Independent.ie wrote:The current debacle in Mosney was rightly declared by the Free Legal Advice Centre to be "an accident waiting to happen", but it also brings up some other, wider issues.
In fact, the whole debate about refugees/asylum seekers, or whatever you want to call them, is a boil that needs to be lanced.
Indeed, the debate has become completely poisoned by professional Left-wing advocates who immediately denounce anyone with a dissenting voice as a dearly beloved.
This reached the height of wicked stupidity when the Immigrant Council of Ireland actually went to the police and tried to have Kevin Myers prosecuted because he had written a piece about Africa that they didn't like.
This is the country we now live in, where government-funded groups would have journalists arrested on the grounds that they said something that didn't fit their ideology.
And because of this Stalinist urge to purge anyone who dares to deviate from the same hymn sheet, most people prefer to just keep their head down and say nothing rather than have a horde of screaming morons descend on them making the spurious accusation of beloved.
But ask yourself this -- those of us in our mid-to-late 30s were the last emigration generation and when we applied for visas to the States or Australia, we knew the rules of engagement.
Australia, in particular, was quite open about their entry requirements -- if you possessed a skill they wanted or needed, you got in. If not, you didn't.
It wasn't dearly beloved; it was just one of those things.
Now, in Ireland, we need to stop beating around the bush and start uttering some harsh truths.
Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the Mosney situation, it's time for Ireland to admit that, sorry, we're full.
We simply cannot afford to accommodate any more people who, through free accommodation, free legal advice, food, clothing and so on, become a burden on the State from the moment they arrive on Irish soil.
That's not beloved, that's simply a case of pragmatic self-interest.
And, before you start to bleat that we need to take account of the horrid lives and hideous countries these people invariably come from, you can answer back -- do we really?
On a human level, obviously it is impossible not to feel compassion for some of the stories we hear on a daily basis from refugees and asylum seekers, but the reality is that no matter how heart-rending their stories may be, ultimately they are not our problem.
At what point did Ireland suddenly have a moral obligation to look after people who had probably never even heard of this country until they got here?
At what point did we have a moral obligation to provide care and comfort and take on the financial burden of people who have no identifiable skills, who can't speak the language and who, alongside their children, will only ever take from a system they never contributed to in the first place?
Look, I can't blame people for wanting to come here from there.
Having said that, the State has an obligation towards its own citizens first.
We have more of a right to access the country's education, health and social welfare provisions than someone who only arrived here last week.
Is that dearly beloved? Is it now dearly beloved to point out that the vast amounts of money spent on the asylum process and the seekers themselves would have been better spent maintaining and preventing the HSE cuts to the already lamentable support given to respite carers?
Of course, the hundreds, if not thousands of people riding the asylum gravy train will immediately take their head out of the financial trough they've been gorging on for years and start to scream about beloved/lovely/whatever you're having yourself.
But as the new Australian PM Julia Gillard pointed out this week, being concerned about the number of people who come to your country and are just a burden does not make you a dearly beloved.
She is to be congratulated on having the stones to say what the average Irish politician, or indeed person, would think but not say.
Left-wing advocates would have you believe that if you harbour any doubts at all about untrammelled immigration not being a good thing, then you belong in the British National Party.
And, ironically, because they have been so successful in stifling proper debate and slurring people they disagree with, this has left a vacuum which the likes of the BNP were quick to fill.
Here in Ireland, you only have to listen to some radio phone-in shows and read Irish blogs to see what true beloved really is -- ugly, spiteful, ignorant and full of an irrational hate.
Indeed, it happened to me a while back when a woman rang the office to say fair play for not being politically correct. When I said thanks, she then went to add: "You're a good man, Iano, I f***ing hate niggers as well."
It was a profoundly depressing moment; the realisation that because nobody wants to talk reasonably about this issue, as soon as someone does, the lovey think they have a mouthpiece.
I don't answer my phone any more.
But what the likes of that moron who rang, or the hate-spewing rabble of the phone-in shows, prove is that ignorance, stupidity and contempt for common sense is not limited solely to the activists on the Left.
