Common sense tells us that when resources are limited, there must be boundaries set of some kind, writes Kathy Sheridan.
I once interviewed a group of newly arrived asylum-seekers whose demeanour was a tad shifty. They waved miraculous medals around to suggest religious persecution, enraged the interpreter (a recently-arrived compatriot) by switching dialects when questions didn't suit them and gave a damn good impression of lying through their teeth.
They had neither the aura of refugees who had barely escaped with their lives nor of people determined to work all hours to scrape an honest living. I didn't like the way their children kept rubbing up against my bag. I didn't like them, full stop.
Afterwards, I examined my conscience. (Journalists actually do this from time to time). I had travelled to the interview predisposed to a sorry tale of political oppression or savage poverty. Was this response of mine some well-tuned intuition or was I a raving racist? Had I missed something important in their story? Who was I to judge the peculiar needs that drive other human beings?
Since then, I've interviewed deeply traumatised asylum-seekers both here and abroad. I know "illegals" here whose honesty and diligence would put us to shame. But a few incidents with the shifty ones were enough to shake my certainties.
Now when commentators call up the special pleading for our own illegal huddled masses in the US as justification for an "open door" policy at home, I hesitate. As a moral case, it seems unanswerable. Yet, common sense tells us that when resources are limited, there must be boundaries of some kind: the boundary between traumatised asylum-seeker and economic migrant; between the economic migrant with a pre-arranged work permit and the one without; between the "illegal" who has managed to carve out a hard, honest living over say, four years, and the one who has just landed in Dublin from the UK, ready to deliver in Holles Street but . . .
The question is, where do we stand on those boundaries, honestly? Who should set them? How tough should the investigation process be? Who - if anyone - monitors the adjudicators?
In Britain, 42 per cent of asylum-seekers who arrived last year were recognised as genuinely fleeing persecution and given leave to stay (which must be a jaw-dropper for the "they're-all-bogus" brigade). In Ireland, by contrast, the figure is 10 to 20 per cent, according to our new Minister for Justice. Are the British really such gullible morons? Or do we simply attract twice as many chancers? Or is something else going on? Why, when Irish employers are desperate to recruit non-EU labour - work permit applications doubled to 36,500 last year - can it take up to three months to have such applications processed? At this rate, shouldn't we be kissing the feet of the 10,000 "illegals" reckoned to be shoring up the economy around the country?
Oh definitely, we nod sagely, until that tentative voice pipes up - remember the boundaries? Are we confused or what? How are we supposed to inform ourselves, silence the racists and rebut their disinformation, make mature, non-woolly judgments about family separation and deportations, dawn round-ups, if we are not properly informed and prepared?
Where is the promised serious, national, accessible, public education programme?
And which of the many well-meaning commentators so quick to resort to the "racist" word, is prepared to come up with sane, workable proposals that accord proportionate respect to the concerns of equally well-meaning citizens?
The Daily Telegraph columnist, Dr Theodore Dalrymple, put forward a proposal on Tuesday. Under this, all migrants who manage to evade the immigration entry system would be left alone. In return, they must expect no help whatever from public sources (no health, social security or housing benefits under any circumstances, no minimum wage entitlement) and must make their own way economically. The pay-off would be that after three or five years of successfully negotiating life in this fashion, they would be entitled to full citizenship.
Its "survival of the fittest" ethos will be repellent to many, but it has its attractions. It would expose the local, dyed-in-the-wool xenophobes and racists (who could no longer hide behind the "milking the taxpayer" camouflage); would offer hope to those fleeing suffering of personal or cultural rather than political origin; and would attract only enterprising people who, because of their need to engage in the local economy, would be automatically integrated into society, where "many of them would become hugely successful".
In the meantime it would offer up, inter alia, a ready-trussed cohort of vulnerable workers, ripe for abuse and exploitation.
As proposals go, it stinks. But for some, it might look more humane than being trapped in the back end of nowhere, forbidden to work and being handed €19 pocket money to amuse yourself until the hammer falls.
