Will Ireland steer its own path on immigration, or again fall in behind Britain, asks Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, Migration Correspondent
The immigration debate rose to a new pitch this week. No sooner had a government minister apologised for miscounting - and thereby underestimating - the numbers of migrant workers who had recently arrived in the country than the leader of the opposition entered the fray with his first major speech on the topic, promising to set an annual cap on immigrant numbers.
With that, the government unfurled its own riposte, first by renewing a ban on certain EU workers and then confirming that it was about to introduce a points system for non-EU migrants who want work in sectors of the economy hit by labour shortages.For better or worse, it set off a lively debate in the press and on the airwaves, and a country that has seen rapid immigration in the past decade looked at least to be engaging with its ramifications.
Of course, that debate took place in London, not Dublin. But while the controversies that exercised the British this week did not carry westwards, their implications might. The British government's decision to maintain its ban on Romanians and Bulgarians working in the UK may well mean Ireland will follow suit and renew the "transitional arrangement" it put in place to restrict workers from the two eastern European states when they joined the EU last January.
The Government does not have to make a decision until late next year, but, because of the common travel area that Ireland shares with the UK and its declared desire to focus on integrating those who are already here, it is unlikely to steer an independent course.
Heidi Lougheed of the employers' group Ibec is not convinced that the common travel area precludes divergent policies; after all, Ireland and the UK already have different rules on asylum and work permits, so there's no reason why the Government can't steer its own course. "In my personal opinion, having watched immigration and how it works, I do think it would be physically possible if they really wanted to. It would be difficult, but it would be physically possible."
While Ibec will wait until next year to make its judgment on whether to support a renewal of the restrictions, Lougheed points out that border control is in one sense irrelevant, because although Romanians and Bulgarians are restricted from working in many EU countries, they are already free to travel to any member state without a visa.
THIS TIME LAST year there was wide agreement with the Government's decision to delay a further opening of the labour market. The main Opposition parties, Ibec, Ictu and the ESRI all endorsed the decision. Ictu, which supported the ban on the basis that there were insufficient employment laws in place, says the situation hasn't changed and it doesn't see any reason to revisit its judgment yet.
Fine Gael's spokesman on immigration and integration, Denis Naughten, thinks Ireland is "backed into a corner" not only because of the common travel area but also because of policy incoherence across the EU. In 2004, Ireland was one of only three member states to open the labour market to workers from the 10 accession states, and this meant that the Republic, along with the UK and Sweden, absorbed disproportionate numbers of migrants very quickly, he says.
"The difficulty with only part of the EU allowing people from the accession countries in is that you get an over-concentration in one country over another. This issue really has to be addressed on a European level rather than a national level," Naughten adds.
In general, governments have relatively little control over migration flows in this era of globalisation, but for EU governments the withholding of working rights to most Romanians and Bulgarians (people from both countries are still entitled to apply for a work permit) is one of the few chances they have to intervene, or to advertise nativist credentials to a jittery public.
Another is the work permit system itself, the second plank of British prime minister Gordon Brown's attempt to neutralise the issue this week. The British government had actually announced early last year that it was moving to an Australian-style points system. It will come into effect in the new year, with the aim of only allowing entry to those whose skills will benefit the UK.
Here, officials in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment believe that if the economy slows, it may come under pressure to reduce the number of work permits it issues (133,848 new ones have been granted over the past 10 years). Is it possible that Ireland could again follow its neighbour's lead? Lougheed thinks not, noting that it was only last January that the Government opted against a points system - which would allow individuals to enter the country and take up any job they wanted - in favour of a "green card" system that is aimed at filling specific vacancies.
Denis Naughten says he is "open-minded" about a points-type system, but says the current one is too opaque. "It's as clear as dirty water as to what are the rules, regulations and conditions. The whole thing is double Dutch. There's no clear policy whatsoever in this country." This leads to "huge frustration" for migrants who want to come to Ireland, encourages illegal migration and causes "resentment" among the indigenous Irish population, he argues.
There was some novelty about this week's public focus on migration in the UK, which has a relatively long experience as a receiving state, but where the issue has figured only intermittently on the political agenda. In this respect, too, Ireland has followed.
Why so? One interpretation is that in Ireland we don't find the same resentment of immigrants that has propelled it to public consciousness elsewhere. And although there is little evidence of widespread negative attitudes, according to Dr Bryan Fanning of UCD, the anxieties that exist have been handled quite well by the mainstream political parties.
That may partly explain why groups such as the Immigration Control Platform have never gained much support. Dr Fanning suggests that the 2004 citizenship referendum, though he opposed its removal of the automatic right to Irish citizenship of those born in Ireland, "took a lot of the heat out of the politics of resentment".
ANOTHER POSSIBILITY IS that public figures resist broaching the subject for fear of what they might unleash. While the public conversation has evolved since the 2002 election, when Fianna Fáil TD for Cork North Central Noel O'Flynn complained loudly about "asylum-seeker spongers", migration was barely raised during this year's election campaign.
"It's happening in the UK as well, but nowadays migration has become some sort of a taboo issue. Nobody wants to talk about it, by and large," says Fidèle Mutwarasibo of the Immigrant Council. He says parties discuss it internally, and certainly the government has a discernible policy line, but there is a "consensus about saying nothing".
The danger is that the vacuum allows myth and prejudice to take hold, and these are easier to propagate than to dispel.
"Political parties don't want to be accused of racism, so what is happening now is people won't talk. Instead of coming up with rational debate, you get the government simply introducing policies like they're introducing in the UK. Then the other parties more or less follow suit."
Perhaps, being among the most monocultural groups in society, political parties lack the confidence to talk meaningfully about migration. Also, says Mutwarasibo, because so few migrants can vote in general elections, parties see little need to speak to their concerns.
"In 10 years' time I'm sure we'll have a debate."