Comments on: Incoming!

By: Maria

Maria — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 18:01:30 +0000

Oops. Thanks, Carnegie. I guess it’s too late for me to fill in that form. Pity – I was even home during April and might have been counted.

And grudging, irritated thanks to Pedant.

By: DC

DC — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 16:08:47 +0000

“Anyone who had grand-parents who were alive in the potato famine will be pretty old…”

I’m not so sure. I’m the youngest in my family, and my mother is the youngest in hers, so my maternal grandfather (who died before I was born) was born 88 years for me. If I were turning 71 this year (i.e. if I were born in 1935) my grandfather would have been born in Black ‘47, so to speak. 71 is, I suppose, pretty old, but not ancient.

By: dearieme

dearieme — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 10:51:27 +0000

“if you’ve got a pretty strong sense of the power of blood”. WHAT?

By: nick s

nick s — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 10:07:03 +0000

I suppose that having one Irish grandparent still only makes one Irish if you’ve got a pretty strong sense of the power of blood.

Surely Jack Charlton’s attitude to what constituted an Irish footballer was a forerunner to what constitutes an Irish bricklayer?

By: Tim Worstall

Tim Worstall — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 09:26:23 +0000

The one grandparent thing is also “one grandparent born on the island of Ireland”. My brother picked up his Irish passport a few years ago (following problems with his UK one and the US INS) on the basis of one grandmother from County Down. No need to be Eire, just the island of Ireland.

By: Jonathan Edelstein

Jonathan Edelstein — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 22:19:02 +0000

Isn’t the phrase “ius soli?”

Probably so; my Latin isn’t what it ought to be.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 21:19:38 +0000

Thanks for the info Cian. I suppose that having one Irish grandparent still only makes one Irish if you’ve got a pretty strong sense of the power of blood.

Removing birthright citizenship is a good way to have the problems of a perpetual non-member class rightly criticized by Walzer and others, I think, and tends also to be closely related to pretty unpleasent nativist tendicies. The way to deal with problem cases is to not give visas to people who seem to be seeking only to have children on the soil of such countries and to not give immigration benefits to the parents of minor children in most cases, and then not to get hysterical when some cases slip by.

By: Gene O'Grady

Gene O'Grady — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 20:57:09 +0000

Isn’t the phrase “ius soli?” “Ius solis” would have to do with the sun, which would cover everyone.

For what it’s worth, my only Irish ancestor emigrated to Canada before the potato famine, and I am only amused at my relatives (at least the American ones) who parade their putative Irishness. My wife, of Norwegian and German ancestry, is even more amused by the people who say things like “I could just tell you’re Irish by looking at you.”

By: Jonathan Edelstein

Jonathan Edelstein — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 19:47:05 +0000

Ireland seemed to be in a minority of EU countries that determine citizenship by birth. I'm actually pretty sure that, by that time, Ireland was the only remaining EU country with pure ius solis citizenship. The ius solis was a common-law concept that the UK passed on to Ireland and many of its overseas colonies, while civil law countries (with the partial exception of France) tended to favor ius sanguinis. Most of the countries that once had pure ius solis have since modified it, with the UK doing so in the early 1980s and Ireland being the last European holdout. Even Australia and NZ have enacted changes similar to Ireland's. Our last census was in 2002, so figures on immigration are based on slightly rough and ready calculations of social security numbers issued to non-nationals. The Central Statistics Office publishes annual migration data; this is for 2005.

By: Cian O'Connor

Cian O'Connor — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 19:31:39 +0000

You have to have one grandparent who was Irish. Anyone who had grand-parents who were alive in the potato famine will be pretty old…

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 19:25:50 +0000

Maria,
Do those source of immigrant breakdowns include those who were of Irish families and so able to claim citizenship in this way? Or is that rule still around? (My understanding was that for some time at least those w/ enough Irish grandparents could claim Irish citizenship fairly easily, in an attempt to lure back the diaspora. Is that still so, and if so, are these people figured in? Surely they should be, since there’s often as not nothing particularly Irish about someone who’s great grandparents came over during the patato famine.)

By: P O'Neill

P O'Neill — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 18:51:27 +0000

It’s an interesting case to analyze. A small country with open borders can see very large proportional changes very quickly. The anecdotal evidence is more negative than the apparent ease of absorption might suggest. Many stories about the summer job market for students having evaporated because the jobs are going to Poles or Latvians. There also seem to be a disproportionate number of the latter nationalities involved in Ireland’s already high rate of road accidents, although that may reflect the age composition of immigrants as well. I think the new census results will be ready quite soon so firmer numbers may be available shortly.

By: pedant

pedant — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 18:50:45 +0000

… useful backgrounds to emigrate to Ireland

Nope.

… useful backgrounds to immigrate to Ireland.

By: carnegie

carnegie — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 17:36:47 +0000

The census took place in April of this year.