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

"Currently the employment is not present in the Balkans" - I know that. And it won't be while skilled people leave. That's literally my point. Developing economies are hamstrung while western economies pick off their skilled people.

"If Germany didn't have those companies, they wouldn't be moving to the Balkans" - maybe not. But there's a trickle-down effect. Maybe they'd move to Poland or Hungary. And other companies can move down to the Balkans.

People sending money back to Ireland didn't keep us poor - it was a symptom of our poorness that we had mass emigration and had to rely on cash remittances. Just like the Balkans in your example, or plenty of other places around the world. We didn't turn things around until we stopped the brain drain. But now you're arguing for brain drain to keep us rich. That's your privilege that I keep referring to. It's as if we've learned nothing from history. But hey - we're happy to undermine developing economies so long as we keep getting richer ourselves. That's what this is all about.

And meanwhile we're increasing carbon emissions (the example I gave about record flight numbers), we're destroying diversity and multi-culturalism, we're going to get to some fairly interesting situations in the coming decades where a native people become a minority in their own country. That's working well in Hamtramck in Michigan, the first Muslim-majority town in the US, which now has an all-male council and which banned Pride flags as one of its first acts (conservative Muslims not being particular fans of women's equality or gay rights). This is another major discussion to be had which is being ignored at the moment.

But when you see the cheap price of Bulgarian-picked strawberries, it's all worth it.

It would be hard. But why not discuss it?

Governments can't really introduce a ban on their citizens working abroad - really you can only introduce a ban on foreign nationals working. And EU governments can't even do that to EU citizens of course.

But as populations in some of the eastern European countries continue to decline, you can imagine it's going to crop up at some stage.

You can suspect away, but just like suvigirl, you've no real better argument than to doubt my concern for other groups for no readily apparent reason. A very convenient and lazy way of not engaging in the discussion.

The reality is different cultures are different. (Obviously). Some are a closer fit to others. The Polish, for example, have a lot in common with the Irish. Culturally Catholic, fond of the drink, very friendly, experience of being oppressed. Others are not a close fit, and ultimately Islam is the obvious example of a bad fit in Europe.

Conservative Islam is homophobic, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic. In Vienna, where one-sixth of the population is Muslim, there's been increasing discussions about the implications of this. There's a 2013 survey which clearly sets out the cultural differences - 73% of Austrian Muslims agree the rules Qoran are more important than the rules of Austria (we can see the impact of this when we look at honour killings in Europe - "Every year in the United Kingdom (UK), officials estimates that at least a dozen women are victims of honour killings, almost exclusively within Asian and Middle Eastern families. Often, cases cannot be resolved due to the unwillingness of families, relatives and communities to testify". 63% say you can't trust the Jews (where have we heard that in Austria before? Muslim immigration is linked with a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Europe) and 69% would not want a gay person as a friend. The percentage of Catholics (or culturally Catholic) Austrians agreeing with those sentiments (with the Bible in for the Qoran) is naturally far smaller.

It's dangerous to dismiss this as similar to the Republicans, even if there's some similar trends. And I'm not sure what the Republican equivalent in Europe would be. I think it's fair to say many in Europe see America as a remarkably backwards country in many respects.

Now ask yourself - what would Europe be like if this were the majority culture? And with birth rate and immigration trends, there's no reason at all it won't happen in some countries; Sweden is forecast to be minority Swedish by 2050 for example. Others will follow over the remainder of the century (including Ireland) I'd argue it'd be similar to what we're starting to see in Hamtramck. Is that what we want?

So there's very much a discussion around what we want for the future of our society, and that discussion has to go beyond cheap fruit.

And that's just one factor on top of economic inequality (local and global), carbon emissions, loss of diversity and multi-culturalism, and the other factors I've discussed already.