11
votes
Ireland can’t blame its anti-immigrant problem on Rishi Sunak – The sudden arrival of European-style populism in Irish politics is the result of thirteen years of government complacency
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- Title
- Ireland can't blame its anti-immigrant problem on Rishi Sunak
- Authors
- Finn McRedmond
- Published
- May 1 2024
- Word count
- 954 words
I think the upcoming elections will be the show here, but I don't think this movement has the popular support here proportional to the press coverage it's getting (especially abroad).
Opinion polls put Aontù, the largest party that actually has an anti-immigration policy, at about 5%, which seems more representative.
I think there are real failings in the housing sector — People have seen immigrants housed and feel resentful that many in their 30s are forced by economic circumstances to live with their parents. That has certainly led some vocal groups to attempt to pin the blame on immigration rather than the collapse of our construction sector in 2008, and our planning system which means that developments can be held up by NIMBYs or rival developers for 5+ years.
I don't think blaming immigration for the housing crisis is quite a fair reading of the situation. Some of the anti-immigrant voices are feeding on that to try and give people someone to blame, but housing has been screwed since 2014/2015 which is also close to our local minimum for immigration. And most of the housing that immigrants are being put in is stuff that native Irish people would rather live in their parents than deal with. Think 8 people in a 3 bedroom apartment, or hotels, or disused office buildings etc.
I think tying the immigration increase here to the UK's small boats nonsense is also foolish. The reality is most of the numbers are Ukrainians and I do think this is a case of our government actually looking at the fact that our official neutrality policy prevents us contributing militarily to the situation in Ukraine and so saw taking in a much larger amount of Ukrainian refugees proportionally than the rest of western Europe as a way for Ireland to contribute. And I mean there's definitely been some hate directed at Ukrainians (and before them it was Brazilians and before that it was Polish), but this hate really blew up since the Dublin riots where people started tying it to Muslim immigrants which are really a small proportion of the increase.
That makes me a bit embarrassed to be Irish, to be honest. In general, I think our immigration policy of 2012-2022 was pretty reasonable given the challenges we had, and I think while the government clearly did not think through the practicalities of how many Ukrainian refugees they took in, we are in a time where there's a land war in Europe and considering how much that e.g. the UK, Germany and France are contributing, the least we can do is take in some refugees. I'd hate for us to shift to being more nasty on the matter, just because our government uncharacteristically tried to do the right thing.
The sort of thing that worries me, though, is stuff like the recent poll where roughly 50% of Ireland would be okay with border checks along the Irish/NI border to stop immigrants from coming over. That's a significant shift, and it's a dangerous one - if there is anything that Brexit has taught us, it is that open borders within the Ireland/NI region are necessary and need to be protected.
In fairness, I'm from the UK, so I'm only getting a filtered perspective on this, but it seems pretty significant to me.
I agree totally here, but also because of the impact on UK politics. I think there are two harms
So if I were an Irish government minister the one thing I would not do is make statements to the press which support the Tories and boost the white elephant Rwanda deal. Especially given that as you point out it's very unlikely to be the source of a lot of refugees.
What is it saying here? That the government has failed to give the racists a hard time, or that it had failed to give the immigrants and refugees a hard time?
I think its saying "Ireland didnt suddenly become xenophobic in response to Rishi Sunaks divisive politics, Ireland has been xenophobic for a good while now"
The latter, presumably.
TL;DR