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

Thanks. I'm not sure if you can call to Citizens Information centres now, aren't most of them de manned and gone online, professional etc since Covid.

But I did find this: https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving-country/ukrainian-refugees-in-ireland/social-welfare-supports-for-ukrainian-refugees/

So it looks like my example of a Ukrainian mother & 2 children (war refugees) would get €278 a week or €1112 a month or €14456 annually - that is basic job seekers at €208 a week and child benefit of €280 a month.

Also likely to be housed centrally with cost borne by the state. If renting privately, can avail of rent supplement. Can also get One Parent Family payment and other normal social welfare entitlements.

I'm not sure if food at accommodations is still provided free, was initially but then reported that all or partial payment would be needed.

Given that accommodation for mother & two children for Irish citizen here could easily be €1200 a month down the country, that's worth €14,400 annually approx. So all in all, I estimate my hypothetical family would have €28,856 worth of basic supports/ income. That would be roughly equivalent to an ordinary person earning about €40K annually. Am I in the right ball park?

What happens then if children are minded by fellow refugee or are in state school and mother works in local retail or hospitality etc. Does she retain the above benefits and top up or are they taken off the job seekers etc?

"Admirable level of support" is one way of putting it.

I'd say more correctly Irish people are being treated as second class citizens in their own country.

Left wingers have also cottened on to this unequal level of support between the regular refugees (although I hate using that word) and our "friends from Ukraine".

If I had my way I'd restore a level playing field by sending every single one packing. Plenty of safe places in Ukraine and a lot of them return for holidays anyway.

Send the lot of them home!

From bing AI on the question of whether Ukraine is safe

"Ukraine is quite safe to visit, except for the Donetsk & Lugansk regions (where the war is). The major tourist destinations like Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa, Chernivtsi, Carpathians are generally safe except for the pickpocketers. Some of the relatively safe cities in Ukraine are Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Uzhhorod, and Chernivtsi"

Let Zelensky house them in a safe part of the large country he is a leader of.

Not our problem to be honest. We are seeing our own country be overrun with "refugees" and economic migrants at huge costs to our exchequer and massive pressures being put on our ability to provide basic services for our existing population, never mind anyone else.

Maybe Zelenskyy should be making more speeches at the UN or lobbying greater supports from NATO rather than touring and inviting celebs for photo ops.

When life is apparently going on as normal in large parts of the country, even to where tourism is available (unlike in many parts of our country now), there's ZERO reason for "refugees" to be here from a safety perspective, let alone more still arriving and being accepted almost 18 months later. It's a regional/localised conflict that has been largely stalled and could drag on for years yet - are we supposed to just keep the doors open indefinitely?

Then there's the chancers arriving via the UK, Belfast or safe European countries with a sob story, maybe no ID, or in the back of a truck - why are we entertaining this group at all? Straight on a plane back to wherever they embarked from.

Ireland has no history to answer for, no moral guilt to assuage, and certainly no obligation to ruin our own country to "save everyone else". My sympathy, charity and tolerance has been steadily eroded as the problems this approach has and is causing have built week by week, month by month. There's a big wide world out there that's far better placed to offer options than a small island on the edge of Europe with a population less than even one major city and a socio-economic infrastructure on the verge of collapse.

Unless they arrive here with a job waiting for them, and the ability to support themselves and find (and pay for) their own accommodation and bills then the doors should be firmly shut until we have addressed the myriad of problems and needs that the political leadership and NGO lobbyists have heaped upon the ordinary citizenry of this State.

Enough is enough.

Got a source on that claim?

Every single poll I’ve seen published on the matter says precisely the opposite

Unless those voters have someone else advocating a radically different immigration policy to threaten to move their vote to the canvassing politicians will just soft-soap them and pretend to take their concerns on board...

There have been a number of them actually

Here’s a recent one from the Sunday Business post

Fairly resounding indication of people’s feelings on the matter

But it's still an important distinction in terms of identifying the gap between what people want and what is actually realistic.

I think most people can, at a minimum, understand that the reality of a war on the European continent is going to invariably increase the number of refugees in Europe quite significantly — which in turn increases the pressure on our system (given this is our first experience as a nation of receiving such a large number of refugees). In these circumstances, it's one thing to say that we should help...but a different thing to entirely to say that we should help in a way that is perfectly manageable, detects all chancers, avoids taking in anyone who might go on to commit a crime, achieves only all-positive outcomes for Ireland and is absolutely fair to Irish people all of the time.

And it seems that this is where the rationale of many of the posters on here is based — an unrealistic view of what handling a refugee crisis actually means in practice and a belief that our efforts must only ever be pitched at a binary option of either doing nothing or doing something so long as there are only positive direct outcomes for Ireland.

Out of interest, what do you think is actually informative about this for the purposes of this thread? Like personally I watched that and see nothing but a guy who is (a) informing the world that Africa has some huge cities when I'm not sure it has ever really been suggested otherwise by anyone and (b) adding a subtle and hopelessly daft suggestion that somehow the existence of these cities is indicative that the Africa we have been told to feel sorry for doesn't actually exist...or something.

It's not like these cities are riding high on the quality of life ratings or are peaceful well-developed places where no person would ever face credible danger or conditions that would compel them to leave . . .

Ukraine is our problem. Countries no longer exist in isolation, we now live in a world of unparalleled trade networks and globalisation. Ukraine produces 6% of global calories, it is important. That 6% may not seem like much, but a lot of the grain produced in Ukraine goes to the likes of Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, Eygpt, Kenya and Djibouti to name a few. Those countries are dependent upon the wheat from Ukraine, without it it will lead to more mass migration from those countries... something which I don't think we can handle or deal with due to the cultural differences.

This is a bit like how Brexiteers voted to keep out migrants, and as a result it has caused a sharp increase in migration from non EU nations.

Sorry, but Ukraine is important to us, yes we need to be reasonable and pragmatic with the number of people we let in, but I'd rather people from a compatible culture, than those from a vastly different culture.

Did you?

Theres still this lingering narrative that Africa is just a dystopian desert, and that Europe is the only way out.

That we're their only option.

Meanwhile; megacities, high speed rail, and megaprojects throughout Africa/mid east. One of which is a 1km high skyscraper vanity project. Let them go live in that.

Being a refugee is not dependent on whether someone lives in a city or not.

perhaps you're shocked that a continent as big as Africa has many diverse countries?

I'm not sure what your point is? Just that people from Africa should stay there? How do you feel about refugees from other continents?

I was questioning the moral reasoning that has someone fly over a few megacities filled with 10s of millions of people getting by daily on one continent, only to land in another continent, with the expectation of better suited asylum there.

Perhaps you dont like people knowing just how urbanized and developed Africa is. (And the mid east).

So you can keep up the crap outdated narrative that pulls on the heart strings of the unaware and easily led. Instead of letting these same countries, which can spare plenty for their ample military budgets and megaprojects, take on their own issues.

If I had the spare time and cash i would be lucky to holiday in some of the places migrants ignore or pass through en route to Europe.

Ah right so we’re only interested in democracy when it coincides with what you believe. At least you’ve dropped your facade that this is something the Irish people want.

There’s an unsettling authoritarian whiff off your posts. Do you realise how you sound?