Irish Independent: "No country has ever accepted, never mind assimilated, the volumes of foreigners now present in this state"

Sign of the times; grocery in Dublin selling "Asian, Arabian & Irish Food", July 2007.

One hell of an opinion piece in the Irish Independent two weeks ago (found it today via The Brussels Journal)

Immigration is now not merely the dominant feature of Irish life, it is the greatest threat to the existence of the Irish nation as a coherent, and cohesive whole.

No country has ever accepted, never mind assimilated, the volumes of foreigners now present in this state. We have some 400,000 legal immigrants; but everyone knows that the army of illegals, especially Africans and Chinese, is vast, and probably tops 200,000. In all, Ireland has received at least 600,000 immigrants, most of them within the past five years. It could be many more. No one has the least idea.

In the US, such immigration would translate into an inward population movement of 45 million. In the UK, the figure would be nine million. Needless to say, neither state would be so idiotic or feckless as allow such vast numbers to enter.

Of course, even though most of these are Eastern Europeans, pointing this out draws the predictable cries of "racism":

And of course, we haven't got the resources to cope with the consequences of such an influx. But worse than our lack of resources, is our lack of courage in confronting the issue.

We do not have policies, but inept evasiveness: and perhaps worst of all, we have a posturing gallery of home-grown jackanapes ready to shriek "racism" wherever and whenever they see that things are not going quite the way that immigrants want.

I'm not sure exactly what a "jackanape" is, but I think the idea is pretty clear...

Part of the problem is not just the numbers of foreigners, but the sheer speed of the change. Unlike the UK, Ireland is only relatively recently a nation of immigrants. One classic quote:

On the News at One on Monday, African after African in Balbriggan complained there were no places for their children in the existing local schools.

Not once was the question posed: what was the real reason for the Africans not having places in schools? Answer: they'd only just come here.

Instead, Africans who were just off the boat were allowed to accuse us of racism for not having school places awaiting their children.
...
This is the land of the Red Cow Roundabout and motorways without service stations, rest-stops or toilets. So how could we be expected seven years ago to have planned school-building projects in north county Dublin for Africans as yet unborn?

Alas, common sense is "racist" too...

The author, Kevin Myers, also wrote another amusing article back in July:

In Luton, 44pc of school pupils are Muslim, though only 30pc of the population of the town are. Which means that Muslim families have 50pc more children than those of the indigenous population - in other words, within a couple of generations, the two groups in Luton will be swapping demographic places.

Better still, Dr Nazia Khanum, the "Chair" of the splendidly named Luton Multicultural Women's Coalition, (no, I didn't make it up: I just couldn't) has complained that in many village schools near Luton - in rustic Bedfordshire - both teachers and pupils were almost entirely white. What? White Christians? In England? How perfectly shocking.

Some of the absurdities of this situation were apparent in an incident that was in all the headlines while I was in Ireland this year. A large group of gypsies came from Romania and started camping out in the middle of a median of highway M50, not far from the Dublin International Airport. Since Romania is now a member of the EU, they felt they had the right to live and collect welfare benefits there. No such luck. They were soon deported. The absurdity is that they couldn't claim asylum, since they come from another EU state. But any non-European (African, Saudi, or Pakistani, or presumably even an American) could claim asylum, and by law would be allowed to stay for a time, and in the end would be almost impossible to remove. I'm not sure if any of this really makes sense.





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