It would appear of late that the Irish Government and Sinn Féin mostly – and one must allow for differences in Cabinet with the Greens and divisions within Sinn Féin – are attempting to hang tougher on immigration.
Their biggest motivator is likely that they know that they have lost the room on the issue. It is interesting then that the official spin on the Migration Pact agreed yesterday between the European Parliament and the European Council of Ministers is that this will allow greater national controls. Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, welcomed it as striking “an important balance between effective asylum and return procedures and protections for those seeking protection who are the most vulnerable.”
The Pact itself, as Gript has previously reported, will basically mean that each European state will be required to set a quota of people it is willing to accept claiming asylum, or will otherwise be fined €20,000 for each applicant that it refuses to take. What it does not do is provide states, or indeed the EU as an entity should it have the will to do so, to deal with the current levels of illegal residents.
The EU centrally also retains the power to impose asylum seekers when it decides that there is an emergency situation somewhere in the world. Given the loose definitions of what that might consist of that are current across most of the centre right and left, that is not a power that ought to be conceded easily.
The scale of what is facing Europe is enormous. There were more than 870,000 asylum applications made in EU states alone in 2022 – close to one million across all of Europe – and that is likely to be surpassed this year, given that the figure was already approaching 700,000 at the end of August. That is apart from over 4 million Ukrainians granted Temporary Protection and several hundred thousand estimated illegal entrants. Around 330,000 attempted illegal border crossings were prevented by Frontex in 2022.
While the NGOs and most of the left are claiming that the Pact represents a victory for “right wing populists,” the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) voted against the Pact in the decisive Parliament vote in April, as did the group that contains the French Rassemblement National.
They all opposed it because they do not believe that it goes far enough, and that the Pact will impose conditions that will make it difficult even for governments that wish to take a more restrictive stance to do so. The fear among nationalist and conservative critics is that this Pact will impose legal mandates that even democratically elected individual governments will find it difficult to circumnavigate.
It is notable in that context that the Pact is being rushed to conclusion and final approval by the Parliament before the June 2024 European elections which are predicted to significantly shift the balance in the Parliament against the pro-migration centre right and left. Such a shift might well presage a similar change in the complexion of member state governments.
The politics of the issue are, of course, crucial and presumably explains while Italian Prime Minister Meloni has welcomed the Pact as she believes it will allow Italy to impose more restrictions. Her stance is understandable given that Italy is a prime target for people trafficked and transported across the Mediterranean. The Italians can probably not be blamed much for wishing to see the “burden shared.”
Meanwhile, the spin here in Ireland, led by the NGOs with skin in the migrancy sector and who need high levels of intakes in order to sustain themselves, is that the Migration Pact represents a crackdown, the truth is far from that. That is understood by those who have opposed it, including the Hungarian government which is the last one standing following the electoral defeat of Law and Justice in Poland who also opposed the Pact and the penalties it imposed.
Hungarian Fidesz MEP Hidveghi Balazs reiterated their demand that all asylum claims should be made and processed outside of the EU. In other words, that each European state would have the right not to admit anyone who was not properly adjudicated and approved prior to arrival. Failing that, that each state gets to decide who may be granted protection. Nor ought any state be forced to take migrants or penalised for failing to do so.
Among those condemning the Pact as “attack on asylum and migration” rights are the European far left communist and green dominated grouping to which Sinn Féin MEP Chris McManus belongs. The GUE/NGL group are opposed to the Pact because they believe that it represents a barrier to the open borders policy that they wish to see imposed across the whole of the EU.
Sinn Féin’s membership of the group and its support for the overall thrust of the most liberal migration policies at European level – where it actually matters because they along with the rest of the elite are happy to surrender our sovereignty on the matter – makes a mockery of Mary Lou’s desperate attempts to put a halt to Sinn Féin’s slide in the polls by claiming, against all of the evidence, that they support a more restrictive policy than the current Government. Au contraire.
The Irish state has not yet opted into the Pact which still awaits formal signing off but of course it will. Nor has it indicated which criteria it will choose to determine what part of “sharing the burden” of “solidarity” they assume on our behalf. A state may also choose whether to pay the vig or to accept a quota based on a formula related to population and GDP size.
Given that somewhere in the region of 25% of Irish GDP is transferred out of the country, that would surely be a rather stupid one to pick. But stupid is as stupid does. The “solidarity” fine actually makes sense in a way, as the least worst scenario, although the no sovereign state ought to be forced to pay for the privilege of protecting its borders,
Had this been in place in 2022, the Irish state might theoretically have refused to take around 13,000 applicants. That would have led to a fine of €260 million. A lot of money but it would actually represent a saving given the annual cost of accommodation for all of these people, the vast majority of whom could quite easily have been rejected from day one.
The realpolitik of all of this is that as long as the EU is dominated at central levels and politically by those who support mass immigration, the Pact will be used to further that policy. Any change ultimately depends both on alternative nationally minded governments being elected and the balance of power shifting not only against the liberal majority in the Parliament and Council but against EU power over ostensibly sovereign national states in the first instance.
Take the €20k fine for each applicant. That’s far cheaper than the €3 billion we are currently spending on migrants each year currently. Take the small fine and fix Irish Housing and Healthcare , do not put further strain on Irish housing and healthcare by bringing in more unskilled migrants.
Open borders are an invitation for exploitation by criminals.
We do not need to be importing more crime into Ireland as we have more than the Gardai can cope with.
We need more migrants to do the jobs the Irish wont do. In my opinion this new agreement is a disgrace. We dont have enough migrants. If the Garda cant cope then lets hire a few thousand migrants into the Gardai. That will also help with the increase in crime. Think about it..Algerians are 17 times more likely to be criminals than the natives, so if we had 1000 Algerian Garda they would be much better at identifing Algerian criminals.
So then you’ll support deporting the enormous numbers of foreigners living on state benefits who also won’t do the jobs Irish people won’t do ??
or heres a thought… if Algerians are 17x more likely to commit crime in Ireland, instead of sticking 1000 of them in the Gardai… why dont we A. ship them back to Algeria, or B. Not let them in in the first place!
Nah wheres the diversity. We need more people of diverse origins. Leo says so
What about more Northerners ? That would be more diversity! And our presence would rob off on you lot and eventually you’d grow some backbone and tell the EU to F off now and again.
The mediterranean countries need to be allowed and assisted to return all migrants to their port of departure.
At this stage the whole ‘international protection’ pretence is exposed for what it is – a deliberate resettlement scheme using emotional blackmail to excuse it.
Scrap all the ‘international laws and obligations’ nonsense – these are man-made political agreements and can be scrapped at will. More than half the world’s countries including the wealthy neighbours of many of the origin countries freely choose not to participate.
Use some of the massive resource being funnelled into the immigration industry to assist the political and economic situation in the developing world.
Varadkar – yesterday, when this was announced – said that depending on the details, Ireland may decide to “opt out” of the scheme.
We have locals and EU votes in a few months. We’ll have a general election not too far away. Your local TDs email address – first-name(dot)surname @oireachtas.ie is there for everyone. They also have consituency offices, as do many of your councillors.
Make sure that this opt-out becomes a certainty.
I hope that opt-out means that we won’t be processing any new asylum applications at all. Does it? Opt out must be specific, with specific targets. It should mean a ban on processing any further applications and the withdrawal of funds that are currently going to that area. A wonderful article by Matt, exposing much and giving us great enlightenment. Best of all, giving a measure of hope, the first yet.
Yes pay the 20k each. Better still just leave the EU. They can’t help but push continuously on people’s rights then we should leave them all to it.
I would like to know if our government knows how certain old people begging on our streets, who cannot even speak English and come from a country distant from Ireland, have arrived here? Who are they, where have they come from and who paid their fare?
I would be happy to help one of them in their home country via a monthy contribution to a charity there – a small sum here would be worth far more there. They would then not be a burden on the Irish state. Just image all the money squandered on certain NGOs that could also be directed to help a considerable number of people in their home countries.
If, as we are told constantly by the government that mass immigration is a benefit,then why do the EU call it a burden.
Everything proposed could and should have been done right after the 2015 crisis — the seriousness of the problem was more than apparent then — skepticism is justified — in fact, you cannot be skeptical enough.
Regarding asylum and how IHL (international humanitarian law) largely supersedes national law in this area, here is a recent story showing how courts nearly always side with migrants:
Court approves IHREC request to take case against State
The NGO 5th columnists will never relent until there is nothing left of Ireland as you knew it, just as the population of Dublin is increasingly not recognizably Irish.
It is impossible to overstate the danger this poses for Ireland — the only ways to deal with are 1) have a nationalist government that will ignore court decisions about asylum policies, or 2) abrogate the 1951 refugee treaty that obligates Ireland to consider applications for asylum (personally I think this is the only way to say the West in the long run).
Agree. Don’t let them in and there will be no asylum application to process. The 1951 treaty obligates Ireland to consider applications for asylum. How many applications does it obligate Ireland to consider? Without a defined upper limit, it is meaningless, it could mean 20 million, 40 million and it evidently means that. They are refugee centred, whose only concern is the welfare of the refugees, not the Irish. Like Roderic O’Gorman whose department said they were concerned with refugees only, as the reason for his plan to dump the Irish out of a homeless hostel and put in his ‘refugees’. Do not let them land on Irish soil. Then they have no claim. Be tough.
>How many applications does it obligate Ireland to consider?
As far as I know, it is potentially unlimited — practically there will be a limit of course, especially for a country like Ireland, which as I pointed out before is surrounded by water (except for Northern Ireland), so right now nearly all the asylum seekers arriving in Ireland are being flown in under the EU’s migrant distribution agreement.
If possible (?), Ireland should conclude a ‘safe third country’ agreement with Northern Ireland — this would eliminate the possibility of migrants entering from Northern Ireland to apply for asylum in Ireland.
It is also important to designate countries as ‘safe’ when remotely possible — this makes it much easier to deny applications for asylum, because the criteria for granting asylum become stricter, e.g. the person has to demonstrate a genuine ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ — in Germany this is a politicized process, and the Green Party (who else?) always blocks designating Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco as ‘safe’, so Germany still gets lots of asylum applicants from there, very few of which are granted, but then you have the problem of actually deporting them — here 5th column NGOs help with the appeal process.
Countries designated as ‘safe’ mean nothing here. I heard Holly Kearns, Greens, saying a ‘safe’ country is not a safe country, one can have LGBT rights issues etc. She has deemed all countries to be unsafe, as there can be a breach of any of these issues in any country. That seems to be the ECHR policy here. They all seem to be radical feminist Kearns types in the ECHR. They are not taking into account how many are here already. We had 20% born in foreign countries in 2020. Northern Ireland had 6.5% in 2021. Your suggestion of a third safe country agreement with NI is very wise. But the migrant distribution agreement is only a voluntary agreement. Surely it is illegal if there is no defined number that we should take. Your suggestion of abrogating the 1951 treaty is the best of all. Get rid of the ECHR and defund the NGOs. All these entities are anti-Irish racists. All their demands are hostile to our needs. Citizenship handed out freely here. We are full beyond capacity but sadly I do not see the political will in Ireland to do anything radical. We will remain subjugated to the demands of the ECHR, a crowd of woke leftists who seem to be dominated by the radical feminists. That will destroy us.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, all of this is going to lead to either a split in SF or a mass exodus of party members who’ll join new parties.
Could Fianna Fail & Fine Gael have foreseen the difficulty mass migration would cause for SF???