Sir, - Of course we should admit refugees (apparently one quarter of present immigrants) and allow them to earn their living. Of course we should invite decent people to come here and take the jobs offered. That, like Irish emigration of the past, serves mutual advantage.
It is plain stupid that all uninvited immigrants are forced to become a charge on the taxpayer because we refuse them permission to work. It takes years of dithering for the understaffed bureaucracy to decide each case and the backlog grows. If, eventually, an immigrant is judged unsuitable, we are so inhibited by scruples and legal tangles that only a few individuals have been deported. This has caused maximum hurt to all concerned, building up resentment both in the Irish citizens and the foreigners. Both are becoming "racist" as a result of government incompetence.
We have a moral duty to help those in poverty at home or abroad. Ireland's few thousand immigrants can make little impact on world poverty. The starving, the sick, the uneducated cannot pay the cost of travel to Ireland. A glance at the Trocaire box shows how many hundred thousand could have been helped by the £55 million spent on immigrant accommodation in Ireland last year. - Yours, etc.,
Louis Smith, The Elms, Donnybrook, Dublin 4.