Ireland At the Breaking Point on Immigration
A weekend of forcefully suppressed protests against mass immigration in Ireland has underlined the growing disconnect between the government and the people. There has been understandable concern over Irish communities being forced to house and pay for migrant men without the locals being consulted. When locals protested in County Wicklow, Gardai (Irish police) forcefully suppressed protesters with riot shields and batons. The Irish state appears determined that migrants will be housed anywhere it pleases, with or without the consent of the locals.
The Irish establishment has blamed the protests on two culprits. The first is the omnipresent bogeyman of the “far right.” When asked what far right ideology actually was in a hearing at the Irish Parliament, the Minister of Justice, Helen McAtee, stated rather sheepishly that “I’m not sure there is a definition.” This has not stopped claims that the far-right are behind the protests, when in fact it appears to be wholly a product of local people and their concerns being ignored and physically suppressed by their own government.
The second alleged culprit has been Britain. As Britain rolled out its Rwanda plan to settle refugees in that African nation rather than allow them to roam free in the UK, many migrants have headed from Britain to Ireland instead. The deal that saw Britain leave the European Union (EU) included an agreement that the border between Britain and Ireland would remain “soft” i.e., not subject to physical barriers or routine checks. Needless to say, this has been a gift to migrants.
A report from the BBC shows that 91 percent of applications for asylum in Ireland in 2024 were made at the International Protection Office in Dublin city center, and not at an airport or ferry port. This would strongly suggest the migrants arrived by land i.e., from the UK-Ireland border in Northern Ireland, Ireland’s only land border. Dublin is creaking under the strain of trying to provide for migrants, with large tent cities full of migrant men springing up across the historic city. As in America, city shelters and housing services were never designed to deal with tidal wave levels of unending mass migration. What cities like Denver, Chicago and New York are experiencing has now come to Dublin.
The Irish people are right to be angry at the way their government has mishandled immigration. Recent years have seen over 10,000 asylum seekers apply for asylum in Ireland each year, a vast number for such a relatively small country. As in much of Europe, their asylum claims are largely fictitious and are solely a way of obtaining residency in Europe (a situation mirroring that of the U.S.). The high rates of rejection, sometimes exceeding 90 percent for some nationalities like Algerians, confirm that most of these asylum claims are bogus.
The physical safety of Irish people has suffered due to mass migration. In November 2023, a fake asylum seeker from Algeria stabbed five people, including three children, in a stabbing rampage triggered by his anger that his welfare payments were due to be cut. Just two months previously, an asylum seeker from Angola, Kasonga Mbuyi, attacked a German tourist with a knife at Dublin’s international airport, claiming that he was angry his welfare was due to be cut and that he was being asked to move to a different government shelter.
The Irish government has a conundrum. As migrants head for Ireland instead of Britain, Ireland has announced it will deport them back to the UK. This is despite the fact that in March 2023, the High Court in Dublin declared that the UK was not a “safe country” for asylum seekers to be deported to due to its Rwanda policy. Furthermore, Britain had stated it will not take them back, or at very least not until France agrees to accept the deportation of asylum seekers from Britain to France. The three European countries are now in a game of hot potato with asylum seekers. If Ireland did deport migrants to Britain, and Britain sent them to France, those migrants could just try to break in again, as some have already threatened to do.
What is happening in Ireland is increasingly serious. As migration reaches record levels, the Irish establishment seems keener to point fingers at the “far right” or the actions of a neighboring country rather than their own misguided policies. Many European countries are moving to stop mass immigration, with Sweden, Portugal and Britain being notable recent examples. Sadly, Ireland’s political leaders seem unable or unwilling to admit there is a problem while ordinary Irish people are made to pay the price.