Migration figures show Irish emigrants are opting for Australia and Canada over the US and Britain, writes JAMIE SMYTH
THE CENTRAL Statistics Office (CSO) migration estimates published in September showed, for the first time in 15 years, more people leaving Ireland than moving here as a result of rising unemployment.
But one question the statistics did not answer was: where did the estimated 18,400 Irish people who emigrated in the year to the end of April 2009 go to pursue job opportunities and a new life?
The figures on this page, which were compiled by The Irish Times from Australian, Canadian, British, US and New Zealand national statistics, show a significant rise in emigration to Australia and Canada over the past year. In the year to the end of June 2009 some 2,501 Irish nationals were granted Australian residence visas, up from 1,989 a year earlier.
The number of Canadian residence visas issued to Irish nationals is also on course to reach the 3,000 mark in 2009 if the trend seen during the first six months of this year continues.
Canada’s ambassador to Ireland Patrick Binns says the economic recovery in Canada earlier this year may be luring emigrants from Ireland. Ottawa’s economy returned to growth in the third quarter of 2009 and its jobless rate at just over 8.5 per cent is well below the current Irish rate of 12.4 per cent.
This is also true for Australia, where the economy continued expanding during 2009 and unemployment is at 5.7 per cent.
With 423,000 people currently out of work in the Republic the search for jobs in English- speaking countries has clearly gone global. But two well-trodden paths used by previous generations of emigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries – Britain and the US – are not yet experiencing a major rise in new Irish arrivals.
The number of immigrant visas issued by the US’s Dublin office has fallen over the past four years. In the year to the end of September 2009 it issued just 287 visas, a far cry from the early 1990s when, for example, 18,000 visas were issued in 1994. The number of new Irish arrivals to Britain increased by about 4 per cent in the first six months of 2009 but is well short of the double digit increases in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The poor state of the American and British economies, where unemployment rates are 10 per cent and 8 per cent respectively, makes them less attractive for migrant workers.
The London Irish Centre, an Irish community organisation based in Camden, London, says it is repatriating up to five Irish people a week who arrive in the city hoping to get jobs but quickly run out of money and find themselves destitute. It advises all Irish people considering making the move to find work in Britain to plan their trip before they set off as jobs remain scarce.
The difficulty of obtaining a work visa is clearly a deterrent for people who may otherwise consider moving to the US. But the depressed US economy is probably also a factor in the very low numbers of people taking up a new 12-month working visa for recent graduates and students, which was launched by the Government in September 2008.
The J visa scheme attracted just 231 applications up to the end of September 2009. Some 137 applications have so far been processed successfully by Usit this year.
But Usit is reporting huge interest in other working holiday visa and volunteer programmes, which are typically targeted at young people. This is hardly surprising given that young people have been hit harder than other age groups in the recession.
More than 80,000 people under 25 years of age are currently out of work and with jobs scarce at home it seems many are taking the opportunity to spend a year abroad in Australia, Canada or New Zealand.
It will take time for the true pattern of emigration to emerge from the current recession. Most of the statistics compiled above only cover the period up to the end of June 2009. They do not give an insight into the number of Irish people working illegally abroad nor do they cover a host of other potential destinations for Irish emigrants moving to the EU and to Asia.
But if the Irish economy does not rebound in the next few years and create job opportunities for the next generation of graduates and school-leavers it seems very likely that a year spent working abroad will lead to longer term and more permanent emigration.