Sir, It was with relief that I read in your paper recently (Mary Banotti MEP, Sean Love of Amnesty International) letters which dealt responsibly with the issue of refugees. The shame I feel personally as an Irish woman who has lived and worked in Nigeria for over three years is indescribable.
Many letter writers have correctly identified the times in our own history when the doors around the world were not closed in the faces of Irish emigrants. I feel obliged to remind readers of the countless development workers (myself included) who spent time working in the countries of origin of most of the refugees in our Ireland today. Those of us who were thus privileged experienced a level of welcome and hospitality which leaves the infamous "Cead Mile Failte" of Ireland looking very pale (and getting paler by the day).
Before readers sceptically disregard this as an easy welcome when our hosts stood to gain so much from our coming, it's worth noting that the predominant experience of development workers is that we learn far more than we teach and receive far more than we give. Therefore, it is with a terrible feeling of shame and embarrassment in "my own people" that I write to say: stop targeting the wrong people for the problems of poverty in Ireland today. Instead of working against the refugees, work with them in order to drag from a globally unjust social order the possibility of a better deal for all of those struggling to survive in our society.
As for the letter from the Nigerian Charge d'Affaires, I cannot but dismiss as a fantasy view his description of Nigeria as a place where "there is no persecution of any nature". - Yours, etc.,
Maynooth,
Co Kildare.