Last year, the key themes from the Irish Times Snapshot polling showed that immigration, for months, dominated the national conversation, frequently emerging as the most important issue among voters. Despite an arguably lack lustre attempt from Fine Gael to appease voter’s concerns over the issue – with a rhetorical change in how the party discusses the subject, increases in fines for airlines that transport migrants that destroy their own travel documents and a slight increase in deportations – the lesson we need to learn from Europe is that half-hearted measures will not abate voters’ concerns over the issue.
The first step in depoliticising immigration is recognising legitimate concerns: migration does put increased pressure on already highly-strained housing market; migration does deflate the wages of native workers; migrants do commit crime on a higher level than natives; migrants are on average a significantly larger drain on public finances than natives.
While this final point applies to both regular and irregular migration, it’s worth noting the scale of government spending on asylum. Although the bike shed and security hut were scandalous examples wasteful expenditure, the government’s daily asylum spending would surpass their costs in just 3 hours and 13 hours, respectively.
The issues is that the main Government parties don’t seem to have recognised these legitimate concerns. For example, last year, with tension rising over the issue, Fine Gael released a series of videos defending immigration. These videos included claims that Ireland needed migration to solve the housing crisis and prop up the health service. In fact, only 4% of migrants who arrived in Ireland in 2023 worked in construction, but 100% of immigrants required housing. Likewise, Ireland ranks in the top 3 OECD countries for the number of medical graduates, yet fails to retain them. This problem is only compounded by the fact that as training standards abroad aren’t on par with Irish standards, cases of medical malpractice and negligence are becoming more common, with migrants being radically overrepresented among those struck from the medical register.
As the debate around migration in Europe has moved on, Ireland’s political class seems to have stagnated in the debunked pro-immigration talking points of the 2010s. While the Irish debate on immigration has seemingly cooled down in recent months, the lesson from Europe over the past two decades is that once immigration becomes politicized, it’s very hard to de-politicise it. Across the continent, this has resulted in the emergence of a more divisive political ecosystem, the rise of hard right parties and immigration dominating almost every election cycle to the neglect of other issues.
There is one European country, however, that has successfully depoliticized immigration – Denmark.
Following an election defeat in 2015, the leader of the left wing Social Democratic Party, Mette Frederiksen, announced that her party would be changing its approach towards migration, on the grounds that its previously liberal reception policy had been a betrayal of the working class – who were forced to bear the brunt of the state’s liberal approach.
This pragmatic shift on the issue of immigration allowed the Social Democratic party to benefit from consistently high polling numbers, ultimately resulting in an electoral victory in the 2019 Danish general election. In the years that followed Frederiksen adopted an approach of attempting to dissuade would-be asylum seekers from choosing Denmark as their host country. Key to this was not encouraging refugees to integrate into Danish society, but rather, to encourage them to return to their home country once it became safe to do so. This was coupled with restricting the access of refugees to employment, family reunification and citizenship.
This approach also included anti-ghetto laws and increased powers for the police to prevent vandalism. The Danish state has also adopted intensive integration efforts for legal immigrants and maintains high standards both for citizenship and residency permits. Ultimately, this is a policy that asserts that Denmark remains Danish.
Such insights seems entirely absent in Irish policy. As was pointed out by Deputy Carol Nolan, “what we are witnessing is unnerving and totally unsustainable levels of inward migration that will inevitably bring the capacity of the state to provide even minimal services to a screeching halt. This is a multi-generational catastrophe unfolding in plain sight”.
With such high levels of immigration into Ireland being a relatively new phenomenon, we’re blessed that we have learned the consequences of failing to manage spiralling migration beforehand – a level of foresight that other European countries did not have. We’re also blessed with the example of other countries that have successfully dealt with this crisis, so that we know what policies are effective and which ones are not.
So far, the Irish Government’s handling of the immigration crisis has been characterised by a failure to grasp that there could be negative consequences and the seriousness of the consequences that flow from immigration. Arguably, this is the outcome of years of having the national conversation stifled by moral panic around approaching the topic.
There are many problems in Ireland, having the national debate stunted on the issue of immigration for the coming decades will stymie our capacity to deal with these issues. From Denmark’s example, we can see how to move on and depoliticise immigration again. Given the gravity of the situation now, hopefully the Government can move beyond a rhetorical deviation towards taking serious action to competently handle this situation.
Dean Céitinn