Sir, - In your series on "Human Trafficking" (The Irish Times, March 10th-17th) two theses stood out, as they have in much recent debate on the issue.
Thesis 1: "The traffickers are perpetrators; the trafficked are victims." Not so. Illegal immigration is the modern form of invasion. The trafficked determinedly enter countries against the will of those countries. That is invasion. They simply use the facilities provided by the traffickers. They are perpetrators equally with the traffickers and we in the west are their victims.
Thesis 2: "If the West would just loosen up on legal immigration then the problem would largely be solved. They would come in the open `front door' and not break in the back door." Nonsense. The West, if it needs immigrants, will actively seek them; witness the Harney visas and the current moves to frame an active immigration policy for Ireland.
This will in no way diminish the efforts at illegal entry. Do you really think that if, for example, 1,000 Nigerians a year entered Ireland as part of such an immigration policy, the rest of the 120 million Nigerians would say, "Tough luck, we were not successful. We'll have to stay here?" Of course not. Not to mention that the more that are here the more will be enabled to follow.
Paul Gillespie (World View, March 17th) refers to the "Janus-faced attitude" of Europe to immigration as if that attitude were hypocritical, confused or contradictory. He refers to "the division between justice ministries which concentrate on security and criminal issues of migration and economic and foreign ministries more concerned with economic growth". There is no contradiction here. It can be summed up as the perfectly sensible proposition: "Legal immigration, yes (if we need, to the degree we need and of the type we need); illegal immigration, no." There is no contradiction there.
Finally, the employment of illegals is absolutely crucial to this problem. Mary Harney has promised that penalties for such employers will be forthcoming in the new Work Permits Bill. These penalties should be extremely severe, possibly including debarment for a period of years from public contracts and, of course, well-resourced implementation. - Yours, etc.,
Aine NI Chonaill, PRO, Immigration Control Platform, PO Box 6469, Dublin 2.