Madam, - Piaras Mac Einri (August 17th) attempts to minimise the immigration issue. "Immigration is neither needed nor going to happen on a massive scale. . .But we do need some foreign workers. Moreover, we should continue to welcome refugees," he writes.
In relation to the first of these phenomena, in the preface to the very publication he co-authored for the Immigrant Council of Ireland, Sister Stanislaus Kennedy writes: "The rate of immigration into Ireland is very high by EU standards; only Luxembourg has a higher rate. It is clear that Ireland has moved from being one of the most homogeneous countries in the EU to a country with a rate of change that is unparalleled in speed and scale".
In relation to the second, he obviously means we should continue the insane asylum system in which the vast majority, being abusers of the system, are rejected but almost no one is made to leave. The Nigerian statistics say it all. We receive more Nigerian asylum-seekers than any other EU country. That is not just per capita, but in raw numbers. Last year we deported a grand total of 22; 47 the year before.
Mr Mac Einri acknowledges the need for a debate; but although there are literally scores of NGOs which operate as immigration and asylum advocates and the Immigration Control Platform is the only NGO whose brief is immigration control, we have, he says, "little or nothing to contribute" to the debate.
Strange debate. - Yours, etc.,
ÁINE NÍ CHONAILL,
PRO,
Immigration Control Platform,
Dublin 2.