The North is facing a racism crisis it was claimed today as the rise in race crime was highlighted at a conference in Belfast.
The Anti Racism Network (ARN) conference has gathered together campaigners from across Northern Ireland for a three-day meeting.
They were not there to shout about what was wrong but to try to find solutions which could right the wrongs, said Barbara Muldoon of the ARN.
Barbara Muldoon, Anti-Racism Network
"We want this conference to be a call to people that this is a deadly serious crisis. It is one of the top five crises people in Northern Ireland are facing."
Latest figures from the Police Service of Northern Ireland show that racist incidents and crimes in Northern Ireland doubled between 2002/03 and the following year and nearly doubled again over the next 12 months.
In 2002/03 there were 226 racial incidents, the next year 453 and the next, 813.
Ms Muldoon said there were no quick solutions and no easy answers to tackling growing racism.
Attacks on homes and people came because there was a public perception refugees were flooding into the province, she said.
"I think a lot of this has been fuelled by the rhetoric we hear from politicians across the water - that everyone coming in are bogus scroungers. People who are here who are not white are assumed to be asylum seekers and that is just not right - last year there were about 100 asylum seekers," she added.
She said there was a huge debt to be paid to migrant workers for what they did - the NHS would grind to a halt without them.
But even then there were issues of unequal treatment over pay and treatment at work. "There are Philippine nurses who suffer racism at work and them go home and get attacked.
The conference is being addressed by representatives of minority ethnic communities, the Traveller movement, and trade unionists involved in campaigning for the rights of migrant workers.