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E-mailMajority of Irish want fewer immigrants in Ireland
Poll also shows many expect to emigrate from Ireland because of downturn
Published Tuesday, November 24, 2009, 8:55 AM
Updated Tuesday, November 24, 2009, 9:27 AM
13 percent of Irish people expect to leave the country over the next five years
The worsening recession in Ireland is hardening attitudes towards immigrants there.
A new poll from the Irish Times shows that over 72 percent of Irish people want to see less non-national immigrants.
At the same time, 13 percent of Irish people expect to emigrate over the next five years.
The sentiment was even stronger amongst young people.
A massive 81 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds said they wanted fewer immigrants in Ireland while 40 percent of the same age group expected to emigrate over the next five years.
The poll said that the majority of people who said they wanted fewer immigrants in Ireland were from rural and economically-depressed areas.
Ireland has traditionally been a country that supported a culture of emigration but the so-called Celtic Tiger attracted many immigrants as the country struggled to fill job vacancies
The poll also showed that people had chosen financial security (77 percent) and health (70 percent) as the most important factors in their life.
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Posted by plasticpaddy on Nov 30, 2009, 05:23 PM ESTno, I guess not.
Posted by IrishEddy on Nov 26, 2009, 11:41 AM EST
That's why I never travel outside the country, to many foreingers live there.
Posted by jacersisityourself on Nov 25, 2009, 08:10 PM EST
P’off ciarriai. We Irish know Kerry and it’s not spelt ciarrai. You’re talking through... well, through.. through.. erm, in the nicest way possible, I’ll say through your hat!
Posted by ciarrai on Nov 25, 2009, 06:20 PM EST
I told you Irish back in 1972 that you didn't know what having loads of foreigners in your country would be like. You thought we Yanks were bigots and racists. Well, welcome to our world.
Posted by jacersisityourself on Nov 25, 2009, 04:53 PM EST
To P’Lee I particularly say that it’s probable that some of the 13% of the 72% he refers to would certainly like to see fewer migrant workers staying here. When I responded (in chapters! – feranbegawdsake pls pardon me goin' on...!!) to p’paddy’s post yesterday, I wasn’t thinking of one of my sons who luckily holds a job in Dublin at the moment, if uncertainly so. Today, he phoned me to say he was planning to go to Australia after Christmas “for a year or so until this blows over”. One of my other sons left Ireland and visited Australia as part of a round-the-world trip sojourn a few years ago – he never made it home; he met a young woman there, married, and has a family now... and is unlikely to return home. What do you think my thoughts are after his younger brother’s phone call to me today? Should I tell the younger that he might be taking up a native Australian’s job if he stays in that huge continent of a country?
Posted by jacersisityourself on Nov 25, 2009, 04:47 PM EST
As for comments by others, notably p’nurse and P’Lee, referring to Irish emigrants to USA and Canada and the ‘millions’ of Irish in these countries, they are a bit wide of the mark. May I remind (some!) people that the so-called millions of Irish (the bulk of 70m of them according to IrishCentral) are descendants of Irish emigrants over centuries when these huge countries were relatively barren of workers, and are not that many of native-born Irish over the last few scores of years. (Three of my father’s family made their homes in Canada during some of Ireland’s bleakest unemployment times. Their children and grandchildren love coming ‘home’ to Ireland on visits). I agree about the undocumented Irish, it is rightfully a sore point with Americans, just as it is with undocumented Mexicans and other nationalities. Personally, I would have little sympathy for the undocumented – they cheated on their visas and stayed illegally in a country hosting their 'visit'. The problem now is that many undocumented have made their homes, careers and families in the USA over the years (it's really a huge country, easy to get 'lost' in) and there’s now so many of these people since the ‘60s, ‘70’s and 80’s etc that the human aspect has to be looked at. We in Ireland certainly don’t expect ‘Kow-towing’ to pressure from the Americans of today... it’s a problem that needs to be sorted - politically, hereditarily and humanely, not just for the Irish undocumented but for other nations’ undocumented people in the USA - esp given the implications of marriage and lack of freedom to travel.
Posted by jacersisityourself on Nov 25, 2009, 04:35 PM EST
Very funny comment by Rebelforce – "too many Irish..." LOL... very good. A friend of mine recently retired from teaching in what was for eons one of Dublin’s finest schools (we were both educated there). I noticed in recent years that its school sports teams were no longer featuring in newspapers’ school sports pages as they always were when we played for the school, and I asked him - why? He said *quietly* “Jacers, it’s got very colourful in there these days” (alluding to the big number of immigrants’ children there now and who don’t play GAA games). It’s not the reason he retired btw, he had a stroke last year, thankfully recovered but needs to take it easy now.
Posted by jacersisityourself on Nov 25, 2009, 04:33 PM EST
BTW, did you know there’s a sizeable Brazilian population living in the West of Ireland? And quite a large one of native English people in Co Cork? There are plenty of Chinese who arrived over the last 6 yrears (working in restaurants, engineering and science) and Asian Indians here too (restaurants, hospitals). What young Irish person arriving into the working population this past summer would not be able to take on those jobs?
Posted by jacersisityourself on Nov 25, 2009, 04:31 PM EST
Yep, I agree p’paddy... there is some selfishness but not incomprehensibly so about it and who would blame the Irish for it? I acknowledge EU peoples’ rights to work anywhere in the EU (hafta, ya see, it's the EU law) but for a small country like Ireland it does mean tremendous competition for the relatively few jobs. Remember that the working population of Ireland is only about 2 million out of a population of some 3.5m. If you take it that some 250,000 Polish people came to work here when things were bad in Poland and there was great demand for workers here, and given a huge proportion of those still live and work here, it is a big dent in the opportunities for Irish people, particularly the Snow Babies’ generation (most around 30 yrs old now). I think that’s where the soreness comes from – immigrants having jobs that young native Irish people now coming out of colleges and into the working population could have, if the immigrants returned to their own booming economies. As Keano says, what comes round comes round. I’m sure you’ve heard of stories of signs at construction sites in booming Poland in recent times saying “No Irish need apply”? In all my time a few years ago, passing by building sites and the like, I didn’t see a similar sign about Poles or other East Europeans. I should add that I am not in the least bit anti-Polish; we Irish have come love them, we meet them working our shops, restaurants, hair salons etc. About 5 or 6 work in the same place as I do, two of whom I know well and find exceptionally nice as do my Irish work colleagues.
Posted by PatrickLee on Nov 25, 2009, 10:16 AM EST
So are the 13 percent of Irish people that expect to emigrate over the next five years among the 72 percent of Irish people that want to see less non-national immigrants?
This web-site has been slamming Lou Dobbs for his so called "racist" rants on ILLEGAL immigrants and I don't see anyone calling what is going on in Ireland "racist" Even on this issue you have the great KELLY FINCHAM, Irish Central.com Editor slamming Dobbs again. What a bunch of flaming, whining, liberal, hypocrites
Posted by phoenixnurse on Nov 25, 2009, 09:36 AM EST
My, My ! Talk about Immigrant bashing.... that's not a nice attitude to have.... the Irish should embrace all these immigrants coming into Ireland...legal or illegal...
You certainly come over to the United States as immigrants and expect us to "Cow Tow" to your every need and raise enough political havoc over right for the illegal Irish...
Stay in Ireland and clean up your own mess might be something more productive instead of Bashing the U.S. with your leftist attitudes. The grass is greener in Ireland!
Posted by plasticpaddy on Nov 24, 2009, 11:51 PM EST
I agree with you completely vincent, I do not wish to make our laws in the slightest bit harsher, more leniency actually.
Posted by Rebelforce on Nov 24, 2009, 09:02 PM EST
You're absolutely right vincent. Just think of the great nation Ireland might have become if she hadn't lost those millions of energetic Irish emigrants---the best and the brightest---to the USA.
Posted by vincentruane on Nov 24, 2009, 06:41 PM EST
You two jokers are forgetting one key point! In time the immigrants who have come to Ireland in the last 20 years may be the major catalyst for significant contributions to Ireland's benefit in the future, just like many Irish immigrants have been a great gift to America and other country's.
Posted by plasticpaddy on Nov 24, 2009, 06:15 PM EST
ha ha, i love that - theres too many irish in Ireland anyway, ha ha ha
Posted by Rebelforce on Nov 24, 2009, 04:48 PM EST
If the Irish want to emigrate so be it. I'm sure the Irish government will have no problem replacing them with tens of thousands of Nigerians or Chinese who will eagerly take their place. (There's too many Irish in Ireland anyway.)
Posted by plasticpaddy on Nov 24, 2009, 03:58 PM EST
Chapter one is only problematic in that you ignore the huge populations of Irish in Canada, Germany, France, the rests of the world. Also why should those jobs be held for Irish people, most of the people are there as European immigrants who are entitled as EU citizens to live and work in our country, and vice versa? We have very little actual immigration from Australia, or Brazil, Poland is another matter so that point is pretty much moot.
Also many of the immigrants have left, most of them in fact as the job market has dried up and they will continue to come in less significant numbers and less and less will remain. Yes I do think it seems selfish. We went to Britain and the US during many a financial catastrophe and the door wasn't closed in our faces we should have more compassion for those less fortunate than ourselves and 'shelter the despot and the slave'.
Posted by jacersisityourself on Nov 24, 2009, 03:26 PM EST
Chapter Three - It is because of the immigrants who’ve stayed holding onto these relatively menial jobs, and the ones who’ve stayed to bleed the Irish Social Welfare system (thus draining our financial resources) that Irish people would now say we’d rather they go home to their own countries, or move on to countries better in need of their services than present-day Ireland. The economies of a large number of immigrants’ own countries are flourishing – Brazil, Poland, Australia, China and India. The thinking here now is “let us Irish have what we believe is ours back, please”. It isn’t really an anti-immigrant thing – it’s because there aren’t enough jobs to go around for all in our own small backyard anymore and like everybody else, we like to look after our own first. Unfortunately for many Irish people, our laws won’t allow us to and many Irish families are suffering while they see the staying immigrants holding jobs they, or their sons and daughters, could be working in. Does it seem less incomprehensible or selfish now, for our tiny country?
Posted by jacersisityourself on Nov 24, 2009, 03:20 PM EST
Chapter Two - The problem with accommodation in Ireland became acute as immigrants and refugees needed housing coincident with the now-matured Snow Babies. This increased the demand for housing accommodation beyond what we Irish needed on our own. Now that large numbers of migrant workers who occupied newly-built apartments have left for new pastures (e.g. building London’s Olympics Stadium/ Town), we have thousands of homes lying empty all over Ireland, meaning no income for the landlords (yes, I agree, also called developers), meaning they can’t repay the loans they borrowed to build the apartments, leading to a banking crisis. There were international reasons for the crisis too of course but the effect of migrant workers leaving was not insignificant in little Ireland. But I come back to the issue of the immigrants who have settled here – they occupy jobs such as shop assistants, taxi-drivers and other such jobs which would have been part-time second jobs for Irish people in hard times (more...)
Posted by jacersisityourself on Nov 24, 2009, 03:16 PM EST
Not so incomprehensible p’paddy! Chapter One - The Irish who you say went ‘all over the world’ really only went to large countries like the UK, USA and Australia, where there was a very good chance of them slotting into society in English-speaking countries without harming the locals chances when employment chances were bad in Ireland (as they are now). Ireland, by comparison to these mega-economies, has fewer jobs to offer. The boom years were fuelled by the demand for housing as a result of the maturity of the babies who boomed out the Irish winter snows of 1977, 1979 and 1982 (our famous ‘Snow Babies’). That happened coincident with billions of Euro granted by the EU for the National Development Plan (NDP to you and me) - mostly spent on new roads, trains, buses, hospitals, prisons, DART and Luas (infrastructure), all generating jobs that needed to be filled. We didn’t have enough people in Ireland to work on these projects. More people working meant more demands in transport and retail sales, and so we had to have migrant workers to help in those fields However, a third factor crept in – that of refugees (more...)
Posted by plasticpaddy on Nov 24, 2009, 11:00 AM EST
Very disheartening to hear a people who have gone all over the world, to not offer the same to other peoples. Very selfish, very wrong and utterly incomprehensible.
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