Ingrates of the Year

It's hard to comprehend the ingratitude expressed by asylum seekers who threaten hunger strike when asked to leave their holiday camp accommodation and move elsewhere while their claims are considered.

After all, these people have fled life-threatening environments, and have arrived on the shores of Ireland pleading for a safe haven. That's the claim, anyway.

Of course, it's a claim that makes no sense whatsoever. Justice figures show that in excess of 90% of such claims are bogus, and the claimants utilise all routes at their disposal, from destroying their ID documents on arrival, to repeated expensive appeals (paid for by the Irish taxpayer) to delay their lies being exposed.

The aim is to delay the process sufficiently so that it results in their nationalisation, either by the former route of having a child born in Ireland or the current favourites - marriage to an Irish citizen or nationalisation on the basis of how long they've been here.

Furthermore, the vast majority of claimants are not from places where their lives could be genuinely considered at risk. Nigeria is not at war nor has it been for decades. It is an affluent country by African standards, with oil and mineral resources, a thriving film industry and large conurbations of industry. Yet a large proportion of asylum claims in Ireland are made by Nigerians.

Asylum claimants are expected to claim asylum in the first safe haven they reach. Obviously there are no direct flights from Lagos to Dublin. It's self-evident that the vast majority of asylum seekers here are simply economic migrants attracted by our generous social welfare provision.

West African countries for much of the past decade were rife with advertisements guiding people in how to claim asylum in Ireland, what to say in interviews, and what you can get from the state. It was an industry that only tailed off along with the economic downturn.

You would think that asylum cases might grow in times of economic difficulty. The fact they plummetted by 50% indicates that the bulk of claimants in Ireland were bogus. They were economic migrants.

Many successful claimants often end up holidaying back in their native countries despite their claim being based on the alleged fear of threat to their lives in those countries. We had one ridiculous case where an asylum seeker who was later elected mayor of Portlaoise returned to Nigeria to be celebrated in a parade. Surely that ought to have instantly invalidated his claim? Not in the upside-down logic of the Irish asylum system.

The poster girl for this methodology is Nigerian liar Pamela Izevbhekhai, who disgracefully invented an imaginary dead daughter to support her claim for asylum. Despite being found out a year ago, she is somehow still in Ireland, still costing the state a fortune as she endlessly appeals in ever higher courts.

There will inevitably be those hand-wringing self-loathers who will cry 'racism' as the first mention of criticism of asylum seekers. We saw this in the protests supporting Izevbhekhai. The country no longer has the resources to support the levels of economic migrants posing immorally as asylum seekers, and certainly need no longer listen to the delusions of the bleeding-heart classes and their facile attempts to throw Ireland's doors open to all-comers.

Simply put, we permitted 505,000 people to come to Ireland in recent years and now are experiencing unemployment of 452,000. The two numbers are obviously linked.

There is an ideological gap between those who consider that nation states have a primary duty of care to their own citizens, and those who support unfettered freedom of movement globally.

The former are baffled as to why the country is still paying to house economic migrants who lie to get into Ireland having failed to claim asylum in countries they've travelled through (where social welfare payments are lower), especially when those bogus claimants then demonstrate their gratitude by ever-escalating demands - the right to work, free education, new schools for their kids, and of course the right to choose to stay in a holiday camp.

They're also baffled by being called racists for questioning these issues.

The latter seem to think that somehow a small island on the edge of the Atlantic which is mired in debt and on the brink of default can afford to house all of Africa on generous social welfare payments, and support the legal fees incurred by their endless risible appeals in court.

I've called before for a new approach to asylum and immigration in Ireland. Even if implemented now, it's still years too late.

But a good start would be to immediately introduce as an emergency measure an end to all funding of legal appeals in asylum cases. And in that context, the claimants at Mosney can be offered a nice simple choice - take what you're given or get out.

They can be provided with flights back to their country of origin, or to whatever country they transitted through en route to Ireland if they still aren't happy.