Cite ceva despre soarta imigrantilor care n-au avut noroc
articol din din Irish Times, 15 ianuarie 2007:
State pays to repatriate 646 destitute immigrants
Carl O'Brien, Social Affairs Correspondent
Almost 650 central and eastern Europeans were repatriated for free last year under a Government scheme aimed at assisting destitute immigrants.
The figures, which have doubled over the past year, come at a time when homeless agencies are expressing concern at the number of EU immigrants experiencing hardship.
As a result of welfare restrictions, many are not eligible for social assistance such as unemployment benefit on the grounds that they are not habitually resident here.
Figures provided to The Irish Times by the Department of Justice show the majority of immigrants who were assisted in returning home were Poles (380), followed by Slovaks (98), Latvians (47), Hungarians (46) and Czechs (33).
The numbers availing of the repatriation scheme have climbed dramatically since the 10 former accession states joined the EU in May 2004. The Reception and Integration Agency (RIA), which operates under the Department of Justice, says it repatriated 149 destitute EU migrants in 2004, 318 in 2005 and 646 last year.
The scheme is open to any citizen of a former EU accession state, and certain other "special-case" EU nationals, who find themselves destitute during their time in Ireland. The repatriations cost the State just over €300,000 last year.
Groups such as Emigrant Advice say immigrants tend to experience hardship for a range of reasons such as having inadequate savings, poor English language skills and being exploited by Irish employers.
Joe O'Brien, the organisation's information and outreach officer, said social assistance restrictions aimed at preventing "welfare tourism" meant there was often no safety net for migrants who ended up homeless.
"We're concerned that these restrictions are further marginalising a section of society that is already in a vulnerable position," Mr O'Brien said. "It's a lot like the Irish in London 10 years ago. We're coming across migrant workers whose employers aren't paying their PRSI contributions, so if they lose their jobs they don't have access to social assistance."
Homeless agencies such as Trust say the majority of people seeking help from them are now EU immigrants.
Alice Leahy, director and co-founder of Trust, said the Government needed to act immediately in order to prevent the problem from growing further.
"It's something that, unless dealt with now, will certainly get worse. The people we're seeing are just like the long-term Irish homeless: they suffer from malnourishment and poor health," she said.
Emigrant Advice says the problems could be eased if the Government relaxed restrictions on social welfare for EU migrants.
Postet at: January 16, 2007, 01:05:54 PM________________________________________________ _si, in sfirsit, s-au alocat bani de cercetare pentru studiul imigratiei in Irlanda - in atentia reprezentantilor CRI si SRI, care ar trebui neaparat contactati de cercetatori, dupa parerea mea.
alt articol din Irish Times, 15 ianuarie 2007:
[b]Major studies to throw new light on immigration into Ireland
Carl O'Brien Social Affairs Correspondent
The largest research programme on immigration in Ireland is due to be launched next week by Trinity College Dublin.
The four-year project aims to provide crucial information on challenges facing the State in areas such as the level of integration of foreign nationals into society and the potential for conflict between migrants and the disadvantaged communities in Ireland.
Many experts on migration agree that a lack of information on immigration has the potential to hamper public policy decisions being made by the Government and local authorities.
For example, there is still widespread confusion over the real level of immigration into Ireland. Foreign nationals received more than 200,000 Personal Public Service (PPS) numbers last year, yet migration estimates compiled by the Central Statistics Office suggest the numbers taking up residence are significantly lower.
The multi-million euro Trinity Immigration Initiative (TII) will focus on a number of key areas. They include a survey on the level of integration of foreign nationals in society; how public services are coping with immigration in areas such as education and health; migrants' careers and aspirations; language supports for migrants in the education system; and the cultural and religious activities of immigrants.
The research programme is one of a number of academic projects which seek to provide more accurate information on immigration in Ireland.
Meanwhile UCD will tomorrow announce details of a separate two-year study to provide more evidence-based research on issues such as immigration and integration.
The Migration and Citizenship Research Initiative will involve public lectures, training workshops and the launch of new research projects on integration-related topics. It is being funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Prof James Wickham of Trinity's Department of Sociology said its four-year initiative, as well as other research projects, could throw new, valuable light on immigration into Ireland.
He said key questions remained unanswered, such as whether immigrants were likely to remain in the State in the long-term, or if the State was experiencing a temporary surge of migration.
"At the moment the discussion on immigration in Ireland is on the basis that we shouldn't make the same mistakes as places like France did in the 1950s and 60s. But that assumes immigration here is the same as it was in France," he said.
"It may very well be that we're experiencing transient immigration, where people are passing through rather than staying. Those kinds of questions have major implications for issues such as social policy, education provision and pensions."
Prof Wickham said there was a narrow window of opportunity in which to maximise the benefits of the economic, social and cultural contribution of immigrants to Irish society, and to minimise the risks. Sound evidence of the potential impact of immigration at every level was required now as a basis for creating a cohesive society into the future, he said.
The research programme is being developed by Trinity College Dublin academics including Prof Robbie Gilligan of the School of Social Work and Social Policy; Sharon Jackson of the Institute for International Integration Studies; Dr Ronit Lentin of the Department of Sociology; Prof David Little of the Centre for Language and Communication Studies; Dr Peter Muhlau of the Department of Sociology; and Prof Wickham.
Dupa cum arata editia de simbata, 27 ianuarie, a ziarului Irish Times, dezbaterile despre imigratie incep sa se-ncinga din ce in ce mai tare. Ca doar vin alegerile peste citeva luni...
Iata nu mai putin de TREI articole de opinie in aceeasi zi:
Stepping into a minefield
Mark Hennessy
Immigration is the great unspoken territory in Irish politics, one where most politicians fear to tread, writes Mark Hennessy , Political Correspondent.
Following a day-long gathering in Clontarf Castle on Tuesday, Fine Gael TDs, senators and new general election candidates got to their feet to applaud their leader, Enda Kenny. The speech had focused on immigration: the challenges, the opportunities, the need to make newcomers welcome, and on the need for newcomers to become part of Irish society.
By the following morning, some had focused on his reference to the Irish being a "Celtic and Christian people" to portray his speech as something it was not: the playing of the race card. In fact, Kenny said something very different: "As a Celtic and Christian people, we understand better than most the special challenges of immigration and integrating new communities. "Now is the time for a real national debate on these issues so that we can make the necessary changes to meet these new challenges. We have a chance to get this response right and to avoid the mistakes that were made elsewhere," he said.
Oddly, Kenny may now gain approval from those who understood and approved of what he actually did say, and from those who did not, and who may now believe FG has adopted an anti-immigration stance. Clearly, Ireland must learn lessons from elsewhere, and there are many bad ones to be learnt from Bradford and Burley in the UK to the poverty-ridden banlieus of Paris. And Kenny is not alone in believing so. The Minister for Social Affairs, Seamus Brennan, warned at Christmas of the danger of Parisian-style riots in coming years by the children of today's immigrants if we fail.
The immigration issue has changed significantly since the 2002 election, when TDs such as Cork North Central Noel O'Flynn of Fianna Fáil complained loudly about "asylum-seeker spongers", and benefited in voters' affections from so doing. In Clogheen, Co Tipperary, locals feared contracting contagious diseases from immigrants staying in an old hotel. Today, the hotel is closed, most of the asylum seekers have left and no contagion was spread. Five years on, the flow of asylum-seekers has slowed: down from just under 12,000 in 2002 to a little over 4,000 in 2005, and the figures are understood to have continued to fall since.
Today, immigration in most people's eyes means the Polish plumber, the Lithuanian petrol attendant, the Latvian cleaner or, among higher earners, the superbly qualified eastern European computer programmer. For some Irish, perhaps most, the experience has been positive, though poorly educated Irish are convinced that they are losing out to eastern Europeans for low-paid labour - even though economic statistics largely show otherwise.
"Economists can say what they like. Most politicians will tell you that we are hearing a different message in poorer parts of our constituencies," one Fianna Fáil TD commented privately yesterday. "There is no doubt but that that is happening. Equally, you hear people getting frustrated when one of their children can't get a local authority house. 'I'm not racist, but . . . ' is the refrain," he went on. "But nobody wants to adopt a hard line on this, for fear of getting hit, though it is not a good idea for Kenny to be raising this so close to an election," another TD feared.
The driving habits of some eastern European drivers - as shown by the fatality figures and by court lists for road traffic offences - are also causing disquiet locally that is being passed up the line to TDs.
Curiously, the political parties' efforts to research the issue are showing a constant: women working at home minding children are more likely to hold racist views. "People who are out there working alongside a Pole know that we are all the same: that we all hate getting up in the morning, have girlfriend trouble, whatever," said a Fine Gael official.
In early 2006, the Labour leader, Pat Rabbitte spoke out about the possible need to require citizens from the 10 states, including Poland, that joined the EU in May 2004, to have work visas before being allowed entry. In the face of strong reaction, Rabbitte amended the message to one demanding that Irish labour standards should be upgraded and enforced rigidly to ensure that conditions for Irish workers were not lowered.
Today, all the major parties are agreed on the basic points that Irish labour law should stay strong, that Bulgarian and Romanian workers should not get free entry, and that immigration has broadly been a positive experience. Equally, they agree on the need for a US-style green card to govern immigration from outside the EU, so that Ireland can pick and choose the ones it wants.
So far, no political grouping has made progress by promoting a harsher line, though some existing TDs have done by speaking the same message more quietly on the doorsteps. The Immigration Control Platform, led by Áine Ní Chonaill, tried in 2002 and failed miserably, and there is little evidence yet that it will be any more popular in 2007.
Though the ultra-liberal wing may turn up its nose at Kenny's conduct this week, there is little doubting that he is in tune with public opinion, as shown so emphatically in the citizenship referendum in 2004. Then, the Government proposed that citizenship should not be conferred on children born here unless the parents had been living legally here for four years. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Michael McDowell faced loud charges of racism. Irish voters, however, saw differently, and supported the change by an 80/20 majority.
However, problems are reaching the constituency desks of TDs from all parties, particularly in schools struggling to teach English to the children of immigrants. "There's no doubt about that. In some places, Irish kids are falling behind because so much effort has to go on immigrant kids who can't cope in English," said one TD. Equally, there are troubling signs that integration is not happening in many places, particularly in the newer housing estates in west Dublin and other urban areas where social ties are weakest. "There are the early signs of "white flight" in some areas, where Irish people who bought houses and then moved on, renting them out to immigrants who tend to stick to themselves," said one Labour TD.
For now, Ireland is getting the best end of the deal from immigration. Most foreign workers are young, well- educated, pay taxes and require little from State services. However, 32,000 foreign children are already in Irish classrooms. In time, there will be more. The language problems already evident are not going to disappear. Given the pace at which change has occurred the miracle, perhaps, has been that Ireland has encountered so few problems, though it cannot depend on luck, and on economic prosperity's ability to hide cracks forever.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Kenny speech on immigration just too narrow in focus
Noel Whelan
Some people were too quick this week to criticise Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny for daring to raise the issue of immigration in his address to a special meeting of his party's TDs and candidates last Tuesday, writes Noel Whelan.
The large influx of immigrants has been the most significant social and economic development in Ireland in the last five years and integrating these immigrants will be one of the main challenges which the next government will face. It would be absurd therefore to suggest that this issue shouldn't feature in the forthcoming election debate. If anything, the political parties have been too constrained about debating the topic. Immigration was actually a big issue in the 2002 election.
Even though it did not feature in the setpiece media events of the 2002 campaign, it was the one topic - apart from the health services - which canvassers of all parties said voters were most likely to raise. This issue is too important to be left to muttered conversations at the doorsteps. This time around the immigration debate should be held in public and should be up front and centre in the campaign. It is a welcome development that the leader of Fine Gael chose to address the issue in his first major speaking opportunity of the election year.
There were some good things in Kenny's speech; the full text of which was published in this paper last Thursday. He had some useful suggestions about structural changes in government which would lead to a better co-ordination of the policy response to the immigration challenge. However, Kenny's speech had one central flaw - it was narrow in its focus. The speech dealt mainly with the difficulties which Kenny says immigration is causing for the indigenous Irish population and only dealt in passing with the needs of immigrants, or the positive contribution immigration is making to our society and our economy.
The careful and considered language could not disguise the suggestion that immigration and immigrants are responsible for some of our worst problems. Among his suggestions were that immigration is causing a rise in crime, that immigrant drivers are making our roads less safe, and even that immigrants are taking places in adult literacy classes which were meant for Irish people.
Kenny began his speech by calling - like many before him - for a "genuine national debate" on immigration, but then went on to contribute to that debate from the perspective of the native population only. The manner in which Kenny used two sets of statistics illustrates this point. He began a section of the speech titled "Keeping Ireland Safe" with a sentence about how this country has recently experienced a "shocking" rise in serous crimes, including murder.
He then told his audience that 22 per cent of those sent to Irish prisons in 2005 were from outside the European Union. He followed this figure with a sentence speaking of how a number of foreign mafia-style crime gangs are operating in Dublin. This juxtaposition of prisoner figures and the rise in serious crimes had the effect of suggesting that immigration is contributing to, or causing, a rise in the most serious crimes.
Kenny is wrong to suggest this. There is no evidence that immigration is leading to rising crime. The overwhelming majority of those engaged in gangland killing in this country are native born and bread.
Gangland crime was as prevalent in Dublin a decade ago, before the recent influx in immigration. While the non-national portion of our prison population is large, it does not follow that this is because Ireland has become some kind of safe haven for foreign criminals, or that non-nationals are more likely to commit crime.
The reason why non-nationals are over-represented in the prison population are more complex and varied than Kenny implies. A larger portion of the immigrant community is of an age group, gender, and economic class (young, male, lower or non-waged) from which most of the prison population comes. Non-nationals are also more likely to be refused bail because they have fewer ties to the jurisdiction.
When convicted they are more likely to be sent to jail, in part because they are unlikely to be seen as good candidates for community service or other non-custodial options. Some non-nationals have been imprisoned for immigration type offences; a category of crime which by its very nature is not available to the indigenous population.
Kenny then went on to deploy the same trick of juxtaposition to suggest that immigration is making our roads less safe. He spoke of how a "worrying" number of road accidents involve non-nationals. He then told his audience that 44 of the road fatalities in this country last year were people born outside the country. In his next sentence (and remember this is all in the section of his speech titled "Keeping Ireland Safe") he talked about how non-nationals have a responsibility to learn about and comply with our road safety regime. He clearly implied that as well as dying in a worrying number of road accidents, non-national were causing a worrying number of road accidents.
Again Kenny is wrong in this suggestion. Of course all road fatalities are worrying. However, Kenny didn't tell his audience that there were 368 road fatalities in Ireland in 2006 which means that only 12 per cent of them were non-national. Non-nationals now account for 10 per cent of our population and a larger portion of them are in the young male demographic bracket where road deaths are highest. On those statistics, non-nationals are no more likely to be involved in fatal road accidents than the general population.
Instead of contesting Kenny's right to raise the issue of immigration, the focus should be on the substance of what he had to say - or the lack of it.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Strong leadership needed on thorny issue of immigration
Breda O'Brien
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.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Postet at: January 28, 2007, 11:41:19 AM________________________________________________ _in acelasi ziar de simbata, sint publicate si trei scrisori de la cititori, cu reactii la discursul lui Enda Kenny:
[b]LETTERS - KENNY SPEECH ON IMMIGRATION
• Madam, - Enda Kenny's call for a national debate on immigration is to be welcomed. I hope such a debate might critically reflect upon some of the terms used in his recent speech, for example "integration" and "community." Immigrants, according to Mr Kenny, "have the responsibility to integrate into our own community, comply with our laws and respect our cultural traditions" (The Irish Times, January 25th). What community? Whose cultural traditions? Are "we" a "Celtic and Christian people," as Mr Kenny so confidently claims? Are we not rather uncertain at present of who just exactly "we" are, and challenged as much from within as without by threats to our stability and harmony and identity?
Mr Kenny's use of the c-word, "community", perpetuates this myth of a harmonious "we" into which a discordant "they" must integrate. But perhaps the subterranean aggression in his language is related to the problematic etymology of the word "community" itself, which has an affinity with "munitions" and also suggests armed fortification. More concretely, think of the way the word has pointed as much to war as to peace on "our" island, with its opposing nationalist and loyalist communities, etc. "Community" is a velvet glove word with an iron fist within. Perhaps this is the meaning of Enda Kenny's speech? In any case, a national debate on immigration should tell us as much about the hosts as about the guests.
- Yours, etc,
HUGH CUMMINS, River Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin 9.
---------------------------------------------------
Madam, - Did anyone who expressed an opinion on the speech made by Enda Kenny about immigration actually read it? One sentence, in a speech which contained well over 100 sentences, stated: "As a Celtic and Christian people, we understand better than most the special challenges of immigration and integrating new communities."
Nowhere else in the speech are the words Celtic or Christian used and they refer to a statement of fact. We are a Celtic nation and the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, to which the vast majority of us claim to adhere, are Christian. What was so shocking about stating such a fact? Was he meant to say we are Latin and Jewish?
Yet Enda Kenny is now accused of being the sort of nationalist bigot one usually finds in Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin/IRA. If those who now seek to make a cheap political point (such as Maurice Dockrell, January 26th), had taken the time to read the speech properly they would have noticed that Mr Kenny, as a future taoiseach, called for a proper debate on immigration. This was to allow those who are affected, either by being immigrants or by having to share resources with immigrants, to understand each other's aspirations and to develop a proper and fair policy to enable each person to achieve their goals without this being at the expense of another people.
It is depressing to think that Ireland is going to repeat the mistakes of other countries by failing to address the issue of immigration in a mature manner. The tone of the debate so far does not instil any confidence that policy-formers in Ireland are capable of moving public opinion beyond the parochial and racist attitudes that most immigrants to Ireland have to deal with every day.
- Yours, etc,
DESMOND FITZGERALD, Canary Wharf, London E14.
--------------------------------------------------
Madam, - Enda Kenny's address to his parliamentary party earlier this week has more disturbing aspects than good points. Rightly he calls for the proper enforcement of labour laws and for more language support services for immigrants. However his bold assertion that "as a Celtic and Christian people we understand better than most the special challenge of immigration and integrating new communities" is an astounding and mythical view of the nature of Irish society.
It is true that some in our society, presumably in Fine Gael and including its leader, still cling to the view that the defining limits of Irish identity are Celtic and Christian, but to further assert that being Celtic and Christian has given us a superior understanding of the "special challenges of immigration and integrating new communities" lies in the realm of imaginative Celtic mythology. This blind acceptance of the Irish nation as being "Celtic and Christian" was certainly a major contributory factor in the Northern conflict. Indeed Mr Kenny has only to walk the streets of our sacred land to hear and see racist abuse, sometimes leading to violence and even death for immigrants.
What is the most telling and most disturbing part of his speech is when he declares that "immigration must be managed in a way that keeps Ireland safe" . The potential leader of a future Irish government seems to be saying that he will keep us safe from immigrants who, alas, have not benefited as we have from the advantages of being Celtic and Christian.
- Yours, etc,
BRENDAN BUTLER, The Moorings, Malahide, Co Dublin.
----------------------------------------------------
PS: pentru cei din RO, poate o mica explicatie ar fi necesara: scrisorile incep cu "Madam" fiindca sint adresate redactorului-sef al ziarului, care este femeie (aici nu se practica "draga redactie", mai ales cind nu ti-e draga :))
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.1.10 Copyright © 2012 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.