Chilean refugees feared as Communists

REFUGEES from Pinochet’s Chile were feared as anarchists and potential recruits for the IRA.

Minister for Justice Patrick Cooney stood alone in expressing grave reservations about allowing Chileans into the country, and took exception to a Government memorandum which indicated the support of all departments.

The Government was only considering allowing 12 families into the country, noting that, unlike the acceptance of Hungarian refugees in 1956, the Chileans would be looking for permanent resettlement rather than temporary asylum.

There was also the view that the unemployment rate and the lack of a Spanish-speaking community meant Ireland was a less suitable destination than other European countries.

But these concerns paled in comparison to the objections of the Minister for Justice who warned in a letter to the Minister for Foreign Affairs in February 1974 that: “Our society is less cosmopolitan than that of West European countries generally ... the absorption of even a limited number of foreigners of this kind could prove extremely difficult.”

He went on: “The Hungarian refugees who came here in 1956 posed problems beyond what is recorded in your Memorandum. The fact is that they failed to settle down and, even when the majority had left for other countries, the few remaining either in Knockalisheen Camp or elsewhere in the country were running into continual trouble to the extent that eventually an ad misericordiam plea had to be made to the relevant British and US authorities (who had already taken their own quota and some of ours) to agree to take them ‘off our hands’.”

He said Chilean refugees would pose even greater problems than their Hungarian predecessors because: “The indications seem to be that they (or, at all events, many of them) are refugees because they are Marxists and probably communists and it is to be assumed that a significant proportion of their number are ‘activists’.

“It would be reasonable to assume that if they have been political militants they will not change their outlook on arrival in this country and that they are liable sooner or later to engage in political agitation here. There would be no effective sanction against such a person - deportation would not be possible.”

He added that some sort of screening programme would have to be set up to vet potential refugees.