Exploitation, bureaucratic confusion, difficulties with family life, trouble integrating into Irish society and everyday racism are all encountered by migrant workers in Ireland, according to a report issued yesterday by the Immigrant Council of Ireland, an independent non-governmental group.
Based on interviews and a growing body of research by a number of organisations, it documents what is now and will remain an important feature of the Irish economy.
In a number of sectors - including services, agriculture and health - immigrant workers make an indispensable contribution to our well-being. While they have also good stories to tell about how they have found work, settled and been treated here, it is high time their conditions and entitlements were put on a more equitable and long-term footing. This must involve a probing debate on the role of immigration in Irish society.
According to the 2002 census 6 per cent of the population living in Ireland are non-citizens, while the non-EU population makes up an average 2.3 per cent of the overall labour force. The proportion is much higher in certain sectors. Two thousand non-EU graduate doctors are a backbone of the medical services, Dr Syed Jaffrey pointed out yesterday. Yet they, and the many non-EU nurses involved, work very long hours on temporary contracts and face recurrent problems with visas and family reunifications. Most immigrant workers are at the lower end of national wage scales, with three-quarters of all work permits going to relatively low-skilled occupations (even though many immigrant workers are in fact comparatively well qualified).
The report highlights the piecemeal market-driven nature of immigration policy, symbolised by the fact that work permits are issued to employers, not to individual workers. That such an imbalance can open the way to exploitation is amply confirmed by individual immigrants and trade union campaigns. Although Ireland will need immigrants for the foreseeable future, as employer groups acknowledge, official policy is still based on the assumption that their stay is temporary, not permanent. In calling for a comprehensive review of that policy, seeing immigrants as potentially permanent members of our society, provided with equal rights short of political citizenship, this and similar reports perform a valuable public service.
Such a change would require a sea-change in public and official attitudes, including the need for more integrated political management of inter-departmental policy-making. That should be facilitated by a greater public debate on diversity and the comparative experience of Irish people abroad. Racism directed against immigrant workers is a toxin which dishonours that experience, as President McAleese said yesterday. The citizenship referendum did not give a mandate for this kind of discrimination.