Leaked documents blow lid off hypocrisy of immigration stance
IF you want to know what populism looks like look no further than Government politicians pontificating about clamping down on illegal immigrants.
The hypocrisy of this was clearly illustrated this week when documents that the Government hid before the referendums were leaked.
They show the Department of Justice warned that amending the constitutional definition of family would “massively restrict the State’s ability to regulate its immigration system”.
Senator Michael Mcdowell pointed this out in the run up to the referendums and the Government accused him of scaremongering. Now we know it was true.
A leaked Fianna Fail memo suggests asylum seekers who break the law should be deported.
This time last year if any commentator dared to make a similar statement the outcry from all the Government parties and Sinn Fein would have been such they might have lost their job. Indeed I was branded a right-wing extremist for merely suggesting last May that there should be a cap on the number of refugees and asylum seekers allowed into the country.
But now as recent polls show that up to 75% of voters believe there should be a cap on asylum seekers, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and even Sinn Fein have all changed their tune, at least in public.
A Eurostat poll released yesterday shows that migration and asylum is the second most important issue for Irish people in the forthcoming European Parliament elections in June.
The Government’s politically-motivated change of heart did not come about because of the country’s inability to accommodate the growing number of asylum seekers and migrants or the threat this poses to social cohesion.
It has nothing to do with the vast sums of taxpayers’ money spent on refugees which is many multiples of the amount allocated to the country’s defence forces.
Even the recent disclosure of a secret Justice Department document warning the Government that most asylum seekers are economic migrants did not bring about this seemingly tougher stance.
It’s just a smokescreen to save their political skins in what promise to be bruising elections
The Taniaste said a “shared response” is needed from the EU to deal with the everincreasing number of migrants coming to Europe.
If that’s the case why has his Government not claimed a cent this year from a multi-billion EU fund set up to help with costs related to the removal of nonnationals whose deportation orders have been confirmed?
If this administration is failing to avail of the benefits of the current system, why should the public believe they will use a new one to expel those who have no right to be here?
This week Senator Mcdowell, who spearheaded the campaign against the referendums, hit out at the way the Migration Pact is being “rubber stamped” by the government with very limited scrutiny or Dail debate.
If passed he claimed it will “surrender to Europe, complete competence in relation to asylum seeking, migration and the like”.
This week the news website Gript finally received documents the under the Freedom of Information Act that the Government most definitely didn’t want the public to see before the referendums.
Had they been made public they would have totally destroyed minister’s claims that changing the definition of family would not lead to uncontrolled immigration.
One of the Justice Department documents states: “It is not an exaggeration to say that it will be extremely difficult, and perhaps impossible, to maintain a meaningful immigration system should the people accept these amendments.”
If the public suspect the Government is not being entirely up-front about the implications of the Migration Pact, or their supposed tough new stance on immigration, who can blame them?
Mcdowell said new pact will surrender our migration policy to EU