It is not surprising that the gypsies trying to slip into Ireland carry Romanian passports. Around 40 per cent of the five million gypsies living in Eastern Europe come from Romania, where they are often treated as outcasts by the settled population. Job adverts, even in the liberal press, often point out that "no gypsy need apply". Human rights groups have documented numerous attacks against them which Romanian police have ignored, if not actually colluded in.
Scholars disagree on the origins of Eastern Europe's most contentious minority group, but the most commonly held view is that the ancestors of today's gypsies migrated from India in medieval times. They were enslaved until the 1830s in those parts of Romania which were then part of the Ottoman Empire. Unlike the Jews, they had no foreign protectors ready to defend their rights after Romania became independent in 1881.
Social hostility has contributed to low self-esteem and an inability to organise effectively for their own rights. Soaring rates of infant mortality, illiteracy, and unemployment have kept them at the margins of society. Their frequently nomadic existence and disdain for conventional politics means they lack a strong group identity. Unlike other minorities, demands for a gypsy homeland or for autonomy have been conspicuous by their absence.
The gypsies being smuggled into Ireland are more likely to be economic migrants than victims of political persecution. They will possibly belong to extended gypsy families who already have members in Ireland and who have reported that life is easier here than in central European countries like Germany, where they are quickly moved on or deported back to Romania.
Despite its image as a turbulent Balkan state, Romania is probably less intolerant to gypsies than states like Slovakia or the Czech Republic where the courts turn a blind eye to murderous attacks on them or where citizenship is even withheld. Bucharest is one of the few East European capitals free from skinheads, a group notorious for terrorising gypsies, along with non-white students and "guest-workers" in more affluent states.
The often confident air of gypsies in Romanian cities does not suggest a cowed social group. Under communism, many retained their mobility as the peasantry were collectivised and the old social system demolished. When most of the German community abandoned the Transylvanian villages where they had lived for hundreds of years, it was often gypsies who took their place, altering the social character of the locality.
Some gypsies retained an amazing knack to slip across tightly-patrolled frontiers undetected. With their black market skills, some profited from the shortages endemic in communist times. They would cause enormous resentment by refusing to wait in line in the food queues, which were a normal feature of life under communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Some gypsies became wealthy by using their trading skills in the economic jungle Romania became after the overthrow of Ceausescu in 1989 when capitalism began to replace the state-led economy. Successful entrepreneurs styled themselves "gypsy kings". Their ostentatious lifestyle (one was recently buried with his mobile phone and other accoutrements of modern living) provoke resentment.
Gypsies who can afford to cross Europe and pay huge sums - equivalent to almost the average yearly salary of a Romanian worker - to enter Ireland may well turn out to belong to the monied and mobile minority.
For the majority, however, life in Romania is grim. Gypsies often live in shacks on the edge of urban areas. Diseases like tuberculosis, which are reaching epidemic proportions in some parts of the country, are prevalent. Gypsies employed in declining unskilled industries are often the first to lose their jobs.
It is hardly surprising that economic crime is associated with the gypsies, theft being the most common. A community subject to prejudice, with a short life expectancy and massive socio-economic problems, is hardly likely to follow the rules of a society when it often seems to have comprehensively rejected them.
Gypsies have their own morality and codes of conduct to regulate their communities. They occupy a parallel world to that of the settled community. Some gypsies have integrated and distinguished themselves in areas of life which bestow social acceptability. But most remain suspicious of, and alienated from, conventional society. As the slow process of integrating parts of the former communist bloc into the European Union gets under way, Brussels is starting to see the need to launch programmes to bridge the chasm between gypsies and the rest of society. Initiatives to improve educational and health standards have been launched. Probably the most important step will be to encourage the emergence of leaders from within the gypsy community who can campaign for civil rights and an end to ingrained state hostility.
For a community which was enslaved in Romania as recently as 150 years ago, social emancipation will be a slow process. Building a tight cordon around countries like Romania will not make the problem of illegal immigrants disappear.
Instead, Western Europe, which during the Cold War enjoyed the fruits of the consumer society while the East knew dictatorship and scarcity, will need to involve itself much more actively in the problems of the region.
Tom Gallagher is professor of ethnic conflict and peace at Brad- ford University and author of Romania After Ceausescu, published by Edinburgh University Press.