To the plethora of ‘anti-racist’ NGOs in this state, and indeed the vast majority of political representatives for that matter, Ireland is basically one giant basket of deplorables when it comes to the issue of immigrant or migrant integration.
Or, to put it another way and to paraphrase Fergus Finlay, Ireland – they would have you believe – is basically awash with ignorance and squalor, and a deeply divided society, riven by racism.
But that’s not really true is it?
In fact, when you perform a comparative analysis of the international data on how well countries are doing in terms of migrant integration, it is not even remotely true.
More to the point, at best it is a deliberately nurtured misrepresentation, at worst a malicious lie.
How do we know this?
We know this because of something called The Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX).
The MIPEX measures policies to integrate migrants in countries across five continents, including all EU Member States (including the UK), other European countries (Albania, Iceland, North Macedonia, Moldova, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine).
It also measures such polices in Asian countries (China, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, and South Korea), North American countries (Canada, Mexico and US), South American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile), and Australia and New Zealand in Oceania.
And before anyone thinks this is just another index that no one pays any attention to, then it might be worth remembering that The Joint Research Center of the European Commission compared MIPEX to other indexes and it concluded that “no other index currently offers the same coverage. In addition, the presence of a discrete number of updates (and the expectations of further ones) makes the index one of the few ‘alive’ source of information for migration policies, and moreover allow comparison between countries and within countries (over time).”
Indeed, only this week an impact report by the Immigrant Council of Ireland positively referenced the MIPEX ranking list for 2020.
There it was shown that Ireland is not just doing moderately well, it is doing exceptionally well.
In fact, Ireland made it into the top 10 (9th) of 52 countries globally that promote migrant integration in areas such as protection against discrimination, migrant voting rights and access to healthcare.
Of course, none of this made top billing for the Immigrant Council report.
To find this information and the MIPEX reference you would have had to wait until you got to page 30 of the 36-page report.
Instead, the report chose to highlight, or perhaps even to emphasise, the abuses that migrants undoubtedly continue to experience. Understandable perhaps, but one has to question the lack of balance and the reasoning behind this.
Certainly, if the reason for this approach was to ensure that the media picked up on it, or amplified these elements of the report, then it should be considered a success.
Why do I say this?
Well, let’s take todays Irish Independent commentary on the Immigrant Council report as a timely example.
Did that article highlight the amazing levels of positive integration occurring on a daily basis, or did it feed the narrative that Ireland is a land riven by racism and populated by deplorables?
Here is the headline:
‘We’re ganged up on, accused of spreading Covid’ – study lays bare abuse of migrant workers in Ireland
At no point in the article is the fact that Ireland is literally a global leader in terms of positive migrant integration mentioned or even hinted at.
Instead, much like the Immigrant Council report, a perspective is once again created and nurtured to the effect that Irish people’s approach to migrants is basically one of overwhelming hostility, bullying and racist inspired contempt.
But as we have seen above from the MIPEX review, this is not even close to being true on either a general level or on the level of national or local governance.
Indeed, many would say that this government, much like the last one, has gone out of its way to promote and prioritise increased protections and rights for migrants of all descriptions, while caring little or nothing for the view that this has come at the price of de-prioritising or dismissing the concerns of ordinary Irish people who are genuinely worried about the impact of inward migration on the resources of the state – not least around access to housing.
It is way past time for us to have a more reasoned and informed debate about the reality of migration in this state so that we can move beyond the insulting caricatures that exist on ‘both sides’ of the debate.