Madam, - The imposition of a €100 levy on non-EU immigrants for identity cards is insensitive and lacking in understanding.
Immigrants pay taxes like everybody else.
Why impose an extra burden on people to whom €100 means keeping a fire in the hearth at home, food on the table and clothes on children going to school?
Have we forgotten that it was this kind of money sent back in remittances to Ireland by our own emigrants that kept home fires burning in Ireland for more than a century and half?
Making comparisons with other EU member-states, particularly former colonists, is odious in the extreme. Remember, upon slave emancipation these nations indemnified the slave owners. The descendants of the slaves are still waiting for their reparation.
In Ireland we seem not only to have lost our memory; worse still, we have lost our collective heart.- Yours, etc,
BOBBY GILMORE,
Chairperson,
Migrant Rights Centre,
Dublin 1.