Irish Political Review, March 2006 - Athol Books

26
Pireland continued
Nick Leeson as Governor of the Central
Bank. Is it any wonder the UN is in such
a mess?
"That's why it is depressing to see
people regard this as a negative, even in
economic terms," he told The Irish Times.
"There is no doubt it is a positive in
moral terms to adopt a generous
approach to immigration, especially
given that we have been the beneficiaries
of the generosity of others over many
decades."
Mr. Sutherland said the problems many
European countries and Japan experienced
in expanding their economies were due to
a poor demography and suggested there
should be a "conjuncture of interests"
between developed countries and migrant
workers from the developing world. He
described international migration as "the
biggest issue of our time".
*********************************
Migrant Workers from other Countries
Spain : 24,659
France: 20,322
China: 19,288
Nigeria: 16,888
Germany: 12,887
U.S.A.: 12,808
*********************************
IMMIGRATION: A BRIEF HISTORY
Certainly, Immigration was a major
influence in the development and
prosperity of the United States, Canada,
and Australia but that was a process that
was controlled throughout. There is a
naivety in the Irish debate bordering on
the infantile: that we open the gates and
welcome all in without restriction.
"Borders should be open", is the way the
Archbishop of Dublin puts it.
Billy Curtin, the Secretary of the Cork
Building Group of Unions, would put it a
very different way. (See Below). But
workers, unlike Archbishops have to
survive in the real world, whether in Poland
or in Ireland.
"There are 40 million or so Poles",
says Rabbitte. In all, there are 70 million
people in the 1st May 2004 Accession
Countries who have an unrestricted right
to travel to Ireland, U.K. and Sweden.
Bulgaria and Romania are knocking on
the door, with their population of 31
million.
At what stage do you draw the line?
There are 10,000 Poles in Cork city and
County; a 1,000 in Dungarvan; Letterkenny
and its hinterland has 1,100. There's
at least 40,000 Poles in Dublin. Around
Rush in Co. Dublin, 2,000 Latvians have
made their abode. The truth is that
officially the State is not even keeping a
count.
A LEFT POSITION ON IMMIGRATION
"There is no 'White New Zealand'
policy or 'White Canada' policy, and no
one hears of those countries being
overrun by Asiatics. Both New Zealand
and Canada regulate immigration
without using terms that are insulting to
the enslaved peoples… We could no
more permit (mass immigration from
Asia) than from Europe, or from Britain
for that matter, and for the same reason—
it would endanger living standards and
create unemployment, and would,
therefore, favour the efforts of reactionary
elements to promote political and
racial division among the people.
"Mass immigration from low-wage
countries in particular must be avoided.
Hence the importance of the immigration
quota system advocated by the Communist
party, as a means to effectively
control the flow of immigrants from all
countries in accordance with the
economic conditions prevailing here in
Australia" (Marxist Glossary by L. Harry
Gould, Current Books,Communist Party
of Australia, Sydney, 1947).
Australia's "white Australia" policy,
officially termed the "restrictive immigration
policy", though somewhat
liberalised after 1965 to permit the entry
of some non-Europeans, remains perhaps
the most noted current example of the
exclusion of coloured peoples.
UNITED STATES
With the oncoming Depression, the
US introduced legislation restricting
immigration, reversing traditional
American policy and stemming the flow
from Europe. In 1920, the year before
enactment of emergency legislation,
800,000 immigrants had arrived. Added
to the protests of organised labour, were
the objections of business leaders, and
patriotic organisations which feared that
some of the immigrants might be
radicals.(sic.)
"Legislation in 1924 set small quotas
totalling 164,000 people yearly; it
favoured immigrants from north-western
Europe and outraged the Japanese by
banning all immigration from East Asia.
Immigration from within the Western
Hemisphere continued—900,000 Canadians
(mostly French-speaking) and
500,000 Mexicans entered the United
States during the 1920s" (Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 1978, Volume 18-p.988).
The main host countries of immigration
after World War II were Australia, New
Zealand, the U.S., Canada, Argentina,
Brazil, Venezuela, and Uruguay. Highest
rates of net inflow existed in Australia and
New Zealand; immigration was responsible
for two-fifths of the increase of
population in Australia.
Migrants in the Americas were
absorbed most readily by Canada and
Venezuela, though in absolute numbers
the US still took by far the largest total.
Jamaica lost nearly a quarter of its natural
increase through emigration, a situation
not unlike the Ireland of the late Forties
and Fifties, while Mexico had a net outflow
of 250,000 (mainly to the U.S.), which
however was only three per cent of the
natural increase.
The number of Irish-born in Britain in
1961, even allowing for deaths and reemigration
was over one million. The
population of the 26 Counties for 1961
was 2,818,341.
One of the striking developments after
1945 was the influx of European and
Indian populations into certain parts of
Africa. In the Federation of Rhodesia and
Nyasaland (later Rhodesia, Zambia, and
Malawi) the number of Europeans
increased from 105,000 to 274,000
between 1946 and 1957, and more than
two-thirds of this was due to immigration.
In a world in which the volume and
direction of migration have been heavily
influenced by restrictions unfavourable to
coloured peoples, however, some channels
remained open as shown by the immigration
of Puerto Ricans to the US, and,
until passage of the restrictive Commonwealth
Immigration Bill in 1968, of West
Indians to the UK. In these cases the fact
of common citizenship made possible a
relatively large increase in the movement
of coloured migrants into these countries.
MAKE UP YOUR MIND TIME!
Ireland has a three-month deadline to
consider imposing a clampdown on
workers arriving here from Eastern
Europe.
Unless the Government applies to reintroduce
some form of special controls
by the end of April, it cannot impose Work
Permits on anyone coming here from the
10 new Member-States, the European
Commission has insisted.
"Any changes to arrangements
proposed by a member state must be
communicated to the Commission before
April 30, 2006," the Commission's social
affairs spokeswoman said.
"The Commission wasn't able to give
a clear answer yesterday about whether
Ireland could impose new restrictions,
since the labour market has already been
liberalised. It said that any plans to do so
would have to be reviewed on a “case by
case” basis" (Irish Independent,
24.1.2006).
Under the current rules, Ireland would
have to prove that the labour market had
been affected by the arrival of the new
immigrants—although with unemployment
stable and low, this might be hard to
prove.
The Commission also admits that it
doesn't anticipate any rolling back on the
current system.
It is not anticipated that any of the
three countries who did not impose transitional
arrangements, Ireland, UK, and
continued on page 25