Go to the heart of the matter. Why do so many people claim refugee status to live in Ireland? Two reasons. The first is that they want to enjoy some of our prosperity, which will continue regardless of whatever economic slow-downs await us. The second is that refugee status by the terms of the Geneva Convention makes it legally obligatory for us to give them sanctuary, writes Kevin Myers
And why wouldn't people claim refugee status if the acceptance of that status meant a safe home amid plenty, with the apparatus of a large welfare state to fall back on if times get rough? People are prepared to cross oceans in open boats, to trek across Siberia, to hide in the wheel-hubs of jet airliners, to endure the privations and humiliations of vast transit camps to improve their lot; why wouldn't they use the clauses of the Geneva Convention to do the same, regardless of the truth? Compared with the far greater sacrifices people are prepared to make, a bit of factual inventiveness is neither here nor there.
The real issue
That's the issue which we have been talking about in all our discussions about "asylum-seekers": whether or not they are bona fide refugees, and whether or not they're entitled to protection under Geneva. And at this point we should finally declare: this is all bilge. The real issue isn't whether or not people qualify according to Geneva, but Geneva itself. It's an obsolete irrelevance.
The convention dates from 1951, six years after the end of the second World War, the expulsion of millions of ethnic Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia, and the establishment of communist regimes in every country on the Asian landmass from Vladivostock to half-way across Germany. The world was an entirely different place from the one we know today. Much of Europe lay in ruins, and a new category of human being, "DPs" (displaced persons), filled camps almost everywhere.
Geneva determined that "no contracting state shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion". That is the legal laissez-passer which was devised to give protection to refugees 50 years ago. But those who put the Geneva mechanisms together were aware of the consequences of such a provision, if it were made open-ended; which is why the draftsmen who concocted it limited the protection it conferred to people displaced "before January 1, 1951."
It was the New York Protocol of 1967 which chose to end the time-limitation of the original Convention. Not merely did it do that, but it also created a charter for imaginative liars, into which species necessity turned very large numbers of economic migrants. But far worse than such mendacity being generated on an industrial scale, New York created a legal instrument whose consequences were simply not manageable.
Adherence to the letter of the law of the Geneva Convention obliges us to give refuge to everyone who makes it to these shores and who can "prove" that if they returned home they would face oppression. There is hardly a country in all of Africa where this is not the case. It is true also for the entire population of Iraq, many groups in Iran, and numerous millions - Muslims, Tibetans, sect members - in China.
An open door
Is the only demand that we make of illegal immigrants from those countries that they get here, so that once they have arrived here, because they come from generically oppressive countries, they may stay? And may those who have made it not in all decency be allowed to bring their families with them too? And might those family members not marry whom they wish from their own country? Wave your wand and intone two words: open sesame.
Immigration policy is not a policy at all in such circumstances, but an open door, passage through which is dependent on art and guile. Now these are not bad qualities to look for from immigrants, if this was the intention; but it is not. It is one of the accidental by-products of observing an obsolete law which was devised for sorting out millions of people shuffling backwards and forwards across Europe's borders. For the most part, they didn't want to go far.
Immigration quotas
That world is now vanished. We know that, for at least a generation to come, tens of millions of Africans will want to flee famine and oppression, which have become indistinguishable across much of the continent. Honest application of the law is no longer possible, so we should simply jettison it. We should unilaterally withdraw from the Geneva Convention, and replace it with immigration quotas and discretionary powers for the Minister for Justice to give political asylum to refugees. Elected politicians - not the courts - would then become the arbiters of policy.
This would not merely create controls where there are none, it would also eliminate the stigma of falsehood that has attached to immigrants generally because so many - very sensibly - opted for the asylum-seeker strategy, simply because it was the only way to remain in Ireland.
The present institutionalised, court-enforced humbug will continue so long as we are signatories to Geneva. Departure from its codicils would be not be a measure of our inhumanity, but a mark of our maturity. It wouldn't mean that we don't give asylum, merely that we recognise reality, and that there are limitations to what we can do for the world. That takes just a bit of courage, that's all.