Ireland’s present immigration policy costs the country in two ways: direct costs, and opportunity costs. Direct costs are very easy to understand. That is the way in which the Government spends the money it receives in taxation to support the unprecedented arrival of immigrants to our shores – this is expended on accommodation, legal fees, and a thousand various tenders for people to provide integration training or language training or anti-racism campaigns to persuade the locals that the newcomers are a tremendous addition, rather than a cost. Getting one’s head around the direct costs of immigration is relatively easy.
Opportunity cost on the other hand is usually harder to quantify. In layman’s terms, opportunity cost is simply the cost of not doing something you would otherwise have done, had you made different choices. The opportunity cost, for example, of not buying a euromillions ticket could range from nothing, to over a hundred million euros.
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