Dealing With Immigration

Sir, - Zivko Jaksic (January 28th) seems to have created almost a clockwork view of history and the world

Sir, - Zivko Jaksic (January 28th) seems to have created almost a clockwork view of history and the world. In his universe people flow calmly from place to place as their labour power is in demand and this is perfectly acceptable if such demand exists.

While this may be the case for a few relatively well-off people, it is not and has never been the case for the majority of the world's population. The mass exodus during the Irish Famine was perfectly understandable in his terms, as he informs us: "again their labour was needed."

But emigration is hardly ever a measured and controlled response to a demand for labour. It is almost always caused by desperate economic or political conditions where people, much against their will, are torn from their birthplaces and scattered. Of the hundreds of thousands who left Ireland since the 1800s a huge proportion perished during or just after their voyages from starvation or disease. Theirs was not a choice built on the logic of America's demand for labour, but on absolute desperation.

He goes on to speak of the flow of asylum-seekers into Ireland as an "uncontrolled influx". While there has been a large increase over the past few years the fewer than 400 applications for asylum cannot be described as an uncontrolled influx. As for his idea of setting up detention camps, one would have hoped that sort of thinking would have gone out of fashion after the last World War (though the use of camps in recent conflicts seem to suggest this is far from the case).

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Let me propose another idea. At present asylum-seekers are legally barred from working or seeking further education in Ireland (leaving begging or social welfare as their only legal alternatives). At the same time (and bearing in mind Mr Jaksic's original argument about labour supply and demand) the computer industry in Ireland is crying out for language skills for localisation and telephone support centres. Surely granting asylum-seekers the right to work and seek further education while their cases are being processed would be to their advantage and that of the economy as a whole.

Finally, I think, we must ask questions of a world which allows total free movement of capital (£1,200 billion a day in foreign exchange transactions alone, as pointed out in your excellent feature on globalisation) and fairly free movement of goods, but insists on placing more and more restrictions on the free movement of its inhabitants. - Yours, etc.,

Conor McLoughlinKilliney, Co Dublin.