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

Can I just interject here to say that I personally know an Irish migrant worker in Switzerland who is out of work there and is being paid a frankly astounding amount in unemployment benefit. He is entitled to 70% of his salary — paid for by the State — in circumstances where he was earning well over €100k a year. Doing very little at the moment and swanning about on trips to Italy and France, skiing etc.

So this unemployed Irish migrant worker is being paid more in Switzerland currently on unemployment benefit than I am in Ireland in full time employment. Food for thought when we compare with other countries.

You can’t help yourself can you?

Again conflating legal migration of a guy probably paying 50%+ of his high income in tax now being unemployed(obviously he’s paid enough stamps to be entitled to his level of welfare) -

with illegal migration and bogus asylum claims (the topic of this thread)

The clever Ukrainians are those who can work remotely from Ireland and bank their salary while living in free accommodation, no bills, un-means tested medical card and social welfare, free education. Its a wonder more haven't moved here.

Not true that they don't have any bills. Any Ukrainains in state accommodation have to pay €10 a day for food (bringing down their weekly payment to around €150 a week). And are there many Ukrainians working remotely for Ukrainian based companies whilst in Ireland? It doesn't seem very likely.

And seemingly you can't help yourself from getting a bit wound up whenever Irish migrants are brought up, right?

The thread is about refugees and the "bogus" economic migrants, which ultimately is a form of migration. It is perfectly valid to bring up attitudes towards foreign refugees / migrants and compare those to the way in which we view our compatriot migrants or relatively wealthy Western migrants in general. Try dig out stories of migrants or refugees getting paid while not working, plop them in here, and I doubt it will be long before the moaning brigade kick off about the cheek of that chancer etc etc. Have the temerity to mention an Irish migrant being on unemployment benefits that are higher than full time professionals are paid in Dublin and using that for lovely trips in the Alps? Well — suddenly nuance applies!

You could definitely argue that the government got carried away with their open door for Ukrainian people in the first six months of the war and weren't factoring in that the war could go on for much, much longer. They should have had a contingency plan in place for a scenario where the war didn't end in 2022 and went on for years instead. Perhaps they would have been moving towards tightening up payments and benefits and so on a lot earlier than Spring 2024.

Actually implementing some kind of anti-immigration policy would be far more difficult than the wording of any referendum.

The poll that scared me was 50% saying they favored border-controls with Northern Ireland. Is Jo Public that 'misguided' as to think such a measure would be remotely possible or effective?

Did we learn nothing from watching the UK vote in a historically terrible Tory government on the back of a simplistic 'stop the boats' message?

Thought anecdotes were banned here??

Just reading about all the proposals and adjustments on the way now. If there were elections every year it would have all been sorted years ago.

There's been quite a few adjustments already in the last few months.

Looks to me that just as many, if not more are coming, but now they're sleeping in tents, and we've less Gardai dealing with serious crime.

What part of this looks like getting things 'sorted' to you?

Firstly, you are overestimating your involvement in 5/6 posters supposedly derailing the thread.

You may need to disseminate the thread better if comments you see as “well thought through opinions” are, you think, deemed invalid. Are they? There will always be extremes, but it’s better to tackle the theme of the thread as a whole, rather than reacting to a small number of individual contentious responses to comments that reflect your view. Recent polls should be paid attention to.

The sense of this thread reflects public opinion in that people skipping the queue for ‘people in need’ is totally unacceptable. How to weed out those in real need from those not, is the main issue - however we have clear evidence that there are people not in desperate need of asylum being granted ease of living allowances that are not granted to people who have lived here 20+ years, or even always - whichever, it’s massively unfair and it can’t be painted any other way.

How do you know how many are or are not working remotely? Why doesn't it seem likely?

As another poster mentioned why would you assume they're just working for Ukrainian companies?

If you don't have facts to back your statement up it's just assumption on your part. I think many people in Ireland would have the totally opposite assumption that remote working is happening by Ukrainians living here under the temporary protection directive.

And I'll preempt a possible reply by agreeing that yes there are Irish people doing nixers while claiming state benefits but that's not the point of this thread.

I’d offer you some advice and edit this post as it will be classed as an anecdote.

38 euros isnt enough to live on. It's nohing.