Sir, - I note with interest the recent decision by the United States to offer work visas to young people from the North and the Border counties. It is the latest chapter in a long history of pro-immigration legislation in the US which has favoured certain countries with sound educational infrastructure, such as Ireland. Given also that the skills shortage currently afflicting Silicon Valley in California is only being rectified by immigration from outside the United States, might Irish politicians not realise that there is a connection between the two?
America needs educated workers just as it needs public relations coups on the Northern peace process. We should learn from this. We too suffer from a growing skills shortage in the high-technology sector. Yet outside the EU a great many highly qualified computer engineers are being trained in countries such as India and China who would jump at the chance to get some EU work opportunities, unlike much of the overpaid European workforce, for example.
Why does the Irish Government not offer a lottery of visas to appropriately educated citizens of non-EU countries? In doing so, not only would Irish and Irish-based US companies get the staff they need, but Ireland would gain valuable connections to non-EU markets and would enhance the skills and language pool in the Irish workforce. Furthermore, the Government might also begin to realise that immigration can be the life-blood of economic expansion, rather than the ruination of it.
Our Irish economic miracle is entering university textbooks all over the world as an example of how a country can take on the principles of global business and prosper. Yet we could quite easily end up as an example of what not to do - a footnote example of how to needlessly blow a good thing after expending 95 per cent of the effort needed to consolidate it.
We need to bring workers to Ireland. If we don't, commerce will go to where it can find the workers. And one thing is certain about the welcome these companies will receive if they do begin to move: they won't be deported or told that their spouses cannot join them for fear that they produce lots more little companies. Quite the reverse, in fact. - Is mise, Conor Meade,
Phibsboro, Dublin 7