I know nothing about Ebi Ojoh, the Nigerian lady who wants to live here, though I do feel someone should really tell her that the weather which almost obliterated the rally to oppose her deportation for being an illegal immigrant, is not a departure from some benign and sunny norm. It is the norm. Yes, Ebi, believe it or not, we get cold, grey monsoons accompanied by typhoons the year round. Monphoons you might call them, and monphoons are what we're going to get for the rest of your time here, interrupted by half an hour's sunshine in July, and this we call summertime.
So, are you sure you want to stay here? Apparently the people of Tramore - well, 150 of them anyway - want you to stay. Which is nice. So too do members of the Anti-Racism Committee too, perhaps on the grounds that it is racist to deport illegal immigrants if they're African. Jimmy Kelly of the ATGWU seems to agree. "We're not going to allow people to be targeted because of the colour of their skin."
Interesting time
Is the implication of this the reverse of what he is saying: that illegal immigrants may only be expelled if they are white? Or is he saying that no illegal immigrants will ever be deported, and therefore we will have no immigration policy at all? If that is the case, we should be in for an interesting time of it. Has he, by the way, broken this news yet to his union members?
Now it is genuinely refreshing to see people campaign to allow Ebi remain in Ireland, suggesting that we are not quite as racist as some maintain. Since we have labour shortages, those people who have gone to the trouble of getting here should be given work visas and status as legal immigrants. But this doesn't mean we can have a permanent open door policy, as the US had in the last century: Offaly is not Iowa, Meath not Montana.
And having an immigration policy means this hard truth: there will always be nice, decent, honest illegal immigrants such as Ebi Ojoh looking to live in Ireland. Are we to accommodate them all? Africa is a big place, teeming with millions and millions of unhappy Africans. Are we to be moved by the sad stories they will unquestionably all have to tell? Are we to endlessly redefine the term "asylum seekers" on politically correct lines, until virtually the entire population from Good Hope to the Nile is entitled to come here? Or will we accept that there will always be people, whose plights will invariably be moving, whom we must nonetheless show the door?
Ebi Ojoh is looking for "asylum" here not because of oppressive government but because her tribe is being "oppressed" by other tribes. I have no idea what "oppress" means in such circumstances. No doubt any number of people in Northern Ireland can tell me. Does that mean all the disgruntled souls there who feel they are being oppressed either because they're not being allowed to march down the Garvaghy Road, or because they live on the Garvaghy Road, may present themselves at immigration in JFK demanding asylum from oppression?
Valid visas
To enforce the law is not racism, and all debate on the issue is contaminated beyond redemption by the illiberally liberal use of that term. Yet one has to ask: would the six Pakistanis held in Mountjoy Jail for three nights have been so treated if they were white Poles, Hungarians or Americans? They flew into Dublin Airport from Zurich, intending go to a factory in Tyrone. All their passports and their visas were valid for the Republic, issued by our consulate in Karachi, but only two had valid visas for the UK, to which Tyrone of course belongs.
Therefore is it right to throw them into jail, confiscating their passports, money and tickets, and to prepare to deport them all, including, by God, the two who arrived with completely valid documents for both parts of the island? Surely it was only their own honesty in declaring on arrival that they intended to travel to Tyrone which led to their arrest. Did they even know of the existence of a border between Dublin Airport and the fair town of Ballygawley, their business destination?
Punjab
Put it another way. Do the officials who took such liberties with the liberty of these businessmen know if we should have an Indian or a Pakistani visa if we wish to visit Punjab? For there are two Punjabs, one in India, one in Pakistan, just as there are two Irelands, one in the UK, called Northern Ireland, the other, which in part lies north of Northern Ireland and which accordingly is sometimes known as southern Ireland. It's very simple, no?
So how would we feel if a half dozen Irish businessmen with valid visas for Pakistan who, upon arriving in Lahore, were thrown into jail, because they frankly announced their intention of visiting Bathinda? For, you see, Bathinda is in Indian, not Pakistani, Punjab. Would such behaviour not have a reek of a police state about it?
But it is not a police state nor racist to enforce the rule of law. We are going to have to devise an immigration policy, and we will have to enforce it; and whereas I hope Ebi is allowed to stay, there will inevitably be another day when another Ebi, equally meritorious and equally oppressed by other tribes, must be told, very firmly, to go back where she came from.