Sir, – Politicians make immigration policy, not asylum seekers, and it is wholly wrong to blame the latter when those policies are failing – as they are manifestly failing at present. We should remember that those who come here to seek asylum are merely people who are attempting to improve their circumstances and will understandably take whatever opportunities are available to enable them to do so.
However, our politicians are charged with a different prerogative. It is to implement and enforce immigration policies that take into account our available resources, and capacity to expand same while giving due regard to both our moral and legal duties as a nation. Facile slogans like “Ireland is full”, or “Ireland isn’t full” are particularly unhelpful in this regard. “Fullness” or otherwise depends entirely on what criteria you choose, but when the Government is forced to impose demography-changing numbers of asylum seekers on small towns, and outbid scarce nursing home, student, and tourism provision to accommodate asylum seekers, it is inarguable that you have crossed the threshold of political capacity.
Government Ministers have tended to plead “international obligations” when challenged on immigration issues. However, they have signally failed to have regard to one of their most important international obligations – to put in place an asylum adjudication system that is capable of delivering final decisions on refugee status or entitlement to international protection within a reasonable time. Contrary to recent Government claims, the asylum adjudication process remains incapable of producing final unappealable decisions at a rate anywhere approaching the rate of new arrivals into the system.
This continuing under-resourcing and failure to reform the asylum adjudication process results in recurring backlogs of unfinalised asylum applications which governments have habitually dealt with by giving amnesties and “leave to remain” to asylum seekers who are still in the system after several years, irrespective of the credibility or merit of their applications. It doesn’t take a genius to see how such a policy makes Ireland so attractive to asylum seekers from safe countries, or how it might reward strategies to delay or obstruct the finalisation of claims – of which document destruction or concealment is only the most notorious. The “gatekeeper” procedure to winnow spurious judicial reviews has also proved insufficiently robust where the real object of the proceedings is delay, and the plaintiff is not a mark for costs. The failure to reform policies that make it perfectly feasible for failed asylum seekers to remain in the jurisdiction is also a scandal.
As previously stated, it is entirely wrong to visit blame for failing policies on immigrants who are only doing what Irish people might well do in similar circumstances. But the present situation is failing not just Irish people, but legal immigrants in general, including those genuinely in need of asylum or protection. – Yours, etc,
PETER MURRAY,
Carrigaline,
Co Cork.
Sir, – According to Anthony Layng, each of us has a duty to respect the “democratic laws” pertaining to migrants and those claiming asylum (Letters, January 20th).
I have voted diligently in elections and referendums for over 45 years. Never once in all that time has a politician, or one of their canvassers, stood at my door proclaiming that they support such unsustainable laws. Never once did any politician tell me that successive Irish governments, unlike for instance their Danish colleagues, would cast aside opt-out clauses relating to asylum seekers and migrants.
In a parliamentary democracy, you trust mainstream politicians to act in the best interests of citizens. Sadly, for me, that is no longer the case. – Yours, etc,
KARL MARTIN,
Bayside,
Dublin 13.
Sir, – Let me see if I understand this correctly. A quality hotel, central to the business and economic activities in Roscrea, was identified as an appropriate location to house asylum seekers. In the same town where there was a somewhat similar establishment that had ceased trading and was possibly in the round, a more suitable location to house asylum seekers.
The Government, however, decided to enter an agreement with the active hotel to close it and use it to house asylum seekers. And then offer to reopen the closed establishment as a “community hotel”. The really concerning aspect to this farrago is that it made sense to all in officialdom. And since when did the Government start running hotels? It’s not as if they are banks. – Yours, etc,
TOMÁS FINN,
Ballinasloe,
Co Galway.