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

You are selfish. I've shown why.

You're free to engage in debate about it if you want. If you can't - well that reflects fairly badly on your stance tbh.

Nothing patronising about it - brain drain was a serious issue in Ireland up to the 80s and played a large part in holding the country back for decades. Carbon emissions arising from migration are quite significant and on the rise at a time when we're trying to get to nett zero in ten years or so.

You are self-centred in that you consistently brush off the damage being done to developing countries. You simply don't care, to the point of pointedly ignoring it. Countries in eastern Europe are seeing population declines that will have whole economies on the brink of extinction in 100 years but you don't care. They're going to have huge issues paying pensions in the coming decades, but you don't care. So long as you have cheap fruit, you're happy.

That's the definition of selfish. There's far more to discuss in this topic than the narrow-minded approach you're taking. You've pretty much ignored any point that goes against your view (you make no mention of any of the above, for example) and repeated your uber liberal view that people should be allowed do whatever they want. But actually bigger picture thinking should trump that if we want to build a sustainable, inclusive, equal world.

But, as I say, you don't care about any of that.

"In return they send back money"

How patronising. Rather than let these countries develop their economies, we help ourselves to their people as we wish, get rich off the spoils, and pat ourselves on the back that we let these countries have the dregs. Aren't we great.

The level of migration we're seeing globally now has not been happening for hundreds of years. You can see proof of that in, for example, the diversity of cultures across Europe (which we're now quickly destroying) as evidenced by something as simple as people's names. Every country has its own unique set of surnames - until now. Simple proof to argue against your point.

You propose coming down on companies treating migrant labour badly, but the reality is most cheap labour here is quite openly badly treated - look at how many covid clusters arose in meat packing factories in 2020. Were these employers clamped down on? No they weren't. "Specialist labour" was required. Specialist labour! More patronising. It's cheap, won't complain, and boosts profits. Because that's all that matters.

For most of human history, people couldn't travel as freely as they do today. The world was much more equal. Heck, up until 30 or so years ago, Europeans couldn't work in another European country, and Europe and European societies were much more equal. I've already explained how these countries would be helped if we recognised our privilege on immigration. The example I gave was of some high tech firms in Ireland who would find insufficient staff here and be forced to relocate to other countries to find staff. This would inevitably happen across a range of sectors. As it is, they're just bringing the staff in from other countries, which is driving global inequality.

suvigirl's comment thatshe doesn't care about eastern European pensions is interesting - it of course backs up my point that people sharing this view of emigration don't care about other cultures. This despite the protestations when I called it out earlier.

"Ideas and progressive vales" is fairly useless to be honest. Empty words really. Certainly when compared to carbon emissions, which you keep dodging. And of course, the usual overly emotive nonsense ("lock the inhabitants up" - FFS) associated with a poster whose point is way less forceful than they'd like to think.

This is the second time you've said I'm attacking you. I'm not. I'm discussing points. If you feel that's you being personally attacked, that's your problem. Ironically, you're the one who's dishing out the personal attacks (by saying I'm attacking you, when I'm not) and ignoring the point.

Building a developed economy is a chicken and egg situation, sure. You can't develop it without educated people, and you can't retain educated people until you have a developed economy.

So this is where you should stand back, examine your privilege, and realise that by actively enticing people away from countries that are trying to develop an economy (as discussed in the BBC documentary by the guy whose name you couldn't spell, yet you still tried to tell me he was talking about something different), you are keeping parts of the world poor while growing rich yourself.

That's the reality of things.

I don't think I mentioned Poland specifically? Though maybe you're just using it as an example, which is fair enough. But let's take Romania or Moldova or Lithuania or Bosnia, whose populations have declined by 25% in the past 30 years. Or Poland, if you want, though their population is only now starting to crash. How much more would their economies have grown without that drain on their resources? How much of the growth is just attributable to EU funding and access to markets? And good percentage figures from a low base can be misleading. And most importantly, how sustainable are their economies when their populations are on course to roughly halve by the end of the century? (Some of that is down to low birth rates, but emigration is a huge factor too).

You still don't get it. Germany has a large number of Bosnians - about a quarter of a million - and it imports more to keep its economy going. Germany has spoken about needing half a million immigrants a year to keep hitting growth targets.

The reason people leave Bosnia and the likes is because there's a dearth of highly skilled jobs - but in moving to Germany to take those jobs up, they ensure those highly-skilled jobs will stay in Germany. It drives German wealth and keeps Bosnia poor.

And we should know this because the same thing happened in Irish history. Money from America kept Ireland going - but it was also a sign that something was wrong with our economy. We didn't get away from that really until the early 90s and the start of the IT boom. Emigration kept us poor.

What would happen if those people couldn't move to Germany? The companies would have to move. There would be more highly-skilled jobs in Bosnia (and other countries), and a stronger local economy. A more equitable distribution of wealth, and a more inclusive global society, as I've argued before.

Also, there's a link between higher subsidy payments and corruption. Here's a German MEP discussing it for example. In countries with high subsidy payments (such as eastern Europe gets from the EU to develop its economy but also nominally to compensate for taking their people), there's less incentive to be innovative or entrepreneurial - and more incentive to ensure you get your hands on some easy cash.

So what we're doing is (a) increasing inequality, (b) creating a vicious circle of wealth generation for some at the exclusion of others and (c) setting the scene for corruption, arguably forcing even more people to leave.