Statistics published yesterday by the EU show that the number of persons granted asylum by member states in 2022 increased by 40% to 384,245.
The number of applications granted amounted to 44% of 881,220 initial first time applications.
What is particularly striking is the very different make up of applications, and particularly successful applications, within the EU as a whole, compared to where the bulk of applicants in Ireland come from.
None of the top three countries of origin within the EU feature prominently in the number of applications made in Ireland. The number of applications granted to people from Syria, Afghanistan and Venezuela accounted for 58% of the total across the EU. None of those countries are among those who made up the main groups of people in Direct Provision in this country.
It is also apparent that some of the main nationalities who claim asylum here, tend not to travel to countries closer to them as the level of rejection is overwhelming. In the case of people from Georgia who claim asylum across the EU, just 8% were granted protection.
Presumably, the states which reject bogus applications do not then facilitate them in the way in which the Irish state does, and which explains why so many of them travel to Ireland to make an application in the knowledge that once you manage to enter the country, you will most likely be allowed to stay for many years regardless of the validity of your claim to asylum.
Statistics on the decisions made on initial applications show that the Irish state has one of the lowest rates of rejection in the EU.
This stood at around 20% in 2022, compared to an EU average of 50%. Interestingly, France has one of the highest rejection rates of around 70% and of course France then does little to prevent those who have been denied asylum from travelling to other countries, including to the UK and Ireland.
The large number of people from Venezuela is interesting, given recent reports of not only the massive corruption and incompetence of the Chavista leftists which has plunged a once prosperous country into mass poverty and violence, but also of thousands of state murders of people mainly in working class districts which have turned against Maduro.
Socialist Venezuela remains puzzlingly popular among the Irish left liberal establishment so they don’t count. Both state President Higgins and former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams paid fulsome tribute to Chavez when he died in 2013.
The number of applications for asylum has increased by ninefold since 2008 when there were around 100,000 applications in the EU.
At the end of February this year, there were 15,880 persons awaiting decision on their applications for asylum in Ireland. That means that the Irish state had almost three times the per capita number of asylum applications as for the whole of the EU.
The per capita figure for Ireland is 0.32 compared to the EU average of 0,12. Even countries such as Italy and Sweden which have had much reported problems around issues connected to asylum have much lower rate of applications than Ireland; at 0.13 and 0.13 respectively.
That data should be an eye-opener. It seems that Ireland is seen by many as an easy touch.
With yet another conflict having erupted in Sudan, with the potential for many more refugees attempting to reach Europe, it is imperative that there are proper measures in place to prevent the sort of abuses that we have seen in this country and elsewhere.
These abuses which do nothing to help genuine refugees, few of whom seem to reach Ireland in comparison to the large numbers of opportunist and often undocumented economic migrants who make up the vast bulk of asylum applicants in Ireland.
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