Sir, - The Irish Times of June 7th had a report on page 4 head-lined: "All small children on one ship die of fever". The dateline on the story was June 7th, 1847, and the ship was the Looshtauk which had reached Quebec after a seven-week voyage with typhus and scarlet fever raging aboard.
A report from Stephen de Vere of Limerick on emigrants' conditions on board read in part: "Before the emigrant is a week at sea he is an altered man. How can it be otherwise? Hundreds of poor people, men, women and children, of all ages from the drivelling idiot of 90 to the babe just born; huddIed together, without light, without air, wallowing in filth, and breathing a fetid atmosphere, sick in body, dispirited in heart.
The article goes on to quote the Freeman's Journal as saying "The scene in New York is truly lamentable. The Irish are there, walking and begging in the streets, in as numerous groups as you will find them in Liverpool."
Across the page from this article is another; this time the dateline is Dublin 1997: "Refugee assaults gardai alter appeal fails." It describes a Romanian refugee whose appeal for asylum had been rejected, who "created such a scene at Dublin Airport - shouting, fighting and removing his clothes that an Aer Lingus pilot and crew refused to take him on board."
Instead, four gardai brought him on the ferry to Holyhead, from where, "with the co-operation of British and French customs and police he was then taken to Romania... The man, in his mid-40s, had been living in Tallaght for two years."
A Justice Department spokes-woman was quoted as saying: "We do have applications from those who are not genuine asylum-seekers, who are bogus applicants. Genuine applicants will be facilitated, but bogus applicants will be deported. Those who are not genuine will be returned to their native country."
I don't know anything about this man, his application, his occupation, his status or the reasons why he was deported. But I keep wondering what would happen to me if something happened in Ireland and the economy crashed so spectacularly that I had to leave or starve. I suppose I'd be an "economic refugee", a bogus applicant for asylum, without usable skills, in some country where I couldn't speak the language, and where I didn't know anyone who could give me a start. - Yours, etc.,
Harold's Cross,
Dublin 6.