Photo credit: Gript
  |   Ben Scallan   |   Comment Ireland

Offering Ukrainian refugees Irish citizenship is a recipe for disaster

It’s well known that if you want to completely decimate a country, and basically cut its hopes of prosperity off at the knees, a great way to do that is to have a huge section of its population emigrate.

After all, that’s why countries with high youth emigration rates often enact radical policies to try and keep their people at home. For example, Hungary is offering 0% income tax to all workers under the age of 25 to prevent them from going abroad. It goes without saying that you can’t have a country if you don’t have people.

So if you wanted to absolutely banjax Ukraine permanently, and make sure that it never recovers from the pummelling it’s received at the hands of Russia, you’d probably want to find a way to cause a mass exodus of its young people. You’d want to see tens of thousands of Ukrainian children – the country’s next generation – and women, who men can start families with, never again returning to the region. Vladimir Putin himself couldn’t devise a more destructive, annihilatory scheme.

And yet, as it happens, it’s not Putin who concocted this particular diabolical plot – it was the Irish government, who are now making plans to offer tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees Irish citizenship.

As reported by the Irish Times this week:

“A “pathway to permanency” should be opened for tens of thousands of Ukrainians, clearing the way for them to ultimately apply for citizenship or long-term residency, the new Minister of State for Integration has said.

Joe O’Brien said the Department of Justice is looking at options to give Ukrainians a status to remain for up to five years, after which they could apply for citizenship.

Currently, those fleeing the war are classified as beneficiaries of temporary protection, the EU agreement that enables them to live, work and claim benefits within the bloc. It was renewed recently until the end of March 2024.

A “significant proportion” of Ukrainians here will ultimately decide that Ireland is “the better place for them,” said Mr O’Brien.”

At this point it’s probably worth pointing out that this is being proposed by the same government that has very publicly stated its intent to offer people a “right to housing” during a housing crisis.

And then the same politicians turn around, and offer all Ukrainians who flee their country permanent Irish citizenship – which automatically must include a free house, as per the previous policy.

That’s not even to mention other benefits like a coveted EU passport, which would allow you to travel to any other country within the bloc.

In short, it’s basically begging for an epic continent-wide stampede, where every Ukrainian and their Mum now has an incentive to rush the country – bearing in mind that Ukraine has a population of 43.8 million people. And in fact, it follows that those who would be most likely to avail of an offer like this are Ukrainians (or those claiming to be Ukrainians) who are already safe in other parts of Europe, such as Germany, or France, or wherever else.

It’s notable that in the Irish Times article O’Brien said:

“A “significant proportion” of Ukrainians here will ultimately decide that Ireland is “the better place for them.”

This is not unlikely or surprising, considering the fact that Ukraine was the single poorest country in Europe even before the war started.

If I came from Europe’s poorest country, and I was offered a chance to move to one of its richest and become a citizen, I’d take that offer, as would most people. But what happens when there are tens of millions of those people, who have been offered a blank cheque with “no cap” as the Minister for Housing so infamously said?

We already covered how the Irish government’s offer of “own door accommodation” to refugees saw the number of asylum applicants surge by over 500% in the space of a year. So we have precedent for policies like this exploding catastrophically in the government’s face. And yet, it seems in this country our motto is “Ireland: We Stay The Course With Stupid.”

But perhaps the most important point of all is one of principle, and the fact that it is actually not warranted or justified to offer Ukrainians citizenship.

Think of it this way: a refugee is someone who is fleeing a crisis – right? And a crisis, by definition, is temporary. All wars, famines and natural disasters come to an end eventually.

So on a much smaller scale, taking war out of it, imagine if someone was let go by their employer, and needed a place to stay between jobs – a terrible situation that could happen to anyone. And imagine if, out of your own kindness and generosity, you offered that person space in your home to crash while they got back on their feet – a lovely and compassionate thing to do, no doubt.

But then, after a few months, suppose the person manages to get a job. And suppose another month or two passes, and they’ve saved up enough for an apartment deposit – in other words, their crisis of imminent homelessness is over. They are not living hand to mouth anymore, and can finally tread water once again on their own. They have an income and can support themselves.

At that point would you not be justified in asking the person to think about moving out in the near future? Would it really be so unreasonable to say that, once the person’s perilous situation has ended, and you’ve done your part seeing them through it, that whatever moral obligation you might have had to them originally has ended?

After all, you wouldn’t offer a guy a chance to temporarily crash on your couch while he’s looking for work, and then expect him to still be there 20 years later brushing his teeth in your downstairs bathroom. That wasn’t the deal.

And yet, at the macro-level, this is exactly the situation that the Irish government expects the public to accept regarding the Ukraine war.

As previously reported on Gript, Ireland has taken in vastly more refugees from Ukraine per capita than countries with populations orders of magnitude bigger than ours – whatever “our part” is in alleviating this country’s suffering, we’ve done it many times over.

And naturally enough, this has come at an enormous expense to the taxpayer, costing the Irish public billions of euros – not to mention social chaos as the government railroads unsuitable asylum centres into every nook and cranny of the country.

We have given piles of cash to Ukraine in the form of foreign aid, along with military equipment and God knows what else. We have objectively gone above and beyond the call of duty, in a war which has nothing to do with us.

And yet, apparently, even this Herculean effort isn’t enough according to the government. Even still, Ireland (meaning, you and I) has more to give – namely, permanent residency, and Irish citizenship. It actually beggars belief.

The Ukraine war, like all wars before it in human history, will one day end. It might end this month. It might end next year. It might end five years from now. But one way or another, peace will eventually be restored to the region. And on that day, what possible justification could the Irish government give for keeping refugees in the country a moment longer?

The government is not only taking advantage of the Irish public’s generosity – they are setting the stage for future scams by showing that ripping off the Irish public pays. We are a country that is easy to rip off. We like being ripped off by our government. We get off on it, in a true masochistic sense – we are the pay pigs of Europe. Every time we get kicked in the stones, all we can do is giggle with delight and say “Please sir, may I have another?”

At what point are we as a country going to call a halt to this absolute rubbish and finally say enough is enough?

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