Migrant crisis

[Purple]

What are posters opinions on the migrant crisis?
Personally I'm ashamed of our response and the selfishness of so many Irish people.
For me this is not a migrant crisis, it's a refugee crisis. We are happy to see much poorer countries all over the world with much larger refugee numbers. Now that a tiny number of refugees are on their way to Europe (less than half of one percent of the EU's population) the sky is falling in. Sickening.

 

[Conan]

The picture of that young child on the beach was surely sickening and demands some better response to help genuine refugees. But the complication is that it is difficult (impossible?) to distinguish between refugees and migrants. Yes we (Europe and the rest of the 1st world countries) need to do more to help those fleeing ISIS and Assad. But do we also open our borders to all those migrants from the variety of African and Middle East states who are more economic migrants than refugees?
Even looking at Syria, it has been estimated that there are some 4 million refugees. So even if Ireland took in 1%, that would be 40,000 people. Are we saying that we could manage that? And if Europe does open it's borders even to such group, we will surely have many others claiming to be Syrian but with no papers.
Regrettably a "fair" solution is very difficult to engineer. Do we do more to solve the problem at source(send in troops to Syria to fight.....who?), do we do more to support refugees in camps in Turkey, or do we simply throw open our borders and let anyone come in?
As in so manny other situations, it is much easier to criticise but more difficult to find real solutions.

 

[so-crates]

According to the CSO the immigration figures for Ireland for the last ten years are as follows ( I am consciously excluding emigration numbers but the details are here http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/pme/populationandmigrationestimatesapril2015/ ):
2005: 84,600
2006: 107,800
2007: 151,100
2008: 113,500
2009: 73,700
2010: 41,800
2011: 53,300
2012: 52,700
2013: 55,900
2014: 60,600
2015: 69,300

40,000 is the probably at the high end of any estimate and is the size of a large Irish town but I think it is within our capacity to absorb that number of people depending on how easy we make it for them to start becoming productive members of society instead of leaving them sat in direct provision. Direct provision for 40,000 for an extended period would be ridiculous. I can't see us agreeing to taking that much because all (most) of them will need sizeable initial supports which our current recovery would be hard-pressed to supply (unlike the majority of immigrants listed above who were more likely to come with a basic ability to start in the country). The number sounds huge and unmanageable when we think of it as people arriving en masse with little or nothing and a need to find a bed for them all when there is clearly a growing indigenous housing crisis but we have demonstrable capacity to gradually absorb it. If we step back from an initial reaction to baulk at the numbers and look at it dispassionately it might not look so insurmountable. It needs to be done thoughtfully though and it will cost us in the short term so we need to be prepared to pay.

 

[so-crates]

I do think though, that without some form of action to deal with the Syrian civil war any action on ours or Europe's part is worse than futile. I also wonder why we aren't seeing invitations to Syrians from Saudi Arabia but we are from Iceland. Maybe I am reading the wrong news but it seems ludicrous to me that Iceland is more welcoming than Saudi Arabia which is far closer by any measure.

 

[johnwilliams]

problem getting to Saudi Arabia as I see it is they would have to go through isis held positions in Iraq acording to last map I saw of iraq, given that asad (spelling)is a ally of putin (Russia) I would have thought that he (putin)would have sent in some assault ships (lot bigger passenger capacity than any thing we have there) and evacute the refugees ,after all they visited a port in Greece recently and also are patrolling in the med

 

[moneybox]

What are posters opinions on the migrant crisis?
Personally I'm ashamed of our response and the selfishness of so many Irish people.
For me this is not a migrant crisis, it's a refugee crisis. We are happy to see much poorer countries all over the world with much larger refugee numbers. Now that a tiny number of refugees are on their way to Europe (less than half of one percent of the EU's population) the sky is falling in. Sickening.

yes it is sickening to read some of the online postings on these poor unfortunate people, I just hope they only represent a tiny amount of our population. News coming through tonight is that Austria are going to close their borders so the problem will get progressively worse in the short term. We have so many empty houses and closed hotels in Ireland especially in smaller rural towns and the countryside, the refugees would bring life back to communites already blighted by recent emigration. If a co-ordinated response could be created to bring these properties back into short use, it would go a long way to relieve the distress for so many unfortunate syrian families.

 

[Gerry Canning]

Money box.

Empty houses/ hotels.

@ the stroke of a pen . legislation could be brought in to penalise non use of empty houses/hotels. Think about it ,it cost a lot to supply /retain services to these places, non usage costs us all, all of the time. .
eg . If a house isn,t used after 1 year , charge e 200, after 2 years e300 and so on.These funds could be used for society .
That would have the effect of either moving houses on or forcing owners into decisions based on society not on tax writebacks etc.
But then I think our Government is ideologically trapped in a (market) mind set.

 

[cremeegg]

The sense of urgency about this crisis, is due to media exposure since great numbers started turning up in Europe. Millions of Syrians have been living in appalling conditions in camps in Turkey and Lebanon for a number of years.

The distinction between refugee and migrant is wishful thinking in my opinion, we would like to distinguish between deserving and undeserving migrants. People who wish to leave their country because there is no future for them there are the same, wether it is war or economic catastrophe that drives them out. Indeed there is plenty of evidence that the civil war in Syria has an economic basis rather than the sectarian aspect it has acquired. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innov...-to-blame-for-the-conflict-in-syria-72513729/ or http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/07/martin-omalley-isis-climate-change/399131/

What should Ireland do. Well as for the numbers in Greece/Hungary at the moment I think we should play our part by taking in some families from that humanitarian situation.

On a more long term basis I think we should tell our friends and neighbours in the UK and US to stop bombing poor troubled countries in the Middle east and elsewhere. It isn't that simple but it would make a good first step.

We should also accept refugees from UN camps near the Syrian conflict possibly in large numbers.

People should be chosen on the basis that they want to come to Ireland.

They should be aware that Ireland is a country where their children will not have a religious education, where women are expected to have an equal role in public life, and where the people recently voted to legislate for same sex marriage.

In Ireland they will have a high level of physical security, a basic standard of living and reasonable educational and economic opportunity. If this is something they actively desire as well as wishing to escape from the conflict they will probably become productive members of Irish society.