As I keep repeating, we are changing, and fast. This is true in many ways. There are 1.5 times as many more households now than a generation ago, but they are smaller and one person in four lives alone.
One person in 10 is an immigrant, the eighth highest proportion of the OECD countries. There are 150,000 Poles living in Ireland, 60,000 Chinese, 45,000 Lithuanians and 30,000 Latvians in whose country they talk of ‘the Ireland problem’.
It’s a dramatic transition, driven to a large degree by the voracious Celtic Tiger labour market. People want to come because they can make more money here than at home, even the 28,000 Nigerians who by rights ought to be filthy rich given their homeland’s vast oil resources.
But while much is made of the benefits to our society and economy, inevitably, there are problematic aspects as well.
There’s the rise of racism, for example. Maybe that should be the liberation of latent prejudice and nastiness. But you know what I mean. At its least offensive it’s a miserable parochial small mindedness, an inbred begrudgery. But at its worst it’s dangerous and vicious and politically threatening.
At the other end of the spectrum there’s the whole vexed issue of asylum seeking and seeking refuge. For generations the provision of asylum has been a hallmark of civilised countries and to two groups in particular, political dissidents and refugees from natural disasters.
It has become a whole lot more complicated in the 21st century. Other reasons for flight now exist – economic, cultural and medical (like female circumcision). In a sense, anyone can probably make a claim for asylum somewhere.
A society like ours, where there is a lot of work and a lot of personal freedom, is attractive and individuals and groups will (understandably) try to find the chinks in our systems and controls.
Hence human trafficking, of which we heard much over the last few weeks.
A number of cases have been uncovered of women being trafficked into Ireland for forced prostitution. Just how many is a matter of debate, but Michael McDowell has acknowledged that Ireland is at risk. According to Ruhama the cases are only the tip of the iceberg.
In this instance righteous anger is directed at the traffickers who make their profits from the misery of the unfortunate victims. But on the other hand, we also heard last week that many of the Afghans who occupied St Patrick’s Cathedral had been trafficked into Ireland. And in these cases, to those protesting in the Afghans’ favour outside, the traffickers are a necessary link in a chain of succour and relief, helping desperate and endangered people to escape.
Perhaps they are, though I doubt it. But the situation in St Patrick’s raised many questions. How, for example, did the Evening Herald come to know that Gardaí had established that the Afghans were in constant contact with Afghanistan and possibly with Taliban members? Who leaked? In turn, if it is actually true that the hunger strikers were being instructed…well, it’s even stranger and more worrying.
What could the Taliban have been up to? Had they read the coverage of the 25th anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands and thought that hunger strikes were likely to be well supported here, or what? Then again, Afghans had succeeded with the same tactic in Belgium, so…
The various galleries who surrounded what became a circus were almost as disquieting. Most noisy were a group of secondary students, misled perhaps by the success of protests backing Nigerian Elukanlo Olakunle. But Residents Against Racism were the most heard, until the hostile Liberties Locals joined the fray.
What to make of Residents Against Racism? They seem to see racism everywhere. But for the most part, this case wasn’t about racism. Indeed, given that nobody has been deported to Afghanistan in recent years, it was as much about hysteria as anything.
The Irish asylum system isn’t perfect, but whose is? And not all asylum seekers are as oppressed as they might first appear either, as evidenced by the Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has admitted she lied to win asylum in the Netherlands.
She sought asylum in 1992, claiming to be escaping from an arranged marriage. She gained Dutch citizenship in 1997 and was elected to parliament in 2002. In recent weeks her family was interviewed and said she had not been forced into an arranged marriage and had nothing to fear.
It doesn’t mean that much, except that everything isn’t always as it seems.
Hirsi Ali’s admission and the failed hunger strike haven’t done any favours to asylum seekers and immigrants. Neither have those who called for individual negotiation for the Afghans. Either you have a system or you don’t and, unless you believe in absolute freedom of access (and some do), you have to have a system.
As I type this I am digesting David Attenborough’s programme on global warming. There is a strong probability that rising seas will cause huge disruption across the globe in the coming generations. We or our children may all yet be refugees. What we do here now might become a model for how we will ourselves be treated in the future. Strident rants and emotional opportunism do favours for nobody. It’s time for enlightened and rational debate.
Thankfully nobody died. Now, let’s think…