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

Just catching up on things in Clonmel. What the actual ****.

Bringing in UK contractors to push things through. This is serious stuff.

any links to support?

For those posters who kept denying that immigration was causing housing shortages Minister of State Jennifer Carroll MacNeill mentioned on a Claire Byrne interview (around the 4:10 mark) that immigration is a "no. 1 issue for government along with housing because the two things are so linked"

https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22397158/

It keeps being repeated that ROG is an 'obscure' or 'relatively unknown' minister. It doesn't matter if he is well known or not. Twitter does not just show tweets of people you follow. You don't need to have heard of someone to see their tweets. And he also has a verified Twitter account (blue tick at the time). It is not a stretch to say that algorithms would show a tweet from an Irish government official in the timelines of those who may have previously searched for info relating to the same subject. Not to mention the fact that it was in multiple languages so the algorithm would have also pushed this.

Those tweets were put out in different languages in order to get a wide reach. This wasn't an accident. I don't mean to be rude but those who keep saying that people outside of Ireland won't have heard of him are showing that they don't understand how social media works

Try telling that to the posters on here who seem to hate anyone mentioning that Irish migrants are part of the problem in terms of housing demand in places like Australia. A few days ago I got told this was a "rapist's defence".

In any event, you're making a bit of a leap there between what was said and what it means. Saying that immigration and housing are linked is not quite saying "immigration is causing housing shortages". Housing shortage is caused by a lack of supply of housing, and right now Ireland has not and is not producing enough housing even if you were to return the 1.5 million Irish people living abroad and boot out the migrants.

What certainly is true is that immigrants form part of the demand for housing, and demand obviously is something which keeps prices high. So migrant workers certainly contribute to the demand and therefore cost of property (though this is probably mainly felt in the rental sector, as migrants are far less likely to be on the property ladder than Irish-born citizens). I think previous debates on here had centered more so on the extent to which refugees (as opposed to migrants more generally) were exacerbating the housing crisis.

Think of it a bit like Everest...the grand canal is the base camp. The summit is the keys to own door accommodation.

Interesting graph. I wonder what caused the massive drop off in numbers around 2002-2004?

Surely it couldn't be the fact that we amended our constitution to limit the right to Irish citizenship by birth in an absolute landslide of a referendum.

Just shows that if there is the political will to do something to stem the flow of numbers arriving, it can be done.

Hopefully we'll be allowed to go back to the polls to decide what direction we want to go in as regards IPA/AS policy in the future. However, I severely doubt the government will risk putting the EU migration pact to the electorate, they know exactly what way that would go.

Well, no, I wouldn't question the capability of a tweet to make its way to a wider audience, I just question the placing of that tweet high on the list of influencing factors that led to the elevated numbers. The insistence that it's somehow more relevant than the outbreak of the Ukraine War just makes no sense to me.

Gone to Dundrum I hear. Soon to appear at well known shopping emporiums. In fairness, if they can hang around outside our local post office and supermarket, don't see why not in the leafy suburbs.

Mostly new arrivals I believe, some interviewed said only arrived in last day or so. Chap called Brian from South Africa interviewed earlier and seems to be here longer. Q: is SA a country at war these days??

More like frostbite. The longer if goes on the worse it gets.

They can be embeded here, its nice to share them so we can all see without having to navigate phone browsers.

It also serves as balance to the stuff the media will happily put out eg below(20mnins ago).

Australia also has outward migration too. I guess if Irish or any other nationalities are contributing towards the housing crisis the Australian government are free to put more controls on inward migration until it has been regulated

The sad thing is that, if countries actually engage in good spirit, the EU Migration Pact presents probably one of the best chances we will have to actually tackle the number of asylum seekers. The alternative vision of saying f**k you to EU-wide migration policies and pulling up the drawbridge to magically only allow perfectly industrious migrants and totally honest refugees sounds tempting. I can see why people get drawn into it as the solution.

But we are already seeing the effects of what happens when the countries of Europe act solely in their own interest without any co-operation or burden-sharing. Italy is left without incentive to prevent migrants making their way to the French border, France whistles while looking the other way as boats set off to the UK and migrants gather at Calais, and the UK decides that Ireland is the perfect defenseless sucker to ship migrants off to. Then what do we do?

The idea of totally self-serving migration policy is great, until we realise that it also means our European neighbours working against us and each other.

And there have been plenty of Irish 'illegal' immigrants too, particularly to the US.

It seems one of those same fellas is running in the upcoming elections on an 'anti-immigration' platform and people (some here anyway) are taking him seriously.

In September 2023, Casey wrote on X: “I was illegal in the USA before I got my L1. Enter a counter [sic.] illegally and you know the risk of getting caught and bounced out.”

https://www.thejournal.ie/key-moments-as-migration-dominates-european-elections-tv-debate-6385001-May2024/

Orban, Le Pen, Wilder, Trump, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, McNamara, Casey… There seems to be a very strong correlation between running on an anti-immigration platform and looking quite like a spoofer (to put it very mildly).