Madam, - In his column of April 15th Dr Garret FitzGerald writes: "I believe that this census will confirm that because 30 per cent of those registering for work do not actually work, and because something approaching half of these migrants return to their own countries within 12 months, the scale of non-national employment is much smaller than most people imagine.
"Yet until this is confirmed by a census, fears of being 'swamped' by foreign workers will persist".
I disagree with Dr FitzGerald's analysis of the labour market and his repeated assurances that a high proportion of immigrants may have created new jobs for themselves, rather than replacing upward-moving Irish workers.
The present Government's policy has long been to encourage competition in this small, badly regulated labour market by a hands-off approach to unrestricted immigration of low-wage labour from all parts of the globe. This has forced Irish workers, from tradesman levels downwards, into a "Devil take the hindmost" scramble with low-paid foreign nationals for increasingly low-paid jobs. Indeed history is littered with examples of the dislocating nature of immigration.
In your edition of April 8th the Taoiseach is quoted as saying that local politicians found it "hard to explain that there were unemployed carpenters and builders in their towns when there were huge building sites going on and that there were no Irish working on them" - not that any of the 700,000 people in the low-wage sector of the economy need the Taoiseach's word for it. And that recent CSO figure does not include those working in the black economy.
While this is wonderful news for the business sector it raises serious questions on a number of fronts. Current immigration figures suggest that Government policy, or lack of it, is transforming Ireland from a cohesive, homogeneous society into an economic zone where uncurtailed growth and generation of vapid consumerism must prevail at any cost. The number of foreign workers has risen in 10 years to the same percentage levels which occurred over a 60- to 70-year period in Britain.
There can be little doubt that this influx, coupled with an internally generated increase, will lead to an intolerable ethnic shift in a small country.
The few politicians who question the reasoning, if any, behind this economic policy are subjected to snide jibes from elements in the media which seem indifferent to the fact that our capacity to absorb low-wage, migrant labour is finite. I am not suggesting that Dr FitzGerald is part of this curious agenda, but I do dispute his contention that the coming census will produce accurate figures on foreign nationals or that any significance can be attached to a small minority who become short-stay migrants.
World immigration patterns show that while most majority economic migrants intend to remain in their host country for a short period, this does not happen. Aspirations become imprisoned by economic reality and once families are started and roots established these aspirations, for the vast majority, fade and eventually disappear. The return home, as it was for millions of Irish emigrants, becomes at best a yearly holiday.
I can only presume that Dr FitzGerald's own innate honesty requires him to believe that immigrants in flat-land will identify themselves in the census when even their landlords in many cases may not know or disclose the numbers resident in any particular renting. The black economy is well known for its allergy to book-keeping. - Yours, etc,
SIMON O'DONNELL, Church Place, Rathmines, Dublin 6.