Sir, - Aine Ni Chonaill is at it again (April 12th). Someone who is so clearly motivated by xenophobic sentiment would not normally be taken seriously. These are not normal times and the rise in racist sentiment in Ireland, accompanied by an unfortunate vacuum in Government policy, suggest to me that propaganda and half-truth need to be nailed whenever and wherever they are uttered.
Ms Ni Chonaill claims that Irish people applying for US visas in the 1980s "asked permission to immigrate" and that this therefore distinguishes them from those who purportedly use the asylum process here to circumvent immigration law. She is simply wrong. Irish "illegals" in the US in the 1980s were just that - illegal. Not only were they in contravention of American law, they were the very type of migrant - "economic" migrants - which it has become fashionable here to distinguish from "genuine" migrants fleeing famine, war or persecution. Some undoubtedly left by choice, but others felt rejected by a country and society that could not offer them work and a future. Irrespective of their motives and of their illegal status, the Irish Government actively lobbied the US Government on their behalf.
Migration arises primarily from intolerable inequities, economic or otherwise, in global society. What was sauce for the Irish wild geese in the 1980s is surely sauce for the immigrant and refugee ganders here today. It was famously said at the time that "after all, we can't all live on a small island". One can, paraphrasing Donne, turn this phrase on its head, in saying that it is simply not possible, or desirable, for this small island to put up walls against the rest of the world, stopping people at our frontiers. Contrary to what Ms Ni Chonaill claims, other European countries, while they are clearly concerned to try to deal with immigration in an orderly way, have already made a commitment to accepting refugees and immigrants on a scale which is exponentially greater than that which we have been willing to entertain.
We should not just accept immigrants because we are wealthy and owe a duty of care to those less well off, although we do. We should accept them because we need them and because a multicultural Ireland will be a more vibrant and interesting place in which we have far more to gain than lose. There is no reason, however, why it should be a chaotic process in which a policy vacuum simply pits the disadvantaged outsider against the disadvantaged insider. There is much to learn from other countries and a failure of imagination and politics on this scale would be inexcusable.
Finally, it may well be true that the "Trotskyist" agenda of another correspondent attacked by Ms Ni Chonaill may be "so far off the political scale that it will find infinitesimal representation in this country". She should certainly know, as this would be a reasonably accurate description of her own performance when she last presented herself to the electorate here in Cork. - Yours, etc., Piaras Mac Einri, Director, Irish Centre for Migration Studies,
National University of Ireland, Cork.