"We asked for workers and we got people instead," said the late Swiss writer Max Frisch of the German guest worker programmes of the 1960s. For all the lessons learned since then, the aphorism - capturing the absurdity of viewing immigrants purely as economic agents who will one day return home - has present-day resonance. Like the Turks and Yugoslavs who came to turn the wheels of Germany's postwar economic resurgence, Ireland's immigrants have been vital to our prosperity. They fill gaps in local knowledge and take the jobs that many Irish people shun. Just as importantly, their presence introduces wealth of another kind, by bringing new cultures, languages, religions and experiences.
But while neglect is not inscribed in official policy, there are worrying signs that the State is being too slow to engage with the long-term questions posed by high immigration. The major problems in education and housing in parts of fast-growing and ethnically diverse north-west Dublin show all the signs of a failure to plan. While Minister of State for Integration, Conor Lenihan, told a conference in Indiana last week that the Government was determined not to allow "parallel societies" to develop, a bleak report on primary education in the Dublin 15 area found evidence of the emergence of "ghettos" inhabited only by ethnic minorities. It also noted "quite a serious and significant trend of Irish moving out and immigrants moving in".
That report came only days after an EU-wide study on integration found that the Republic's policies in the area have evolved in a "piecemeal and economically driven fashion". It placed Ireland bottom of its league table for the provision of long-term residence rights to migrant workers. Meanwhile, in the lack of English language training, inadequate interpreting services across State bodies and delays in the overly punitive asylum regime, there is further cause for concern.
Integration poses questions that are at once practical and ideological. At one level, it is about ensuring that those from ethnic minorities have the same chances as everyone else. This requires an emphasis on socio-economic policy, particularly on anti-poverty strategies, and measures to guarantee equality and encourage participation in society. But integration is also a principle, and the Government has yet to explain what it understands by this malleable term. So far it has been defined only negatively in relation to two contested terms: the Irish approach will not be assimilationist, Mr Lenihan has said, nor will it be multiculturalist. Instead, Ireland will plot a vague "middle way". But integration implies combining into an integral whole, and if it is not to mean assimilation by default, then the Government should explain how. And if the 'live-and-let-live' credo of multiculturalism is to be rejected, what are the core values to which native and newcomer will be asked to subscribe? That these are some of the most searching questions a nation-state can ask itself is not an excuse for evading them.