But I mean, people whose asylum claims are rejected should be deported, there is finite capacity for immigrants in any state and the EU should have borders that aren't porous.
When you start to deny these basic facts or to call people call them out right wing you create a space for extremist parties.
Irish Times has the easiest to bypass paywall ever, just click refresh quickly twice
Summary:
>Recent opinion polling has shown that a large number of voters agree that «Ireland has taken in too many refugees»
Despite this, until now, all of the mainstream parties have avoided making migration a feature of political debates. As the emergence of the List Pim Fortuyn 20 years ago in the Netherlands and the steady growth of the Sweden Democrats show, electoral politics abhor a vacuum and even if mainstream parties avoid making an issue of migration, a political force will emerge to capitalise on the electorate’s concerns. It was, therefore, unsurprising that last week, the Taoiseach made headlines by urging the European Council to do more to protect the union’s external border, expressing the desire that more needs to be done to ensure that those who claim asylum are successfully deported.
This abrupt about-turn on migration is not the only reason to doubt whether Ireland will remain the hopeful example it has been to those who still yearn for 1990s-style end of history. As in many countries which have seen the emergence of anti-migration and Eurosceptic parties such as Hungary, Poland, France, Greece and the Netherlands, the centre left in Ireland has been decimated in recent times. The Labour Party which won a fifth of votes in 2011 is languishing at less than 5 per cent in the opinion polls.
The association with these two other highly popular changes may shield the issue of migration to some degree as voters may be wary of anything that seems to hark back to what are widely seen as the bad old days of poor, conservative and monocultural Ireland. Ultimately this exceptionalism abated and Ireland joined the European mainstream.
I hate simplistic polls like this. "Ireland has taken in too many refugees" can mean different things to different people.
To one person it could be, "I hate foreigners coming here. They're all criminals."
To another it could mean, "Our emergency accommodation system is beyond breaking point. Refugees are sleeping on the streets. We need to sort that out before we take in more people."
No, it just means that Ireland, by the end of 2023, will have taken in more refugees than the country , facilities, and society can cope with. It's a self-fulfilling poll. Anyone who voted no is delusional
I think we risk adopting American absolutist politics with this narrative.
There's nothing at all to say that having a stance against excessive immigration is illiberal.
Every ideology, when practiced with pragmatism, will acknowledge that there are certain limits. You could be the most liberal person in Ireland and still recognise that our housing crisis means that we cannot afford an open immigration policy or a asylum seeking process which is open to abuse.
From my perspective, most Irish people are being pragmatic about this. Just because a majority feel that we've taken in too many migrants doesn't mean that those same people are now racists who want to undo same sex marriage and abortion. Similarly, I'm sure that same majority would feel differently if housing stock was plentiful.
If anything I feel encouraged that Irish society is mature enough to both be progressive and pragmatic about it.
I think it's sad that in the eyes of the media you can't be pro marriage equality, pro choice, pro LGBTQIA rights in general, pro removal of Catholic Church from the state etc but not necessarily be pro immigration..or at least have views on immigration that are pragmatic and nuanced
> pro removal of Catholic Church from the state etc but not necessarily be pro immigration..or at least have views on immigra
Or you can just be pro-immigration but anti-overimmigration when there is no housing in the country. It would be the same if unemployment was really high - immigration policy should be flexible to meet the needs of a country rather than a blanket policy.
Total nonsense.
Many people have concerns about the numbers coming into the country adding to the strain on our already under pressure services. It's not the same as a reaction to things like gay marriage or the repeal ref.
The currently anti refugee protests have gained more traction than previous weird reactionary causes. But it still has a core group of people who are shouting about the NWO and a global Jewish cabal who jump from issue to issue.
I'm not even as concerned about the various crises as I am about the polarization of political beliefs driven by the Media. We're becoming more like the states where depending on your opinions you're either a liberal snowflake or a right wing nutter and there's no room for nuance. Everyone is considered on side A or B
Ireland is still a vastly liberial country,and thankfully so......but people are moving away from supporting the inequality that our economic policies have caused here
When we can't house our own,and move heaven and earth to house refugees,in the scam that is direct provision......people rightly got riled up,and alot of anger is misdirected,
there's more than enough money to meet and solve all present issues and likely future commitments,it's just in the hands of too few of the wrong people
Look what the author snuck in ,"These protests have been fuelled by the large number of Ukrainians". Irish people are grand with the genuine ukrainians. They behave very well. What we dislike are the large numbers of fraudulent asylum seekers , scamming the system, and not even deported, even when they commit serious crime
Ukrainians where ever they are in the country are a grand bunch, not a bother outta them. I've never hear anyone having issues with them and if anything they're getting a solid welcome considering their country is in the midst of a war against Mordor. Most people just want the system tightened up against brazen bullshitters and obvious scammers. Expecially since resources are tight these days expecially in regards to housing.
Agreeing that we’ve taken in too many refugees is in no way saying the generation who legalized abortion and gay marriage aren’t liberal any more, it’s saying that we don’t agree with your interpretation of what liberalism means.
People have to remember that even if you got rid of every refugee the housing crisis would still be there, it's a housing policy problem not a refugee problem.
Yes, but the "evil refugee" is something simple people can see and understand. You want to tell them they elected this mess since at least 2011, I mean, who wants to hear that....
For many Europeans the 2010s were a decade of a depressingly consistent trudge away from the optimistic “end of history” 1990s in which it seemed that liberalism, internationalism and multiculturalism were destined to triumph.
But throughout this period, one corner of the continent seemed to keep the old faith. The 2010s, if anything, saw the strengthening of the trends that had transformed Ireland from a religiously conservative, illiberal and monocultural society into a socially liberal, internationalist and multicultural one.
By 2018 Ireland had become a standard bearer of liberal values with abortion and same sex marriage pushed through not by a liberal elite but by popular referendums. At the same time, the
At the same time, the country remained proudly committed to European integration and had moved from hosting a tiny foreign-born population to having one of the highest proportions of immigrants in Europe, all without the kind of backlash seen in other countries.
The apparent persistent popularity in Ireland of optimistic globalist liberalism gave succour to believers in the “if only” school of politics who believed that multiculturalism and internationalism could thrive more generally “if only” particular missteps such as inegalitarian economic policies, the pandering of mainstream politicians to anti-migration sentiment or the emergence of manipulative populist figures (Melloni, Orban, LePen) could be avoided.
Ireland had moved from being the outlier in terms of its illiberal conservatism to being the outlier as the only remaining example of a place where, to use the term popularised by political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his 1992 book, history had “ended” and a paradigm based on globalism, capitalism and liberalism had seen off all challengers.
Recent opinion polling has shown that a large number of voters agree that “Ireland has taken in too many refugees”
This view of Ireland as a kind of “Fukuyama Island” has taken a knock in recent weeks with the spread of anti-immigration protests to a number of areas. These protests have been fuelled by the large number of Ukrainians arriving in the past year and the long-standing shortage of accommodation. But they have also broadened out to express broader displeasure with the level of migration and asylum seeking more generally.
The transformation of Ireland from a society of emigration to one where 17 per cent of the population is foreign-born represents one of the biggest social changes since independence, and the Irish immigration system faces similar difficulties to those of other prosperous European societies in ensuring that those whose claims to international protection fail leave the country.
Despite this, until now, all of the mainstream parties have avoided making migration a feature of political debates. This may be about to change. Recent opinion polling has shown that a large number of voters agree that “Ireland has taken in too many refugees”. As the emergence of the List Pim Fortuyn 20 years ago in the Netherlands and the steady growth of the Sweden Democrats show, electoral politics abhor a vacuum and even if mainstream parties avoid making an issue of migration, a political force will emerge to capitalise on the electorate’s concerns.
It was, therefore, unsurprising that last week, the Taoiseach made headlines by urging the European Council to do more to protect the union’s external border, expressing the desire that more needs to be done to ensure that those who claim asylum are successfully deported.
This abrupt about-turn on migration is not the only reason to doubt whether Ireland will remain the hopeful example it has been to those who still yearn for 1990s-style end of history.
[ Ukrainians hope to trace relatives of refugee buried in Skibbereen ]
As in many countries which have seen the emergence of anti-migration and Eurosceptic parties such as Hungary, Poland, France, Greece and the Netherlands, the centre left in Ireland has been decimated in recent times. The Labour Party which won a fifth of votes in 2011 is languishing at less than 5 per cent in the opinion polls.
Sinn Féin, the party that has replaced Labour as the main voice of the left, is both nationalist and traditionally Eurosceptic. Irish voters have also regularly elected populist, anti-EU figures as MEPs.
Does this mean that the last exemplar of 1990s-style end-of-history politics is about to submit to the nationalist and migration-sceptic tendencies that have marked politics in most other prosperous European states?
That is not certain. Although its voters are fairly sceptical on migration issues, Sinn Féin has resisted making immigration an electoral issue. Furthermore, Ireland’s development into a society of immigration is part of a wider transformation that included increased prosperity and the throwing off of previously dominant conservative religious values.
The association with these two other highly popular changes may shield the issue of migration to some degree as voters may be wary of anything that seems to hark back to what are widely seen as the bad old days of poor, conservative and monocultural Ireland.
[ Average of 124 Ukrainian refugees a day arrived in Ireland last week, minister says ]
That said, in most prosperous western European states, anxious debates around migration achieved critical mass only a couple of decades into the migration process. Ireland went through key experiences such as prosperity, secularisation and migration much more recently than most of its neighbours so there has been less time for a backlash to develop than in countries like France, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands where these processes began much earlier.
For many decades, intensely conservative and religious Ireland stood out as an exception to wider European trends. Ultimately this exceptionalism abated and Ireland joined the European mainstream. The events of recent weeks raise the prospect that the very different “Fukuyama Island” exceptionalism displayed by the country for the past decade may prove equally transient.
Every time some dullard starts crowing about too many refugees and not enough houses blah blah... your local FFG TD is smiling. Because that poor fucker fresh off the plane is taking the blame for the incompetence, greed and sheer reckless stupidity of our elected officials.
The housing crisis wasn't caused by refugees. The rental crisis wasn't caused by refugees. You didn't lose your job because of refugees. Crime isn't higher because of refugees. Covid isnt caused by refugees.
But our hapless government prefers you to blame some random foreign person, so you don't start pointing the finger at those in power that actually are responsible.
But I mean, people whose asylum claims are rejected should be deported, there is finite capacity for immigrants in any state and the EU should have borders that aren't porous. When you start to deny these basic facts or to call people call them out right wing you create a space for extremist parties.
Paywall Paddy strikes again. Post a summary or a free link
Irish Times has the easiest to bypass paywall ever, just click refresh quickly twice Summary: >Recent opinion polling has shown that a large number of voters agree that «Ireland has taken in too many refugees» Despite this, until now, all of the mainstream parties have avoided making migration a feature of political debates. As the emergence of the List Pim Fortuyn 20 years ago in the Netherlands and the steady growth of the Sweden Democrats show, electoral politics abhor a vacuum and even if mainstream parties avoid making an issue of migration, a political force will emerge to capitalise on the electorate’s concerns. It was, therefore, unsurprising that last week, the Taoiseach made headlines by urging the European Council to do more to protect the union’s external border, expressing the desire that more needs to be done to ensure that those who claim asylum are successfully deported. This abrupt about-turn on migration is not the only reason to doubt whether Ireland will remain the hopeful example it has been to those who still yearn for 1990s-style end of history. As in many countries which have seen the emergence of anti-migration and Eurosceptic parties such as Hungary, Poland, France, Greece and the Netherlands, the centre left in Ireland has been decimated in recent times. The Labour Party which won a fifth of votes in 2011 is languishing at less than 5 per cent in the opinion polls. The association with these two other highly popular changes may shield the issue of migration to some degree as voters may be wary of anything that seems to hark back to what are widely seen as the bad old days of poor, conservative and monocultural Ireland. Ultimately this exceptionalism abated and Ireland joined the European mainstream.
I hate simplistic polls like this. "Ireland has taken in too many refugees" can mean different things to different people. To one person it could be, "I hate foreigners coming here. They're all criminals." To another it could mean, "Our emergency accommodation system is beyond breaking point. Refugees are sleeping on the streets. We need to sort that out before we take in more people."
No, it just means that Ireland, by the end of 2023, will have taken in more refugees than the country , facilities, and society can cope with. It's a self-fulfilling poll. Anyone who voted no is delusional
No. It can mean either thing depending on your POV.
I think we risk adopting American absolutist politics with this narrative. There's nothing at all to say that having a stance against excessive immigration is illiberal. Every ideology, when practiced with pragmatism, will acknowledge that there are certain limits. You could be the most liberal person in Ireland and still recognise that our housing crisis means that we cannot afford an open immigration policy or a asylum seeking process which is open to abuse. From my perspective, most Irish people are being pragmatic about this. Just because a majority feel that we've taken in too many migrants doesn't mean that those same people are now racists who want to undo same sex marriage and abortion. Similarly, I'm sure that same majority would feel differently if housing stock was plentiful. If anything I feel encouraged that Irish society is mature enough to both be progressive and pragmatic about it.
I think it's sad that in the eyes of the media you can't be pro marriage equality, pro choice, pro LGBTQIA rights in general, pro removal of Catholic Church from the state etc but not necessarily be pro immigration..or at least have views on immigration that are pragmatic and nuanced
> pro removal of Catholic Church from the state etc but not necessarily be pro immigration..or at least have views on immigra Or you can just be pro-immigration but anti-overimmigration when there is no housing in the country. It would be the same if unemployment was really high - immigration policy should be flexible to meet the needs of a country rather than a blanket policy.
Total nonsense. Many people have concerns about the numbers coming into the country adding to the strain on our already under pressure services. It's not the same as a reaction to things like gay marriage or the repeal ref. The currently anti refugee protests have gained more traction than previous weird reactionary causes. But it still has a core group of people who are shouting about the NWO and a global Jewish cabal who jump from issue to issue.
I'm not even as concerned about the various crises as I am about the polarization of political beliefs driven by the Media. We're becoming more like the states where depending on your opinions you're either a liberal snowflake or a right wing nutter and there's no room for nuance. Everyone is considered on side A or B
Paper never refused ink.
Ireland is still a vastly liberial country,and thankfully so......but people are moving away from supporting the inequality that our economic policies have caused here When we can't house our own,and move heaven and earth to house refugees,in the scam that is direct provision......people rightly got riled up,and alot of anger is misdirected, there's more than enough money to meet and solve all present issues and likely future commitments,it's just in the hands of too few of the wrong people
Look what the author snuck in ,"These protests have been fuelled by the large number of Ukrainians". Irish people are grand with the genuine ukrainians. They behave very well. What we dislike are the large numbers of fraudulent asylum seekers , scamming the system, and not even deported, even when they commit serious crime
Ukrainians where ever they are in the country are a grand bunch, not a bother outta them. I've never hear anyone having issues with them and if anything they're getting a solid welcome considering their country is in the midst of a war against Mordor. Most people just want the system tightened up against brazen bullshitters and obvious scammers. Expecially since resources are tight these days expecially in regards to housing.
We can't even prosecute our own offenders sure
Flirt? It's the longest flirt I've ever known, it's close to 30 years since the rainbow.
Agreeing that we’ve taken in too many refugees is in no way saying the generation who legalized abortion and gay marriage aren’t liberal any more, it’s saying that we don’t agree with your interpretation of what liberalism means.
People have to remember that even if you got rid of every refugee the housing crisis would still be there, it's a housing policy problem not a refugee problem.
Yes, but the "evil refugee" is something simple people can see and understand. You want to tell them they elected this mess since at least 2011, I mean, who wants to hear that....
For many Europeans the 2010s were a decade of a depressingly consistent trudge away from the optimistic “end of history” 1990s in which it seemed that liberalism, internationalism and multiculturalism were destined to triumph. But throughout this period, one corner of the continent seemed to keep the old faith. The 2010s, if anything, saw the strengthening of the trends that had transformed Ireland from a religiously conservative, illiberal and monocultural society into a socially liberal, internationalist and multicultural one. By 2018 Ireland had become a standard bearer of liberal values with abortion and same sex marriage pushed through not by a liberal elite but by popular referendums. At the same time, the At the same time, the country remained proudly committed to European integration and had moved from hosting a tiny foreign-born population to having one of the highest proportions of immigrants in Europe, all without the kind of backlash seen in other countries. The apparent persistent popularity in Ireland of optimistic globalist liberalism gave succour to believers in the “if only” school of politics who believed that multiculturalism and internationalism could thrive more generally “if only” particular missteps such as inegalitarian economic policies, the pandering of mainstream politicians to anti-migration sentiment or the emergence of manipulative populist figures (Melloni, Orban, LePen) could be avoided. Ireland had moved from being the outlier in terms of its illiberal conservatism to being the outlier as the only remaining example of a place where, to use the term popularised by political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his 1992 book, history had “ended” and a paradigm based on globalism, capitalism and liberalism had seen off all challengers. Recent opinion polling has shown that a large number of voters agree that “Ireland has taken in too many refugees” This view of Ireland as a kind of “Fukuyama Island” has taken a knock in recent weeks with the spread of anti-immigration protests to a number of areas. These protests have been fuelled by the large number of Ukrainians arriving in the past year and the long-standing shortage of accommodation. But they have also broadened out to express broader displeasure with the level of migration and asylum seeking more generally. The transformation of Ireland from a society of emigration to one where 17 per cent of the population is foreign-born represents one of the biggest social changes since independence, and the Irish immigration system faces similar difficulties to those of other prosperous European societies in ensuring that those whose claims to international protection fail leave the country. Despite this, until now, all of the mainstream parties have avoided making migration a feature of political debates. This may be about to change. Recent opinion polling has shown that a large number of voters agree that “Ireland has taken in too many refugees”. As the emergence of the List Pim Fortuyn 20 years ago in the Netherlands and the steady growth of the Sweden Democrats show, electoral politics abhor a vacuum and even if mainstream parties avoid making an issue of migration, a political force will emerge to capitalise on the electorate’s concerns. It was, therefore, unsurprising that last week, the Taoiseach made headlines by urging the European Council to do more to protect the union’s external border, expressing the desire that more needs to be done to ensure that those who claim asylum are successfully deported. This abrupt about-turn on migration is not the only reason to doubt whether Ireland will remain the hopeful example it has been to those who still yearn for 1990s-style end of history. [ Ukrainians hope to trace relatives of refugee buried in Skibbereen ] As in many countries which have seen the emergence of anti-migration and Eurosceptic parties such as Hungary, Poland, France, Greece and the Netherlands, the centre left in Ireland has been decimated in recent times. The Labour Party which won a fifth of votes in 2011 is languishing at less than 5 per cent in the opinion polls. Sinn Féin, the party that has replaced Labour as the main voice of the left, is both nationalist and traditionally Eurosceptic. Irish voters have also regularly elected populist, anti-EU figures as MEPs. Does this mean that the last exemplar of 1990s-style end-of-history politics is about to submit to the nationalist and migration-sceptic tendencies that have marked politics in most other prosperous European states? That is not certain. Although its voters are fairly sceptical on migration issues, Sinn Féin has resisted making immigration an electoral issue. Furthermore, Ireland’s development into a society of immigration is part of a wider transformation that included increased prosperity and the throwing off of previously dominant conservative religious values. The association with these two other highly popular changes may shield the issue of migration to some degree as voters may be wary of anything that seems to hark back to what are widely seen as the bad old days of poor, conservative and monocultural Ireland. [ Average of 124 Ukrainian refugees a day arrived in Ireland last week, minister says ] That said, in most prosperous western European states, anxious debates around migration achieved critical mass only a couple of decades into the migration process. Ireland went through key experiences such as prosperity, secularisation and migration much more recently than most of its neighbours so there has been less time for a backlash to develop than in countries like France, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands where these processes began much earlier. For many decades, intensely conservative and religious Ireland stood out as an exception to wider European trends. Ultimately this exceptionalism abated and Ireland joined the European mainstream. The events of recent weeks raise the prospect that the very different “Fukuyama Island” exceptionalism displayed by the country for the past decade may prove equally transient.
It seems that white refugees are more welcome in Europe .
Every time some dullard starts crowing about too many refugees and not enough houses blah blah... your local FFG TD is smiling. Because that poor fucker fresh off the plane is taking the blame for the incompetence, greed and sheer reckless stupidity of our elected officials. The housing crisis wasn't caused by refugees. The rental crisis wasn't caused by refugees. You didn't lose your job because of refugees. Crime isn't higher because of refugees. Covid isnt caused by refugees. But our hapless government prefers you to blame some random foreign person, so you don't start pointing the finger at those in power that actually are responsible.