News


Immigrants flooding into Ireland despite bad economic times there

Over 80,000 approved for visas despite massive unemployment, emigration


Immigrants take part in the Irish naturalisation ceremony
Immigrants take part in the Irish naturalisation ceremony
Photo by The Journal

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Though Ireland’s economy remains in poor shape, there is no shortage of foreigners from around the world seeking legal residency and citizenship there, new Irish government figures show.

The Journal.ie reports that there was a six percent rise in the number of foreigners applying for visas last year compared to 2011. Out of the roughly 88,000 visa applications received, 91 percent were approved, with the biggest number going to natives of India (16 percent), followed by Russia, China, Nigeria, and Turkey.

Justice Minister Alan Shatter’s office revealed that the Irish Naturalization and Immigration Service received some 165,700 applications for a number of services, including visas, residency, protection and naturalization.

The figures show that nearly 115,000 non-European nationals received permission to remain in Ireland. Again, natives of India represent the highest number at 11 percent of this total, followed by Brazil, Nigeria, China, the U.S. and the Philippines.

More than 25,000 citizenship cases were decided last year. Also, more than 31,000 non-European foreign students are registered for study in Ireland.

Asylum applications have fallen drastically from a peak of 11,600 in 2002. Last year there were only 950 requests for asylum. Almost 2,700 people were deported from Ireland last year.

“Reform of the immigration system will be sustained in 2013 and I will be focusing on major legislative and procedural measures such as the Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill and further civilianization of Immigration Officer functions at Dublin Airport,” Shatter said in a statement.


Nster.com


146 Comments

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Shatter needs to be removed from office, he is beyond useless in his job
What can "We" Irish both living there and elsewhere DO to voice our concern and put a stop to this wholesale overunning of our Country ? I know that it is always possible to e mail TD's and Senators , one has just got to use thier first name then dot , second name then dot and then @oir.ie for example alan.shatter@oir.ie bUT I suspect that the loest rung of the support staff get to read and deal with these e mails or letters.Emigrants should get thier Irish relatives to lobby Politicians , both local and National about this issue before it is too late ( I fear it already is).Emigrants , of which there are approx 2 million living still ( amazing figure) , if you want to have a "homeland" to come home to then write to Taoiseach Enda Kenny and tewll Him there is no point coming home for "The Gathering" to a land where you do not recognise it anymore as it is now full of East Europeans , Africans and Asians.In most Hotels now you do not get served by Irish Staff.There is no "authentic" Irish experience anymore.I know that is partly our own "fault" because Irish people turned thier noses up to lower paid hospitality sector jobs during the good times as well as some , don't know how many , opting to claim the dole rather than work in hospitality and the net income was much the same.That is as much a fault of the over-generous welfare system as the "lazy" tag applied to these people.I think many would snap at these jobs now !There will be more and more inter-rwacial violence going forward , there are numerous recent examples of Countries being taken over by immigrants eg Fiji(Indians) , Singapore (Chinese from Malays), it almost happened to the Baltic States as Stalin forceably moved Russians into Latvia , Estonia and Lithuania.Ireland watch out ! You are in the same danger zone !!!
Theres more than the educated natives flooding out and possably lost forever. A great piece to read is Giving away family silver or reaping a bonanza? By: John Hearne - Irish Examiner. Unbelievable that we the Irish stand for this.
EU Supremo President Kenny's Irish coalition government party passed legislation some years ago to exclude foreign nationals from labour law protection - ie minimum wages, union representation, pension entitlement, holiday pay etc at the behest of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC). Never doubt, racial integration and multiculturalism are sanctified euphemisms for cheap labour. The EU has prevailed upon the Irish political establishment to turn Ireland into an glorified FAS/TEFL occupational training ground/language laboratory for immigrants. Try getting a seat at the local library you spent you working life paying taxes to fund, only to find yourself being jostled aside by dangerously competitive foreign language students who seem to wonder why you're there as an somewhat older minority Irish native.
Jacers - no worries pal. Sometimes I get a little too into things but I should always remember my manners. Cheers!
Far into the 21st century countries like Germany, Japan, China, and Italy will continue to be a homeland for their own people. But not Ireland. Ireland has decided to worship at the altar of multi-culturism. Even Vietnam with 89 million people did not allow the French, Americans or Chinese to dismantle their country. The Vietnamese fought wars to keep their country! The Irish surrendered....
WoundedKnee: In addition to what you have just said, places like Kuwait, UAE, Qatar only allow foreigners to work on temporary visas. There is no chance of getting citizenship or permanent residence there ever, even if you are born there of foreign parents. I don't know if there is an exception if you marry a local citizen, but the chances of that are slim, since the local citizenry segregate themselves socially and culturally from the guest workers.
Precisely, Madeliene. The official party line is "You're only Irish if you are not Irish."
I guess they will be welcome as long as ghey do not say they of Irish descent, or American Irish.
2ndRepub: A friend of mine became a citizen of Spain, so it was he who told me the requirements there. You mentioned Denmark, so I checked out Danish citizenship. Turns out to be naturalized in Denmark you need to be named in an act of parliament! And you must have lived in Denmark "for a continuous period of at least 9 years." Why not look up a few more countries on line--you'll find that Ireland is a patsy as regards citizenship. There are quite a few countries which have more migrant workers than Ireland--places like Singapore, Kuwait etc. But in those places the migrant workers will not walk into citizenship--and full access to benefits--within a space of just five years. And they won't be able to exercise a right to "family unity" after five years. That is what has set the clock ticking for the Doomsday of 2040 or so--the date when the Irish become a minority in their own homeland.
jacers; Who is this "Immigrant Council of Ireland" and why do they wield so much influence over who gets citizenship? Do they put councillors up for election so that the Irish people can vote on their policies? Why has such power been handed to a quango or pressure group with no democratic mandate. Also, just thought you might like to know that 800,000 council houses in the UK have been handed to foreign citizens ahead of British citizens. I am sure that the same sort of thing goes on in Ireland, it is inconceivable that it does not.
continued :: entities that deal with each stage of the application process.As the first stage is reched and rejection of application is made an "appeal" is longed and so on and so on.The Legal profession love this process as they get paid out of Taxpayers monies all the way along the line .Eventually the 5 year limit is reached and , bingo , you have Citizenship ! For the 5 years or more the Taxpayer pays for feeding , housing and clothing etc ALL the people caught up in the process of which there are tens of thousands.The authorities bury these figures because there would be a public outcry if it was publically known how much this is costing the Irish taxpayer.Apart from this the Irish Taxpayer is paying over 1.25 Billion in aid to Africa over the past two years - and the Ugandans were recently caught pocketing the money allocated to them for the Senior Governments personal use.The Danes also caught another African Countries officials up to the same thing.It is wholesale fraud.There are over 7000 registered charities in Ireland , many of them focussed on Africa because it is easy to put pictures of starving Black babies and Women in the papers and raise lots of money.The CEO's of these entities are highly paid head honchos who jet back and forth to Africa telling everyone here in Ireland that we "have to do more" etc etc .Since when did Ireland become responsible for sorting out the Third Worlds problems ? Methinks our charitable nature is being taken for a massive ride.
I am confused - perhaps someone could clarify this for Me - Is there a " 5 year rule" for automatic Citizenship in all EU Countries or does it vary from Country to Country ? In correspondence here there is reference to Spain being 10 years and the UK and Ireland being 5 years.This is a crucial issue because the way Ireland currently "handles" ( if you can call it that) Asylum applications it is almost impossible for the authorities to fully process each application within 5 years because there are several different
What is most important about of the death of the African juvenile Toyosi in Dublin, is the sad circumstance of a young man dying on a street, thousands of miles from his homeland. But I will briefly deal with some of jacers’ inaccuracies. He claims that the Dublin men started the fight. Yet the African man Kuti explicitly told the court that he threw the first punch. The court was told that “A fight broke out resulting in Michael and Paul (the Dublin men) being kicked and punched and Michael believing one of the youths had taken his mobile phone.” “The group of (African) teens were still mouthing off and one of them started to taunt us with a screw driver”. A witness deposed: “at one stage the smaller of the two (Dublin) men was on the ground being kicked by the black teenagers.”. No knife was ever found. The juvenile Lupepe, supposedly the owner of the screwdriver that has been cited as possibly used in the killing, refused to go back to Ireland from England to give evidence. Jacers says “Paul B had been convicted of racial incitement about 10 yrs before”. I’ve checked that, and as far as I can see from the online records, wrong again. The incident in question was an atrocious attack on an English tourist in downtown Dublin, for which several men received jail time, but I see no record of Paul B being convicted for it. Care to back up what you said, jacers? It is pretty obvious that none of those involved in the affair that led to the killing of Toyosi was an angel. In fact I am sure that several of the actors were pretty reprehensible people. This tragic death was just another part of a pretty brutal street scene that has developed in Ireland in the past decade or so—there are countless reports of quite shocking casual street violence. But it was not something from 1960s Alabama or Mississippi. The Dublin men involved may very well have been thugs, but they were not KKK, and the African youths were not Civil Rights marchers.
I agree that Mr jacers’ posts are tiresome. I stopped reading his latest baloney after I saw him claiming that there is an EU obligation to grant citizenship after 5 years. Wrong. Spain has a ten year residency rule, I am sure there are lots of other examples I could cite.




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