Last week, Minister Roderic O’Gorman told a UN Committee on Human Rights that Ireland had seen a “dramatic” rise this year in the number of people coming to Ireland claiming to be asylum seekers. These numbers were in addition to the 39,000 Ukrainians who have now arrived in Ireland after government ministers threw open our doors and said 200,000 or more were welcome.
Minister O’Gorman said that up to 15,000 non-Ukrainians were now expected to come to this country seeking “international protection” in 2022 – which would be more than five times the number that came in 2021 when 2,649 applications were made.
Although these applicants are generally referred to as asylum seekers, the vast majority of their applications are refused, and it’s evident that most applications are not from genuine refugees but from economic migrants or from those who wish to move to Ireland for their own reasons.
A 2016 report found that 90% of asylum applications are refused, and, as noted by my colleague Dr Matt Treacy previously, amongst the highest number of applications continue to come from countries like Georgia, Nigeria and Albania which are not war-torn countries and are not considered “unsafe” for the purposes of determining that international protection should be required.
But don’t confuse the decision to refuse asylum with any actual action on behalf of the government. Endless appeals are lodged and supported by well-financed NGOs – and the ESRI estimates that 80% of those who are refused asylum are never deported. Then again, those who hung on likely knew that it was only a matter of time before a Justice Minister as gormless as Helen McEntee would introduce an amnesty which would allow undocumented persons including many supposed asylum seekers to gain residency through the back door. McEntee has no clue about how many people might take advantage of this amnesty by the way, and she is never asked that question by an entirely sympathetic media.
The hapless Department of Justice seems to have no interest in enforcing the law around illegal immigration in any case – failing to act even when a supposed asylum seeker is found guilty of sexual assualt and ordered to leave the country as happened with Chico Makamda, who seems to be happy to remain here exposing himself to young girls and attacking women while the State twiddles its thumbs. That this is happening at the same time that Minister McEntee is promising zero tolerance in regard to violence against women is indicative of what a laughing stock Ireland has become.
What we are really, really good at, however, is letting the world know we’re a soft touch when it comes to illegal immigration.
Consider these two statements made by Minister O’Gorman at the UN Committee last week. As ever, Ireland sees virtue signalling as an Olympic sport in which we’ll always win gold because we’re the only ones foolish enough to enter.
The Minister is talking about the disastrous decision of the government to promise all asylum seekers a land of milk and honey once they set foot in Ireland. There’ll be housing – own door accommodation – within four months, despite the savage and spiralling housing crisis in the country. Medical cards will be available and dentistry, mental health, and other services, even though Irish people often struggle to access the same. A plethora of NGOs will help with everything from getting a driver’s licence to a bank account to work permits. That’s in addition to the knowledge that you’ll never be deported and can probably get an amnesty anyway if you work the system right.
To make sure the maximum number of people knew what a soft touch Ireland is, O’Gorman made his proposals available in Albanian, Arabic, Somali, Urdu and Georgian – and proudly tweeted the same.
Then a year later he sounds a little surprised when telling the UN that the numbers applying for asylum under his ludicrously generous terms have gone through the roof.
Well, of course they have. If the Irish government is telling the world that they are flinging open their doors and guaranteeing free accommodation, healthcare and services to anyone who rocks up saying they are seeking asylum, what do they expect will happen? The numbers of those arriving will dramatically increase. A child with an abacus could do the math there.
Of course, O’Gorman has hit the first obstacle to his ludicrous plan because at the same time he was selling Ireland as a pushover, we had other Ministers, like Heather Humphreys, saying there was ‘no limit’ to the number of Ukrainians who could come here.
Some 39,000 Ukrainians came, O’Gorman told the UN Committee, failing to add that the rocketing numbers had already led to chaos in hotels like the Red Cow, while the Business Post was reporting that “hundreds of Ukrainian refugees are to be moved out of a Dublin hotel to make room for asylum seekers from other countries as the state’s supply of emergency accommodation comes under increased strain”
The Department of Justice says, in fact, that by the end of May 2022 there was a 700% increase in [non Ukrainian] asylum applications in comparison to same period in 2021. Perhaps O’Gorman’s figure of up to 15,000 arriving is an underestimate? Where are all these homes to come from? Will the state now increasingly be bidding against Irish families to purchase all the housing needed for migrants? No one seems to know least of all the Minister.
In truth, the issue of Ukrainian refugees is mostly a distraction and many of those people who came to Ireland fleeing a war not of their making will go home. But arguing that 200,000 Ukrainains could come to this small, already stretched country, was always ludicrous. That their needs are now clashing with a huge rise in mostly bogus asylum seekers is the fault of the Irish government.
Can we get real for a moment about this whole ridiculous scenario? We are a tiny country with huge, seemingly intractable, problems. Our own people are emigrating due to the high cost of housing and rent, yet we’re guaranteeing free accommodation to the world and its mother. Our health system is in tatters, with a million people on waiting lists, while we promise free care and services to all newcomers.
There are, of course, genuine refugees and the focus of the government should be to speed up the process here so that those who are genuine can stay, and those who are bogus can be deported. Instead there seems to be an unspoken desire to simply attract as many illegal immigrants to this country as possible.
This is all happening in Ireland even as other EU countries and the UK get tough on illegal immigration. We have the ridiculous spectacle of Ireland’s establishment trying to out virtue-signal every other country on taking in migrants while utterly failing its own people across a range of key metrics on health and housing
If you market your country as a soft touch, you’ll be treated as fools. And, as ever, it’s ordinary Irish families who end up actually paying the price.