Sir, - May I make three points about the anti-immigrant argument which appear to have been missed in the storm of publicity that now surrounds this issue. Firstly, the so-called "refugee crisis" has been so exaggerated in recent months that it is distracting attention from the very high levels of often involuntary emigration that this country has experienced since the 1980s. As recently as 1996, the last year for which we have reliable figures, an estimated 32,800 people left this country. Most of these went to Britain. Many still occupy the traditional job ghettoes of Irish emigrants. Contrary to the views expressed by Aine Ni Chonnaill, emigration on this scale is having a far greater impact on the social fabric of rural and urban Ireland than asylum seekers or foreign residents will ever have.
Secondly, the fact that Ireland has finally become a minor host society for asylum seekers as well as for foreign residents should not be used to explain demographic imbalance or cultural disintegration in rural Ireland. Large-scale emigration, not immigration, is still the real villain here. Likewise, returning Irish emigrants still constitute the largest single group of immigrants to this country. Indeed, they appear to have outnumbered asylum seekers or refugees by approximately five to one in recent years. Moreover "foreign immigration" on the scale that we have recently been experiencing has not had any significant effect on the high levels of emigration that we have been witnessing since the 1980s. Indeed, the two phenomena bear very little relation to each other.
Thirdly, publicity for anit-immigrant activists like Ms Ni Chonnaill is in danger of recreating in Ireland the racism and politics of exclusion which are so evident elsewhere in Europe. Responsible journalists and others in the media must not allow this to happen.
One final remark. Refugees and asylum seekers are clearly being constructed as "aliens" and "spongers" by anti-immigrant activists today. Is it only a matter of time before Ms Ni Chonnaill's version of rural fundamentalism extends to others in the Irish underclass to brand these also as "dangerous", "dirty" and therefore "dispensable" people? Certainly the urban poor, the ghettoised unemployed, and the victims of drug culture are currently being portrayed as our new "criminal classes". Like the asylum seekers who are vilified by Ms Ni Chonnaill, they too are constantly being constructed as threats to the fabric of Irish society. - Yours, etc.,
Geography Department, University College, Cork.