Ireland: we are a country of migrants. All through history right up until today. In fact, according to pobal.ie: “Ireland is in the top ten of countries whose nationals emigrate to work and has the second highest proportion of its population living in other countries of the EU”. So, you would think we would have enough experience leaving our own country in search of a better life that we would be understanding of migrants who come to us looking for the same thing. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.
Let’s go back about 10+ years to when we first started receiving an influx of migrants from the Eastern European countries and beyond. I remember comments thrown about how they were “stealing our jobs” but this was certainly not the case. At least the majority of the migrants I met were highly skilled people speaking two languages or more (unlike Irish nationals who have, at the time of publication, the highest percentage of people who can’t speak a foreign language throughout Europe). In my personal experience, in most cases the jobs that they took they were over skilled for – the same jobs that many Irish people turned their nose up at during the Celtic Tiger. While many Irish nationals may be less fussy today due to hard economic times, within the Irish workforce, we do still need migrants to fill some positions. Pobal.ie also states: “International studies have shown that Ireland, along with the rest of Europe, will continue to need migrant workers in the coming years to support an increasingly dependent population”.
We also had serious cases of exploitation of migrant workers across many industries during this time. Any Google search will show you that that still occurred right up until 2015. It probably still occurs today on a lesser scale but now more and more migrants are aware of their entitlements and go about making sure they get them. Whether or not a section of this community acquires these entitlements legally is a story for another article. My point here is that there are Irish people who begrudge these migrants for getting what they are entitled to.
Let’s skip to another point: Irish people working and living in another country. We are no strangers to discrimination ourselves and there are still certain parts of the world we can go to make a living where people are unhappy with our presence. Not specifically because we are Irish, but because we are a foreigner coming to their land and “stealing their jobs”. Sound familiar? We react with outrage at such treatment against ourselves, yet many of us still treat others the same. Funny how opinion differs when the tables are turned.
The reality is that other countries also react like this to migrants and the Irish are not special in this case. The sad part is that we, a country which prides itself on its warmth and friendliness, deny that this is a problem. “They are wrong, not us. They just shouldn’t be here”. Why do we feel this way? The economy looks to be on the mend again so we can’t use the old favourite excuse of unemployment. We also have the son of an Indian migrant as a Taoiseach, whom we seem to have accepted, yet back in April the Irish Independent reported an incident on a Limerick train where an Indian passenger was abused. In fact, racist incidents as a whole have risen by about a third.
I researched heavily for this article for information which could provide an answer to this question but I came up considerable short. All I can do is speculate on behalf of the Irish people: Do we not feel European enough? Do we really see our Eastern European neighbours as that different from us? Or perhaps those at home do not have the experience of being a stranger in a foreign land? We are extremely lucky not to have a strong far-right party in the country right now but, considering trends in Europe and our own racist actions, this is something which could change over the coming years.
Is this an attitude we can change? Yes, it is; we just need to do something about it – and sooner rather than later. Let the government out its money somewhere it is needed, starting with producing some kind of study which can give us answers about this racism problem.
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