Our future as a society will rest upon our ability to ensure that the people who are most affected by immigration can manage the change, the Ictu secretary general said yesterday. Speaking at a conference to mark Anti-Racist Workplace Week, David Begg said immigration was vital to society and inevitable.
"But we also have to accept that its costs and benefits are very unevenly spread and that we don't do enough to ensure that the people who are most affected by it, either as immigrants or as hosts, can manage the change being forced upon them," he said.
Minister for Justice Michael McDowell, opening the conference in Dublin, said legislative change could only go so far and that it was people who could embrace diversity.