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The plight of the new 'Irish' immigrant

Aiden Ball/Seven Oaks Magazine | 05.04.2004 08:23

As centuries-old demographic patterns are reversed, Ireland's North and South react sometimes violently to a new wave of immigrants. Will the weight of Irish history result in humane immigration policy, or will past violence continue?

Recently, Vancouver's Province newspaper ran a story that took me completely by surprise. The story told of the growing problem of racist attacks against immigrant families living in Northern Ireland. Apparently, the worst of these attacks occurred on December 21, 2003 in Loyalist South Belfast. That day, four men broke into the homes of two Chinese families and one African family, assaulting the occupants inside and forcing them to leave. Two of the women assaulted in the attacks were pregnant, and one of the husbands was smashed in the face with a brick while trying to defend his family.

Being of Irish descent, I was both ashamed and astonished to find out about these cowardly attacks. Ashamed that my people, who define themselves as an “immigrant nation,” could perpetrate such heinous crimes against immigrants. And amazed that there were actually immigrant families of Chinese and African origin who had chosen to make their homes in south Belfast. In fact, I was so amazed by this that I wondered whether I had read the story wrong. They must have been talking about unfortunate Catholic families living in a Loyalist area of Belfast.

Upon further investigation I found out that in fact the story was accurate, and more. It appears that Ireland, including the war torn, occupied North, is experiencing net immigration. This means that for the first time in documented history, more people are moving to Ireland than are moving away. Unbelievably, 800 years of Irish history has been reversed overnight. According to the Central Statistics Organisation of Ireland, the Irish Republic received 41,300 more people through immigration than it lost through migration in 2002. The North, over the same period, received about 100 more people than it lost. While these statistics may not seem impressive at first glance, they are in fact monumental. Roughly, five million people — north and South — populate Ireland today. According to Newsweek International, with the amount of immigration that the country is experiencing, old Ireland has acquired the highest immigration rate in the western world. Four times higher than even the United States, the so-called “melting pot” that had once attracted enormous numbers of Irish immigrants.


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Aiden Ball/Seven Oaks Magazine
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