They carry out operations on our hearts. They serve our food. They clean our schools. They build our houses. They design our software. All around us, immigration is changing the face of Ireland, writes Breda O'Brien.
Enda Kenny was charged with using the "race card" as an election ploy, and even worse, having temerity to use the adjectives "Celtic" and "Christian" to describe our heritage. Apparently, "Celtic" and "Tiger" are fine, but "Celtic" and "Christian" are evidence of being hopelessly out of touch, even if you are suggesting that our Christian heritage should help us understand and empathise with the challenges of immigrants.
Elements of the media seized with glee on his comments about crime and road safety, as if that was all he said about immigration. He also said that you would have to have a small mind, a very short memory and a very hard heart not to welcome the strangers trying to make better lives for themselves.
Strangely, it didn't generate the same headlines. A debate about immigration is long overdue. Immigration is a reality for a decade now, and for the foreseeable future. Yet any debate will have to begin with looking at our own sometimes flawed perceptions.
Take the oft-quoted statistic that 10 per cent of the population is now foreign-born. The 2002 census estimated that 10.4 per cent of the population were foreign-born, but this included significant numbers of people born abroad to Irish parents, or born in Northern Ireland, and a huge number born in Britain.
Tentative estimates suggest that about 9.4 per cent of the population in 2006 were non-Irish nationals. We do have a very large influx from new member states of the EU, but there are still large numbers of British citizens and those from longer-standing EU members. The perception that there is a massive influx of other races is not accurate.
A debate about immigration will be painful, because it will raise many questions about our own identity. We used to have a firm fix on our own identity, even if elements of it were a curious mixture of victimisation and triumphalism. Our identity has become much more slippery in recent years. Archbishop Dr Seán Brady, according to a poll in the Sunday Tribune, struck a chord with his statement that Irish culture had become much more crass and aggressive. Are we going to blame newcomers for that? Or is that the kind of culture we want them to adopt? Most people, including most immigrants, would agree on the need for a shared culture and shared values in order to prevent anarchy. But what exactly are our values?
Successful integration will be dependent on a lot of practical things. At the moment, we still have a model of immigrants as temporary workers.
A new system of permits was announced this week and Minister for Employment Micheál Martin announced that high-skilled "green card" workers would generally be eligible for permanent residency after two years.
However, as far as I am aware, there are only two routes to legitimate long-term residency in Ireland. One is by naturalisation after a period of five years residence, and is completely at the discretion of the Minister for Justice. The second is permanent residency for EU nationals and also involves five years' residence.
Becoming an Irish citizen may result in the loss of legal ties to their country of origin, a route that most people would not wish to embark on.
Do we need a permanent residency channel that could be awarded to certain categories of immigrants straight away? If we view all our immigrants as being a temporary little arrangement why should they invest energy into integrating?
We have a serious lack of joined up thinking on immigration. Fine Gael has proposed a minister of state attached to the Taoiseach's department with responsibility for co-ordinating state services involved in immigration.
As a proposal, it has some merit, and there are valuable precedents such as the Office for Children. However, it would probably be an impossible task for a junior minister. We should start with a centralised office for collection of data. We have a crazy situation in this country where we do not really know what we are dealing with. Take, for example, the situation regarding newcomer children. Under the National Development plan, 550 new language support teachers will be appointed. However, we have no accurate data on the number of children who will require language support. Currently, one teacher is appointed in a school for 14 newcomer children, two for 28, and in highly exceptional circumstances, one other such teacher and no more may be appointed - even if you have a further 150 children who need such help. Support for a child is also only available for two years, which is fine if you are a child in junior infants. If you come at age 11, it only scratches the surface.
The Department of Education recently revamped its definition of disadvantaged schools. However, the number of children without English as a first language was not one of the new criteria for assessing the level of disadvantage. Frankly, this is also mad, because lack of English poses such extraordinary challenges for students and schools. The Irish Primary Principals' Association says that one in five schools is catering for up to 10 nationalities. They estimate that in some urban areas, up to 60 per cent of the pupils are from non-English speaking backgrounds.
Moreover, what was wrong with the Fine Gael leader's suggestion that our Christian heritage should help us to understand the plight of immigrants? Welcoming the stranger is a key part of Judaeo-Christian teachings. How are we supposed to welcome other cultures if we are in firm denial of our own cultural roots?
Mind you, Fine Gael would have had more credibility if they had a fully worked out policy on immigration, including how much money they are willing to invest in integration. The party's riposte to that criticism is that they wanted to start a debate.
However, given that this issue needs real leadership, a fully articulated policy that focused less on potential crime and more on potential benefits, would have been a fine place from which to start.