Sir, - The people who advocate an open-door policy to asylum seekers, political or economic, or indeed to anyone who wishes to enter from abroad without restrictions, are deluding themselves about the reality of the future consequences of such a policy.
Open-doorites point to the many Irish people who emigrated to America in times past. But there is no comparison between the vast continent of North America, her culture, her history, and the time that was, and our own island and the inherent idiomatic lifestyle and psyche of the modern Celt. Our oppressive history has left us a vulnerable nation susceptible to cosmetic changes in order to be accepted, while temporarily suppressing our true identity in the process.
Another open-doorite argument is our "Cead Mile Failte" slogan, which is as much a delusion as when we believed we were an island of saints and scholars in the 1950s and 1960s when I was at school. The current ongoing daily revelations about the sainthood of some of our scholastics at that time is proof of our nation's delusion then; while some of that delusion remains today.
I am not a racist but a realist and I believe that unless the Government is courageous enough to restrict the intake of foreign nationals, except for genuine refugees from, say, autocratic dictatorial regimes, in years to come today's delusions will be tomorrow's nightmares.
I have witnessed a number of verbal racist attacks on people of different nationalities, mostly by inebriated indigenous idiots and I felt helpless, fearful and angry, and unable to do or say anything at the time. Decent people are always helpless before these thugs, and this is a breeding ground for apathy. These moronic cowards thrive on the fear they instil in others to compensate for their own fear. Our Government must take action now to prevent our baby racist problem growing into a costly and uncontrollable monster. We are not far away from such slogans as "Ireland for the Irish" or "Social Welfare for the Indigenous Irish only".
Our children will reap the fruits of the seeds we sow now, in our over-sympathetic delusions and pseudo-caring openness. Have we learned nothing as we awake from our deluded attitude to the drugs problem that "would never happen to us", but has now become unmanageable, or the corrupt politicians who were only in America and Italy?
The handle of the door should be on the inside so we can choose who we open it for. Ireland is just out of nappies and beginning to find her feet in a strange and fast-moving Europe. Let us not delude ourselves for another era, only to suffer the consequences of these delusions in time to come; as seems to be the history of the Irish psyche. It is only now that we are learning how to live with each other and we are unable to manage that on our own. What we sow now we will surely reap one day. - Yours, etc., Thomas J. Kinsella,
Old Bride Street, Dublin 8.