One of the most irritating things about the immigration debate in Ireland, is how generations of previous Irish immigrants are used as a cudgel with which to terrorise anyone who objects to the government’s immigration policy today.
Ironically, it is usually people who in all other areas of life think there is nothing whatsoever to learn from the past, that love dredging up alleged historical parallels to pontificate as to what Ireland’s immigration policy should be today, circa 2024.
Yes, everyone has a great uncle or aunt who left Ireland for the United States or Australia or New Zealand. So what?
The fact that millions of Irish had to flee reoccurring famine (or British generated genocide depending on what history book you read) or indeed were transported as part of the penal system, or later voluntarily left due to economic necessity does not mean we must operate an open borders policy in the here and now.
Fintan O’Toole wrote a whole piece on how many Irish immigrants to the UK ended up in jail. To which I say – exactly.
What do you want us to do, travel back in time and tell the British to tighten up their immigration and penal policy? What the Brits did way back when should have zero influence one what Irish immigration policy should be today.
In fact, many Irish were shipped to the American colonies as part of the British penal system. They had not choice in the matter. “By 1777 no fewer than 40,000 men and women from Britain and Ireland had been transported as part of the penal system to the American colonies, supplementing the supply of indentured labourers.” Once the British lost the American colonies somewhere new had to be found to prevent British prisons from overflowing. That place was Australia.
Later, around a quarter of the 123,000 men and just under 25,000 women transported to Australia between 1781 and 1853 were Irish, of whom one in five had been convicted on a political charge, according to Niall Ferguson in Empire. “Once there the convicts were only a little better off than slaves, forced to work for the government or ‘assigned’ to the growing number of private landowners.”
So please spare me all the misty eyed stories of how the Irish went to far off lands so we should offer therefore unlimited hospitality to immigrants here. Because until very recently, the 1960s in the case of the United States, the Irish were not offered any hospitality whatsoever in those far off lands.
First the Irish were shipped against their will to the American and Australian penal colonies. But even when the Irish were not being transported to a penal colony but to find a better life for themselves, the welcome was cool to say the least.
Take the United States. When the Irish were fleeing certain death in the famine, managed to survive the famine ships and landed in the US, they were not put in hotels or accommodation that were paid for the American taxpayer. The white Anglo-Saxon protestant elite were not known for their warm welcome to the Catholic Irish (or Jews for that matter.) The WASPs did not provide bed and board to new immigrants of any persuasion at their own expense.
Today, in 2024, the Irish taxpayer meanwhile will provide accommodation to international protection applicants to the tune of £5billion.
Indeed, the figures just released by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DECEIY) for the provision of accommodation and other services for Ukrainians being granted Temporary Protection and others claiming asylum under the International Protection system show that a total of more than €2.1 billion was paid out in contracts for the whole of 2023.
In contrast Irish immigrants had to fight for everything they got. It was long way from the tenements of New York to the White House and it was a tough fight. Hence the rivalry and violence between the Irish and Italians to take just one example.
Competition for jobs and housing between immigrant groups was fierce, so please do not patronise me with nonsense arguments that because the Irish were forced abroad before, and worked for everything they got, this means that the Irish in Ireland today must never object to government immigration policy.
Another obvious difference is that there is a lot more space in countries such as Australia and the United States, whereas we are a tiny island (with terrible weather). When it comes to immigration you can’t just create land space out of thin air, unless someone intends to start draining the Irish sea or Atlantic.
Now I am not saying that we do not have moral and legal obligations to immigrants (or international protection applicants in the parlance of our time). We do. But it is a delicate balance between the needs of those who are here, and those who arrive on our shores in the future. It is perfectly normal to believe that our duties to those who live among us now are greater than those who have arrived very recently or will arrive in the future.
What I am saying is that it is immoral to compare the Irish immigrants of the past, to the immigrants into Ireland today. The two situations are not historical comparable in the least.
There are many arguments for a civilised immigration policy today – but harking back to a completely different past is not one of them.