How would we feel if there was an immigration clampdown on us?

THEY'VE just passed a new law in the United States. It's been through Congress and the Senate with little fuss or publicity and was signed into law by President Bush a couple of weeks ago.

I can't understand why we're not up in arms about it especially as it has been made clear that it is specifically for the purpose of cleaning up the whole business of Irish people working illegally in the States.

It's called The Non-Americans Irish Act and, at first glance, it seems innocuous enough. Section one defines a non-American Irish person as anyone from Ireland who is not an American citizen or hasn't applied to become one. Sections two and three make it clear that, except in certain circumstances, non-American Irish people can own property and be treated under the law exactly the same as Americans.

Section four, however, sets out the exceptions. It gives the attorney general the power to make what are called non-American Irish orders and it says that he can do this "if and whenever he thinks proper ... in respect either of all non-American Irish people, Irish people generally or particular Irish people".

These are the things he can do and don't forget that he can do them by order:

He can prohibit Irish people from entering the United States;

He can force them to land only in particular places;

He can prohibit the Irish from leaving or impose restrictions on how they leave including deciding where they can go;

He can deport Irish people by order;

If they're not deported, he can compel them to live in particular districts or places in the US or prevent them from living in other parts;

He can require Irish people while in the US to comply with particular provisions as to "registration, change of abode, travelling, employment and other like matters".

Most spectacular of all, the bill also gives the attorney general unlimited powers of arrest, the power to enter buildings by force if necessary and the power to compel anyone providing accommodation to keep a register. In any legal proceedings following arrest, the onus will be on the Irish person or people involved to prove that they're not guilty of an offence.

Speaking after the passage of the bill, the attorney general made it clear that it would be applied rigorously. "After all," he said, "America simply cannot regard the Irish as belonging to the huddled masses of the world and we cannot invite them to migrate here at will.

"It is, among other things, the business of government to decide, in accordance with law, who is admitted to live in the United States and who is not."

You might think that the heartlessness of that last couple of remarks, coupled with the draconian nature of the bill itself, might have caused an outcry. The reason there hasn't been any furore is, of course, because I made it all up. The US hasn't passed such a law and they haven't made it more or less a crime just to be an Irish person. If they had, you wouldn't be reading about it here first.

But we have a law on our statute book exactly like the one I have described. It is called the Aliens Act 1935 and it is the basis of all our law where immigration is concerned. It contains all the provisions I have set out above, including placing the onus of proof on all aliens to prove that they are not here illegally. For nearly 70 years, we have applied that law to the "huddled masses of the world", especially the ones who look or sound foreign as a result of colour or speech.

The Aliens Act has been modified a number of times and, on paper at least, people who want to come into Ireland from abroad have some rights. But rights only exist when there is a mechanism to enforce them and a will to recognise them. Our law and its institutions steadfastly refuse to recognise that aliens can or should be treated the same as the rest of us.

A law that would cause uproar if it were applied to us causes only silence when it is applied by us. The silence is created in large measure by the fact that the law is applied administratively. The power under the Act allowing all sorts of things to be done by order means that there is little or no accountability. The power of the minister of the day to exclude people, and the fact that such power is exercised in practice by officials who aren't even accountable in any real sense to their minister, means that there is ample scope for abuse.

It is one of the first rules of bureaucracy that, when there is scope for abuse, there will be abuse.

And the human rights abuses that permeate the treatment of immigrants in Ireland and underpin the entire philosophy of immigration law are (or ought to be) a source of shame.

The essence of our immigration law is that anyone who isn't Irish is an alien. Any alien who isn't from the EU and isn't a bona fide refugee is here illegally. That can be fixed by work and residency permits and they are freely available for, say white Americans or Australians. Anyone else is out (unless we really need them).

If you're Irish and you want to better yourself by going to America, you can write and apply. You can visit and see if you like it. If you can support yourself, you will have a better than evens chance of being allowed to stay.

If you're Romanian or West African and you want to better yourself by coming to Ireland, there's nowhere to which you can write or apply. There's no possibility of being made welcome to look around and there is no chance of your skills ever being recognised by the Irish State as desirable. If you can't prove you're a refugee, you're a liar, you're illegal and you're out. Even if it means tearing your family apart, you're out.

And you might be hunted down by our system while you're here. We have a Minister for Justice who recently uttered the words that I assigned above to my fictional US Attorney General, words that are contemptuously dismissive of the "huddled masses of the world". In the week when he had to reveal some of the worst crime figures in our history, he presided as minister over a farcical garda operation aimed at hunting down people whose only crime is breach of a law that we couldn't and wouldn't apply to our own citizens. What a peculiar ordering of priorities by a system that has failed to protect thousands of its own citizens from crimes committed by other citizens.

The most liberal and humane immigration system in the world will have to be bounded by limits of one kind or another. We have chosen to go the other way to hide behind a law that is as vicious and cruel as it is out of date. Let's hope nobody ever does decide to apply our immigration system to us.