Asylum-seekers can help to tackle racism by integrating with their local community, a public forum in Killarney, Co Kerry, was told. Asylum-seekers and migrant workers should accept the many open invitations to join local sports and church groups. Anne Lucey, in Killarney, reports.
The forum was organised by the Killarney Asylum-Seekers Initiative, which was set up about four years ago. Up to 90 locals and immigrants attended the meeting which was addressed by a number of speakers including Mr Peter O'Mahony, chief executive of the Irish Refugee Council.
The fear of being called a racist had stifled conversation and debate about immigrants among locals, the forum heard. It was natural for Irish people to ask "where are you from?". However, this could be taken as an insult by some African immigrants.
However, one Nigerian immigrant criticised the reticence of asylum-seekers. If other Nigerians had made themselves known to him, it would have helped him, he said.
Smaller communities worked better for immigrants, said one woman whose children had settled into school and were very happy in Killarney.
"We have to reach out too. We have to start a conversation. We don't have to wait. I have friends in Dublin. They don't have things like this \. Because it's a smaller community everybody knows who everybody is."
Her children's teachers did not look at skin colour but at the level of achievement.
"There's a lot of goodwill," she said.
Ms Marjorie Long, who was not from Killarney but had retired there, said anyone moving into a new town had to be "a joiner".
Killarney, a town accustomed to tourists, was an ideal place for immigrants, but they had to go out and take part in things, she said.
Mr O'Mahony said the racist stereotype that all black people were asylum-seekers, as well as misinformation about State aid, had to be challenged.
One speaker said attendance at Mass did not guarantee the making of friends. It was only when he approached a priest and was asked to read at Mass, did he make a breakthrough. Churches needed to organise special days for immigrants, he said.
Several speakers said the referendum on citizenship in June had led to greater racism. One immigrant said she had had it easy "until June".
Canon Brian Lougheed, a retired Church of Ireland minister in Killarney, said all "the old hatreds" between Catholic and Protestant, the suspicions that still existed in the North between those communities, were being transferred to immigrants.
"We are just transferring all the old hatreds, we just have someone new to take it on," he said.