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.

A thousand unemployed call centre workers cheer...

It's happening in India too. Three cities in a row, I've found that waiting and kitchen staff in hotels in India were predominantly Chinese.

Fair enough, a lot of people like Chinese food, even in India. But I cannot fathom how it could be cost-effective for employers to take on migrant workers ahead of one of the lowest- paid workforces there is.

Perhaps the Chinese government is subsidising this as part of some sort of training programme? Does anyone out there know if there is method behind this madness?

Surely when Chinese staff are populating the rosters of hotels in a place like India, we've already exceeded even the flimsy economic purpose for mass migration?

And how can the Indian authorities justify these jobs going to non-Indians, given the poverty and deprivation in the country?

And have they foreseen the negative effects on their tourist industry?

After all, it wasn't that long ago that they were hiring hotel staff for Connemara in Newfoundland because so many complaints were coming in to Bord Failte from American tourists about non-English speaking staff in Irish establishments.

And with no Irish forthcoming for the jobs, they looked for staff in the one other place where people sounded and looked Irish. There is, it appears, a premium of authenticity that tourists attach to visiting places like Ireland or India that involves interacting with locals and not with imported Chinese labour.

So why are Indian hotels hiring from China? Does anyone know?

The capital of East Ireland

This BBC radio 3 debate was only recently drawn to my attention. It dates from December 2006, prior to Liverpool's assumption of the European City of Culture title. But it has possibly more relevance now.

The question posed is fiendishly simple: Is Liverpool really an English city?

Or is it actually the primary outpost of Irish cultures (Gaelic and Dissenter) in Britain, some sort of proto-capital of a notional East Ireland?

Or is it better seen as a city state, a one-time global port now irreparably independent in spirit with a greater regional than national sense of identity?

Or perhaps like Hong Kong or Cape Town, Liverpool is really just the nearest of the many obscure outposts of the Empire to London, a post-colonial entity struggling to shrug off the post-imperial hangover?

There's no doubt that the city suffers disproportionately from negative stereotyping and slurs from the rest of the nation it purports to be part of. And there's no doubt that the denizens of Scouseland love to assert their separateness in a wide range of ways.

So, is Liverpool really an English city? Best listen and find out what the locals think.

Time for a new immigration and asylum system

So finally the authorities have started removing the Roma who had been living in their own faeces on a motorway roundabout, seeking to extort free money and housing from the Irish taxpayer.

News reports have revealed how these people, with no visible means of support, had nevertheless been banking four figure sums in Western Union accounts. Either that money came from begging, such as I have already highlighted, or from out-and-out robbery.

Comments by Gardai in some news reports suggest the latter, in the form of handbag snatching, is the most likely source of much of the income they obtained.

The Romanian embassy is appalled by the behaviour of these people. They have repeatedly said so in public too. The Irish authorities have done their best for them, repeatedly offering them free flights home, healthcare, social services assistance, and even going so far as to take into care three at-risk children from the camp, which is soiled by the collective faeces of over 100 gypsies.

But none of that is sufficient for these people, who gravitated here from France and Spain seeking free housing and dole outs of funds from the Irish state, seeking to claim asylum (even though no EU citizen can claim asylum in another EU state) and demand the same lengthy list of freebies that other nationals have eagerly came here to receive.

To achieve that aim of a free life at our expense, these people robbed, begged, refused their children education and lived in their own filth. That is child abuse, pure and simple. While the women and children should be heading back to Bucharest, the menfolk ought to be doing prison time for those repeated acts of child abuse. But they won't. If we can get them onto a plane we'll be lucky.

As for the 38 refusing to leave, prison is now the preferred option. Warrants should be issued for their arrests on child abuse charges. Investigations by Revenue and the Gardai into the source of their incomes should proceed, and charges forwarded to the DPP in relation to tax evasion and theft.

The Romanian government should receive the bill for this. They have behaved honourably, but issuing handwringing statements is insufficient. Perhaps if they were forced to pay for the behaviour of their nationals, they would start taking this issue much more seriously.

This country showed good grace and the desire to help others repeatedly in the recent past and has seen that grace abused by criminals from all over the world. We've had 97% of Nigerian nationals who sought asylum proven to be liars. We've seen hundreds of cases of asylum seekers breaking the law in Ireland once given the chance of a new life here.

This shouldn't surprise anyone, except perhaps the bleeding heart professional vested interests of the likes of Pavee Point and the Refugee Council. After all, it isn't cheap to get to Ireland from Romania or Nigeria. Only the criminal classes can generally afford to travel. Those in real need of asylum, the people of Darfur, or Uganda, or Cambodia aren't coming. They can't afford it.

And with the accession of the Eastern EU states, we've seen the influx of Roma gypsies, who don't want to work, but are happy to live in their own squalor, use their children to beg with menaces, are suspected thieves and known to be fond of resolving disputes with large knives.

People forget we didn't have to open the doors to these people. We didn't have to permit large scale abuse of the asylum system. We showed hospitality and saw it repeatedly and systematically abused on a massive scale.

I propose we shut down all asylum programmes with immediate effect, and refuse entry to the state to anyone who shows up without the correct travel documentation.

In place of the current system, which has shown its flaws and inability to keep up with the scammers, I suggest we take two Aer Lingus planes and fly them to places with known and proven need.

Let us prove our dedication to the asylum process by removing ourselves from all current conventions and conducting an emergency intervention programme in actual warzones. Let us fly planes to Darfur, to the Ivory Coast, to Uganda, and to the other places at actual war (unlike Nigeria or Romania) and give a new life in Ireland to people who actually deserve it.

In most of the places on the planet where people have the greatest need of asylum, Irish charity workers are already on the ground. We should consult these NGO workers to establish who ought to be given the chance of a new life in Ireland and use them to establish screening processes to keep out criminals.

Then we can rest assured that we really are doing our bit to assist the most unfortunate. Unlike these thieving Roma chancers or the scamming Nigerians we foolishly let in thus far.

The lies they tell us

(Number one in an occasional series)

Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea, writing in his Sunday Independent column in Summer 2002, spoke out about the Nice Treaty then being debated in the country. He told us:

"The second myth is that the Nice Treaty will mean mass immigration from the new EU member countries in Eastern Europe. This is probably the most odious of the myths propagated by some in the "No" campaign."

According to today's Irish Times, over 200,000 people legally migrated to Ireland for work last year, and of those 130,000 came from the new accession states. Just so we're clear - this number does not include asylum seekers or illegal migrants.

The Times quotes the Department of Social and Family Affairs thus:

"Of the 130,000 PPS numbers provided to accession-state nationals during 2006, most were from Poland (87,115), followed by Lithuania (14,805), Slovakia (9,857) and Latvia (7,368)."

Now, doesn't that sound just a little like the mass immigration from new EU member countries in Eastern Europe that Willie O'Dea vociferously swore wasn't going to happen?

Seven months wasted

A Guardian journalist just spent seven months undercover as a member of the British National Party. Amazingly, he made it as high as London organiser for the party during his stint.

Splashed all over the paper's front page today are his exclusive revelations, gleaned as a result of his undercover efforts. These include:

• Members are advised not to be racist or anti-semitic
• They are told to act at all times in a way that brings credit to the party
• They use encryption software to protect their member lists
• They occasionally use false names while on party business for fear of losing their jobs otherwise, especially those in the public sector.

Is it just me, or do all of those 'revelations' seem perfectly sensible, and in some cases, admirable? I'm no fan of the far right, but from the sounds of these 'revelations', the BNP under Griffin has transformed itself from a fascist bootboy organisation into an anti-immigration party which is little further right than some Tories or PDs.

If this is the best the Guardian can do in terms of a smear job after having obtained unprecedented access to the party's inner circle for months on end, then perhaps it really is the case that the BNP of today is not the beast it once was.

In fact, to me the biggest concerns arising from the article are that the Guardian is prepared to 'out' people who are not politicians as members of a political party, and that people who are members of a legitimate political party fear losing their public sector jobs solely because of that membership.

If we're talking fascism, then publishing member lists of a political party in a newspaper or threatening people's jobs because of their political affiliations seem to be fairly fascist acts to me.

And it is very possible that the tame aspect of these 'revelations' will have the opposite effect to that intended by the Guardian - that of encouraging more people to think of the BNP as an increasingly mainstream organisation.

Of course, this is a process already underway. The BNP are gaining up to a hundred new members a week and obtained nearly 10% of the vote in recent British council elections.

There are of course major concerns with aspects of the British far right. Their policies in relation to Ireland for starters. Or the recent arrest of former BNP members in a bomb plot that was almost totally ignored by the media, including the Guardian.

But the weakness of these revelations about the current state of the party is likely to attract rather than repel people in the UK who are as concerned about the tidal wave of immigration they are experiencing and angry about the lies they have been told about immigration by more centrist parties.

And since I'm guessing that wasn't the intention of the Guardian when they set out on this undercover mission, I'd say that was seven months wasted.