Ireland, Mass Immigration and the Threat to America
As Americans sat down to Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 23rd, Irish families were receiving news of a mass stabbing attack at a school in Dublin, Ireland. Three children and two adults were wounded in the knife attack in Dublin. The attacker was revealed to be an asylum seeker from Algeria. This asylum seeker had been issued a deportation notice in 2003, but had been able to remain in Ireland for two decades anyway and had received Irish citizenship. He lived on welfare and his outrage at cuts to that welfare have been offered as a potential “stressor” that led him to attack the children. At the time of writing, a 5 year-old girl is still in the hospital as a result of the attack. Heroic intervention by two bystanders helped prevent any fatalities. Sadly riots followed. Irish UFC legend Conor McGregor condemned the riots and called for political change. The usually quiet Irish political scene was suddenly global news.
This is not the first time Ireland has seen violence from linked to mass immigration. In September 2023, an asylum seeker from Angola named Kasonga Mbuyi attacked a German tourist with a knife at Dublin’s international airport. The asylum seeker told his victim “I am going to kill you” before launching the unprovoked attack. In court, it was claimed that Mbuyi, who had been living on welfare, carried out the attack as a “cry for help” after learning his welfare would be cut and that he was going to be moved to a hostel “that he was not used to”. EU statistics show that nationals of Angola and Algeria have asylum rejection rates of 86 percent and 91 percent respectively. This seems to confirm that EU-wide, it is broadly understood that nationals of these countries usually have no genuine grounds for asylum and remain primarily as economic migrants.
Ireland has seen its population swell by nearly 100,000 people in just one year, an extraordinary amount for the small island country of just over 5 million. Asylum has been a common route for migrants to gain access to Ireland, and Irish government statistics show that just in 2023 so far, over 10,000 asylum applications have been made. Despite the high rejection rate, these migrants know that there is almost no realistic chance of deportation. Irish government statistics show that just 248 migrants were confirmed to have been removed from Ireland.
This example is significant for America as well. Irish citizens (like the naturalized Algerian who went on a knife spree) qualify for visa-free travel to America on the ESTA scheme. Ireland is also currently gripped by the trial of Irish-Uzbek dual nationals who are accused of raising funds for international terrorism, much like the Uzbek terrorists who have struck on U.S. soil before. Furthermore, Dublin airport, scene of the stabbing by a failed Angolan asylum seeker, is one of the few facilities in Europe that allows express pre-clearance of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) before even boarding a flight to the U.S. This allows direct flights from Dublin to arrive as domestic flights in the U.S. If Ireland is unreasonably generous with whom it awards Irish citizenship to, and far too relaxed about whom it allows into the country, this has grave implications for America. This also applies to other nationalities with visa-free access to the U.S., as in the recent case of a Pakistani with British citizenship launching a terrorist attack on a synagogue in Texas.
It is also significant for America because the usual tactics of the open-borders lobby are being deployed in Ireland just as they are in America. Within hours of the stabbings, the Irish state was denouncing “far-right ideology” and discussing the need for “hate speech” laws to shut down critics of mass immigration. The goal appears to be to drown out debate about Ireland’s open borders by shouting down critics and framing immigration as a partisan issue rather than one with relevance and real impacts for all of society. Americans who call for immigration controls can attest to similar tactics in America. Ireland and America increasingly cross-pollinate politically. On both sides of the Atlantic, the open-borders lobby use the same language and tactics against anyone calling for sensible immigration controls. Immigration is not a partisan concern that can be ignored, it affects everyone.