A new report calls for changes that would help immigrants become equal members of society. Anne Dempsey hears two of the stories the report is based on

In Moldova you grow up fast. By the age of 20, Vanya Don was married to Valya (18) and two years into an engineering degree. Then his mother became ill and he left college to earn money for her medical bills.

"When I started university, the economy was better, but later I knew there would be no jobs in engineering, so why waste five years when the family needed me?" he says.

He found work in building, security, and door-to-door selling, earning the equivalent of €1 on a good day.

Moldova's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 had led to economic freefall and currency devaluation.

"It was as if £1,000 was suddenly worth €1," says Don. "We used to live well, but now the money saved perhaps to buy a car would buy only two or three breads."

The young couple decided their hope of a future lay abroad. Valya's sister, who had migrated to Ireland, facilitated a work permit, and Don, without a word of English, arrived in 2001 at a Co Kildare dairy farm, leaving his wife and one-year-old daughter Aida behind until they could legally join him.

Vanya Don is one of 22 people interviewed in Voices of Immigrants: The Challenges of Inclusion, a report launched yesterday by the Immigration Council of Ireland. These legal migrants from eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East discuss their reasons for coming here and their experiences of life and work in Ireland. While the personal stories tell of both kindness and cruelty, the underlying theme is that Ireland's immigration policy since 1996 is market-driven, importing people to do those jobs we no longer want to do but with relatively little concern for their human needs and rights. With State agencies promoting Ireland as a work destination abroad, there are now approximately 160 different nationalities living in Ireland. According to the 2002 census, 6 per cent of the population here is non-Irish, including 23,105 from Europe, 21,779 Asians, 20,981 Africans and 11,384 from the US.

The report covers settling here, ethnic diversity, accommodation, work, language, education, prejudice, racism and poverty. For Don, now aged 25, and his peers, desperation makes them fair game.

"I had no idea of Ireland, but I had to try it, there was no other choice," he says. "My first employer was very good, he helped me learn English. I lived on the farm, had my food and €150 a week. I don't drink, I didn't smoke then, and I was able to send €100 home each week, sometimes more. I paid for my parents to have a phone put in so I could keep in touch with them. They were able to buy more goods and medicines for my mother."

When Valya and Aida arrived in Ireland in 2002 the small family set up in a flat in Mountjoy Square, Dublin. Then, last year, the dairy job folded.

"He gave me three months' notice that he was getting out of cows, so I could look round," Don says. "My sister-in-law heard of a stud farm [in Sallins, Co Kildare] looking for someone. This new employer was very kind. Our flat had been broken into and everything stolen. She let us stay in her house while we found somewhere to live."

His current Irish home is a pleasant, impeccably tidy three-room flat in Dún Laoghaire. He's alone again at the moment as Aida contracted asthma in Ireland and went home to get well in sunnier Moldova. Wife and child return next week, but for the moment the photographs on the mantelpiece have to fill the gap.

"I have been in the stud farm for two years," says Don. "I groom and feed and exercise the horses and I love that. I earn enough to live good, pay the rent and help my family back home. Now I'm sending money to my brothers. My eldest brother has three big children for university. Every two months, I send €100; they never ask, but I know how hard it is for them."

Don's positive employment experience here is down to luck, not legislation. Work permits are held by employers, thus depriving employees of the right to move should they wish to do so.

"There are many bad employers," says Don. "One friend works seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 8 or 9 p.m. in bad conditions for €350-€380 per week, and he cannot leave. One change we need is for the workers themselves to have their permit."

Secondly, the yearly renewal of the permit on an employer's recommendation leaves workers extremely vulnerable. "My permit comes for renewal next month. I am getting very nervous. It is something you think about all the time, it is never out of your mind and you feel very insecure."

If things go well, Don plans to enrol Aida in a nearby Montessori school. Paying the fees will stretch him to his limit, but he feels she needs smaller classes to learn English and to adjust to life here.

Finances would be less of a pinch if Valya were allowed work, but her application for a work permit has been rejected. Still on a holiday visa, she cannot legally work, and the couple won't consider the illegal route.

"It would not be worth her getting €5 or €6 an hour in a restaurant," Don says. "If it was found out, we would all be deported. I could not risk that."

In 2006 Vanya can apply for Irish citizenship and, if successful, can begin to put down roots and consider resuming his engineering studies.

"My dream is to give my daughter an education," he says. "You very easily learn the easy things and it is hard to go back to the bad things. In Ireland you are accepted and allowed do better. In Moldova there is jealousy of the rich - if you have a car, someone will break the windows. But in Ireland too, there is fear of people like me. My first employer told me how his six brothers went to America and sent money home, so this is something the Irish people know. But now they seem to be afraid we are taking their jobs. I would love to stay in Ireland, but it would be good to feel free and secure here, and not to be worried all the time."

Yesterday's report calls for the establishment of a ministry of state for immigration and ethnic affairs in the Department of the Taoiseach. It also states that a national forum on immigration would facilitate a public debate on the development of an agreed immigration policy, which would examine the role and contribution of immigrants as potentially permanent and equal members of our society.

• Voices of Immigrants: The Challenges of Inclusion, a Social Innovation Ireland initiative, is published by the Immigrant Council of Ireland, 2 St Andrew Street, Dublin 2 (tel: 01-6740200; e-mail: info@immigrantcouncil.ie; website: www.immigrantcouncil.ie)