Immigration to Ireland - policies, challenges, and solutions *Read OP before posting*

The East wall community didn't do anything about the trouble and crime in their neighbourhood, now they're virtually uppity because a few people have been moved into an disused building.

There is a lot more positive things they could be doing

You're still not articulating just how this supposed excessive immigration of workers and students is harming Ireland. If there is pressure on housing and accommodation, that surely is a problem with supply, not demand. The entire population - nationals and non nationals - have a need for housing, services, infrastructure etc. If there are shortages of the aforementioned, the blame surely has to lie with the government, certainly not with the people seeking access to those services.

Incidentally, there is nothing remotely "nuanced" about claiming the way to solve the housing crisis is to curtail immigration. The Brexiteers went down a similar route with predictably disastrous results in 2016 - they spent most of the referendum campaign arguing how blocking freedom of movement by leaving the EU ("moderating the migration stream" as you put it) would solve all of their problems.

Did you really just call a Dublin inner city community "uppity"?

I'm wary of criticising anything you say here because you seem like such a perfect exemplar of the kind of person who doesn't see any problem with what's happening. I don't want to change that or disturb it in any way. It's too valuable.

Reading your posts here gives such a great insight into a way of looking at the world that's

one, completely beyond me and

two, shared by the people making decisons at the highest level.

So what problems have occured because of the people living in the disused building?

It is an aspect of the housing crisis.

The government create demand-side shocks through population increases with immigration.

The government also create supply-side shocks through the Level 5 construction lockdowns in 2020-21, through NIMBY limitations on new developments, over-regulation and various other things.

Does increasing the demand-side in the teeth of these supply shocks to help to aggravate the latter? Yes, of course. It is hard to level out the supply problems if the number of potential buyers and renters keeps being replenished and increased.

This benefits asset owners (in real estate). It doesn't help the average person living here, including already-established immigrants.

But there seems to be a general theme in this thread that immigration is somehow an aberration, something that needs to be stamped out (or curtailed at least). It has been going on between countries for centuries, millennia in fact. The government don't necessarily cause immigration - people will come here if they want to and if they see Ireland as an attractive location. The whole idea of "controlled immigration" is a bit of a nonsense anyway - no government is in control of net immigration or emigration (no more than they are in "control" of the birth rate, marriage rate, death rate or anything else related to demographics). They cannot switch immigration on and off like a tap.

It’s quite entertaining seeing what nonsense you’ll come up with next. I only wish I had more time to draw you out even further.

Firstly, there’s nothing ‘supposed’ about the extraordinary levels of immigration to this country. You’ve been furnished with the facts and what current levels of net migration would equate to in the US and the UK, which of course you ignored. Anybody with a basic grasp of maths comprehends the scale of this influx. Maths is logic-based though, so never mind..

Secondly, the population of Ireland has grown by 32% since the turn of the millennium. That’s one third. Migration accounts for more than 50% of that increase. Supply will never keep up with that level of demand. It’s simply not feasible, particularly when that demand is not predictable.

In terms of natural growth, governments can forecast, plan, and build accordingly. However, with the borderline reckless policies pursued throughout the last decade, it’s almost impossible to predict annual net population increase. Do you feel good about people sleeping 20 to an apartment in modern day tenements? Do you think we should satiate migration-driven demand by concreting over the entire country? Perhaps, we should build replica Ballymuns ringing our cities, mirroring the French banlieue?

There are shortages of housing, school places, GP places etc because of hugely inflated demand, driven to a large extent by immigration. Your solution? Build? Anybody with a basic grasp of logic understands that regulating that demand is the obvious solution. Not you though ‘Strazdas’. No surprises there.

In terms of some of the other detrimental impacts of this extraordinary level of inward migration, I suggest you read Robert Putnam’s ‘Bowling Alone’ to get a sense of some of the likely societal impacts coming our way. You won’t like his conclusions though as it will undermine your world view.

I reiterate that you aren’t capable of nuance. You demonstrate it yet again in your second paragraph. Anybody who advocates for regulated migration that benefits this country is immediately branded a ‘brexiteer’. Why do you only have the capacity to think in absolutes?

It’s such a crude, imbecilic response, it’s hard to know where to start with you. In fact, I’m passionate about the EU, have studied, lived, and worked in a neighbouring EU state, and support freedom of movement. The very antithesis of a ‘brexiteer’. Nobody is suggesting that curtailing all immigration will ‘solve all their problems’. That’s more rubbish that you’ve concocted. Instead, what most sensible posters are suggesting, is that we closely regulate and reduce non-EU migration, whilst dealing with significant, bordering on intractable issues, that are demonstrably having a negative impact on the lives of Irish people.

I much preferred less people.

And just on immigration from outside the EU. These people are all put together and live as they did in their own countries. It would be a lot better to spread them out as they'd easily acclimatise and become part of the community.

A lot of people don't like large etnic groups living in their area and there's no need to put them all in one place.

"In terms of some of the other detrimental impacts of this extraordinary level of inward migration, I suggest you read Robert Putnam’s ‘Bowling Alone’ to get a sense of some of the likely societal impacts coming our way. You won’t like his conclusions though as it will undermine your world view."

You mean his 2007 paper “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty‐First Century” where he says that "immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer."

He refutes the "contact hypothesis" beloved by many open border enthusiasts which argues that diversity enhances inter-ethnic tolerance and social solidarity. Unfortunately, says Putnam, most empirical studies refute the “contact hypothesis” and actually provide evidence for the “conflict theory”: the latter being that

“ … diversity fosters out-group distrust and in-group solidarity. On this theory, the more we are brought into physical proximity with people of another race or ethnic background, the more we stick to ‘our own’ and the less we trust the ‘other’ …”

He uses the example of South Dakota and San Francisco

“Inter-racial trust is relatively high in homogeneous South Dakota and relatively low in heterogeneous San Francisco or Los Angeles. The more ethnically diverse the people we live around, the less we trust them. This pattern may be distressing normatively, but it seems to be consistent with conflict theory.” (Putnam 2007: 147).

Even more devastating is the evidence that, as diversity rises, the more people tend to distrust their neighbours and even people like themselves, even of the same ethnic group or race (Putnam 2007: 148–149).

There's a lot more about it in this review of his paper. Sobering stuff.

At the height of boom house building matched the population increase, After the crash we stopped building. So putting the housing shortage down simply to a "hugely inflated demand" is hardly the nuanced analysis you harangue others for not displaying.

Whereas the Danish government implemented their controlled immigration policy in order to preserve social cohesion.

Shush you're not supposed to counter nonsense with facts!

Compare the population of immigrants in Denmark at 8% and Ireland at 17% of which 46% arrived in the last 5 years where everywhere is at 22 % in the same time

32,000 + of which were from Ukraine

People will get together with people from their own country. Its perfectly natural but the ghettoising of large groups is not a good idea for integration in the long term.