Sir, - Two letters on immigration in your columns invite response. Gerry Loughrey (March 31st) talks of the 90 per cent or so refusal rate of asylum-seekers, as if it were a peculiarly Irish phenomenon. On the contrary, it is the norm. He talks of Irish people applying for visas to the USA in the 1980s. That is precisely the point: they asked permission to immigrate and did not use the asylum process to circumvent immigration law - the modern form of invasion. As for work permits for non-nationals, we are part of an EU labour market with 11.8 per cent unemployment. If that cannot fill the labour needs of a country which composes 1 per cent of the EU, it is very strange. As John O'Donoghue said in the Dail in March 1998, "No European country actively seeks migrant labour from outside the EU".
He urges us in his final paragraph to be "mature Europeans" and accept political and - note - economic refugees. If he looks at almost any country in Europe he will see the "mature Europeans" tearing their hair out in a desperate effort to find some way to cope with the unwanted influx.
Of Sean Crudden's letter (April 1st - or is that the point?) there is nothing to be said of his Trotskyist agenda other than that is so far off the political scale that it will find infinitesimal representation in this country. - Yours, etc.,
Aine Ni Chonaill, PRO, Immigration Control Platform, Dublin 2.