Incoming!

When I heard Jonathan Edelstein, aka the Head Heeb, had been to Ireland recently and was planning to write something about it, I knew we’d be in for a treat. Today he’s posted a very informative piece on immigration in Ireland. It’s a good overview from someone who has a lot of comparative knowledge about immigration and can place our experience in a wider context. From being a net exporter of people up to 1995, we’ve been an immigration nation since, with 10% of people living in Ireland today born elsewhere. And it’s only getting started.

The biggest group of immigrants to Ireland are nationals of the new EU member states. As Ireland (and also the UK and Sweden) chose to open its borders to the new member state worker from their accession in May 2004, we’ve seen a great influx of people from central and eastern Europe and the Baltic states, much to the benefit of our economy and our society as a whole. Since 2004, 200,000 social security numbers have been issued to non-nationals; 110,000 to Poles, 30,000 to Lithuanians, and 15,000 to Latvians. Looking at non-nationals as a whole, the top seven goes like this; Poland, China, Lithuania, Latvia, Nigeria (down from 3rd place in 2002), UK, US. As Jonathan points out, Ireland’s lack of colonies means there’s no historic logic linking us with most of our immigrant communities. Immigration to Ireland is largely determined by the incentives and opportunities of our immigration policy and our economy.

In Ireland, the infamous ‘Polish plumber’ (or, more like, the ‘Polish builder’) is a fairly popular figure. Our economic growth is precariously dependent on a booming building sector. Irish builders have concentrated on the big construction projects, often turning up their noses at smaller SSIA fueled house extensions. Several friends of mine have had building work done in the last year; each of them has a well-thumbed Polish dictionary and an impressive command of construction vocabulary in that language.

It’s not all plain sailing. In 2003, our Supreme Court ruled that while babies born in Ireland are entitled to citizenship, their parents don’t have the same automatic entitlement. This came at a time when Dublin’s three maternity hospitals were in crisis because of the number of non-EU nationals arriving in the late stages of pregnancy (sometimes disembarking already in labour) and giving birth in Ireland in order to secure citizenship. It was reckoned that one in three births in Dublin were to non-nationals, often Nigerian women who left the country soon afterwards, Irish birth certificates in hand. There was consternation when a Kenyan woman gave birth in the office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, having arrived in the country several hours earlier. Ireland seemed to be in a minority of EU countries that determine citizenship by birth. In 2004, a referendum approved by a surprisingly large majority a change to our constitution which did away with the birth right to citizenship.

I don’t know what the effect of this has been on immigration patterns. Jonathan Edelstein seems to think we have a relatively benign immigration policy. That’s good to hear. While we don’t operate national quotas, we’re certainly moving towards the ‘green card’ model of allowing immigrants with particularly useful backgrounds to emigrate to Ireland. 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. A census later this year will give us a clearer idea of what the numbers really are and also help to develop sound policies for dealing with the influx.

In the future, we may even have to work at attracting the most ambitious and able immigrants from central and eastern Europe and the Baltic states. Other EU countries have taken note of the positive effects these talented people have had in our economy, and are even considering bringing forward their own admission of new member state nationals. Strong competition will come as the Baltics’ own revving economies scoop up their brightest and best as they whizz past us.