Sir, - In his recent statement on asylum/immigration matters (The Irish Times September 11th), Sean Healy of CORI says: "What we may well be witnessing now is the beginning of a major migration from the South of the world to the North."
He speaks of this as if we had no say in the matter; as if their wanting to come gives them the right to come; as if our permission were not required. He represents the tiniest sliver of Irish opinion in this and I hope that this is recognised when he puts his anarchic views forward in meetings of the social partners.
He talks of it being Government policy to discourage asylum-seekers from coming to the country. Well, we have a strange way of discouraging them. Almost no one is deported (nine failed asylum-seekers in August - a score of about one deportee for every four members of staff in the National Immigration Bureau, while there were 919 asylum applications in the same month).
Alone among European countries, children born here to asylum-seekers (or to illegal immigrants) are citizens and their parents get residence.
I would consider this a very successful way to make yourself a honey-pot country for asylum-seekers. This is going to be a major issue in the next election. If we have any vestige of sanity we cannot allow this to continue. - Yours, etc.,
Aine Ni Chonaill, PRO, Immigration Control Platform, PO Box 6469, Dublin 2.