxi drivers in Rome are notorious for trying to scam tourists. Athens is not a particularly nice place to walk around as a tourist. I mean the bigger the tourist city the bigger the chance someone will try to take advantage. This cannot be blamed on immigration, this stuff has happened for years in tourist locations.

Agree about not throwing people into big cities and leaving them to fend for themselves, smaller towns and villages allow for more integration.

There's an element of opportunism to this though. What often seems to happen is that anti-migration arguments tend to piggyback on a different pressing issue and then seek to establish the causal link. In this case — you take an issue like the housing crisis which is more less #1 issue at the forefront of minds and if you draw the causal link between that and migration (or refugees) you can then claim migration to be a massive issue.

As a 32 year old young professional with a girlfriend who is a full time teacher who feels pretty angry at the fact that it's so hard for us to buy a home, there are many on here and elsewhere who just really, really, really badly want me to believe that refugees are the obstacle and I should be mad about their presence. That's how it works.

Housing is most definitely the biggest issue for me followed by immigration, then health, law & order and so on.

All are not mutually exclusive though. And all have an impact on each other.

I'm blessed I have a rental but I'm handing over 2k a month of hard earned money for it on top of scrambling a deposit together. Myself and my partner are terrified if we get put out of here, there are not many options.

I'm seeing "studios" - a sofabed beside a cooker in a mould infested room over the road in Ranelagh/Rathmines going for 1600 a month at the minute.

How it's allowed I don't **** know. That's what immigrants are coming into. Unscrupulous greedy bastards exploiting the **** out of a supply issue and FGFF watching on pretending they are addressing it.

Supply and demand isn't 'opportunism', it's a fact of life. You don't put out a bonfire by pouring petrol on it.

I would add that the phrase 'anti-migration' is a typical nasty touch. Most people are happy with planned and managed, legal immigration.

I think it's a stretch to make that comparison though. The mass displacement of people due to conflict is not something that is easily controllable firstly — it's not a policy of migration like France pursued in the 1950s to leverage its old colonial populations to rebuild the country from devastation of WW2. We are dealing with a humanitarian issue that is unavoidably more difficult to "get right".

What happens next is a question of national mentality. Be accommodating of the people who have arrived here despite the imperfections and problems or simply continue to peddle narratives that the refugees are actually just tramps who are here for sex and handouts — we shall see which option transpires for the better when it comes to integration.

Yes , like Longford ! ;)

Absolutely .

Have worked out of an inner city area all my life so know what the city is like at all times of day . It is just like any other major city and has been always . But generally not pleasant except on a Summer's day when in some leafier parts or shopping areas .

Dublin by the sea and the Parks are beautiful . It's great to have it a walk or a bus ride away .

Two drama programmes recently released , The Catch set in Cornwall and Maryland set on the Isle of Man , were both chiefly filmed in parts of Howth and Sutton beach .

The problems in Dublin before and now have little to do with immigration and more to do with the present government and their policy of allowing greedy landlords and vulture funds hike up rents way beyond the level of affordability and more , and handing over social housing commitments to private developers.

We are still suffering the politics that engendered the last crash but with new faces on the old politicians .

But people trying to lay the blame for this and other problems on refugees is just pure head in the sand stuff.

The problems here are the politicians who are not listening to people over not just immigration but housing rents ,cost of food and profiteering by companies while ordinary people are squeezed .

If people say oh its immigrants , and the government slow down the numbers coming in ,will these other issues just disappear ?

It's the same people voting for FF/ FG over and over again .

It's new faces and ideas in government that are needed .

But not far right . Vote for those guys is a vote for darkness , hate and extreme intolerance .

Seriously? I have lived an worked in Dublin since 1993. Trust me, the chances are massive. I am aware of just how often people are victims of this crime.

Gardai have dedicated units working on this crime entirely. Plainclothes members working fulltime trying to stop/catch these criminals.

I'm really not. It's not publicized like we hear about Barcelona, but it's a massive issue in town.

People literally do it as their 'job.'

This is a good point and a shortcoming of how polling is typically conducted.

In order to figure out how high a priority something actually is you'd need to conduct a poll where different weightings are assigned to each question's response. An example of how this would work is what's known as quadratic polling.

Here's a good interactive example of it in action (because that's a lot easier than actually explaining the mechanics of it)

Basically you have an allotment of votes to spread throughout the questions so you can really emphasise the positions that you feel more strongly about.

Housing is a massive issue - what on earth do you expect?

As for me 'blaming' one of the more reasonable posters - why not go back to the post that I responded to that contained this hysterical line:

it's being used by many as the underhand way of giving a respectable side to arguments that centre more on refugees being aggressive horny males who are here to rape and plunder.