Many people will have been unaware, until this intervention from the migrants rights council yesterday, that migrant workers are required to pay a fee for a residency permit in Ireland. Here is said council calling for that fee to be “substantially reduced”:
Everyone deserves to be treated equally and fairly. But that’s not the case for many in Ireland when it comes to immigration fees.
Call on the Minister for Justice @HMcEntee to reduce these fees. Sign the Fair Fees petition today. #migrantrights #fairfeeshttps://t.co/DABD2wug2O pic.twitter.com/CKmgVxsEb9— Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (@MigrantRightsIr) June 28, 2023
The underlying principle of the MRC’s argument is, of course, that migrants should be treated in every way identically to Irish citizens. Note that they compare the cost of a residency permit to the cost of an Irish passport, and suggest that the two should be roughly the same price.
But of course, migrants are not the same as Irish citizens: For an Irish citizen, living in Ireland is a right either of birth, or one granted via naturalisation. For migrant workers, living and working here is a privilege granted to them by Irish citizens – and it is a privilege that comes with costs to the country in terms of providing health, education, and other services.
The arguments for a fee outweigh, by some distance, those against it: First, there is the strategic question about the fee as a tool for managing inward migration. At present, the country very clearly has more people resident here than the Irish housing market can naturally accommodate. Therefore, a sensible government policy would seek to deter, not attract, additional migrants. Reducing the residency fee would make Ireland a more attractive destination relative to other potential migrant destinations, which is not a logical policy to enact at present, with the country near full employment and probably well beyond full housing capacity.
More than that though is the basic principle of solidarity and buy-in: It is in the interest of Irish society and Irish people that living in Ireland be seen as a privilege, and not a right. Those granted the privilege of being admitted to our society are not being treated unreasonably by being asked to pay a premium for the right to reside here. Such a fee is effectively a charge for the extra costs associated with accommodating somebody whose arrival would not have been planned for, or budgeted for, according to the usual use of the census for forward planning.
Economic migrants – those who move here legally for job opportunities – are coming here in most cases to avail of a higher standard of living and a better life. In many cases (not all, but many) they are competing with Irish citizens for jobs, and housing, and other resources. The state is well within its rights to provide certain disincentives to that kind of migration, and to provide some relative advantages to its own citizens.
Such taxes are not unusual, either: The European Union, for example, places tariffs on incoming products from many other economies around the world in order to protect its own industries and workers from foreign born competition. A migrant residency fee is essentially little more than an economic tariff on foreign labour, comparable to the extra taxes levelled on imported beef from some south American countries.
All of this goes back to a fundamental question: For what, and for whose, purpose does the Irish state exist? The people of Ireland, for better or ill, contracted amongst themselves to found an independent Government entirely on the basis that the preceding Government of Ireland was not Governing in the interests of Irish people, but rather in the interests of the British Empire as a whole. The Irish Government’s purpose – and reason for existing – is so that Ireland may be governed in the interests of its own people, rather than the interests of people from other countries. That is not a profession of nationalism, but a profession of fact.
To reduce the residency fee for foreign migrants would be an act taken specifically in the interests of foreign citizens, and would come at the cost of Irish citizens: The money (not a large amount, but that is not the point) lost in residency permit payments would have to be replaced, in the exchequer, by income taxes on Irish citizens. It would be a transfer of wealth from our own people, to those who have come here to make a life amongst us.
If anything, the fees should be increased: Not out of any hostility to migrant workers, but out of an acknowledgment of the reality that current migration levels are putting a strain on Irish society. It is not unreasonable to ask migrants to make an additional contribution to the public finances to counteract those costs, and those strains.