Looking beyond the cheap labour

REMEMBER several years ago when refugees first began coming to Ireland?

Remember the indignation from certain quarters and the pictures of long queues outside the Refugee Applications Centre?

Remember the hyped-up fear of diversity which quickly manifested itself in countless dramatic and emotive headlines?

And remember the failure of the Government to respond in an adequate and timely fashion? To be fair, there was an element of being caught on the hop back then, since there was little or no warning that from an inflow of practically zero asylum seekers one year, close to 10,000 would arrive the next.

Nevertheless, the Government’s response left much to be desired and was held responsible for engendering unprecedented levels of racism.

In fact the tardiness and haphazard policy approach to the whole area meant that the so-called baby loophole - no more than a coincidental legal quirk - became an almost de facto immigration system for years.

Only a fool would have tried to go through the refugee applications system with its almost cast iron guarantee of a refusal when the baby loophole came with a certified guarantee.

Remember all that? Now fast forward to the present day. The Constitution has been changed, some refugee centres lie idle and we now need everybody we can find to keep the steam-rolling economy going.

That’s a fact all the best financial minds agree on. We desperately need more workers - 50,000 a year for the foreseeable future in fact. We cannot attract them fast enough.

That’s why Ireland took the brave and liberal approach when Europe opened up in May 2004 to allow anyone who wanted from the 10 new accession states to come and work here.

It was the right thing to do. Unlike the ham-fisted approach to asylum seekers, the Government called it perfectly this time. The workers we needed began to arrive, the economy forged on and everyone was happy.

Well, not quite. Unfortunately because another aspect of Government policy - that of labour regulation - had been completely neglected, our new migrants were left wide open and vulnerable to abuse.

With nothing - 21 labour inspectors for a workforce of two million is nothing - to protect workers’ rights, Gama and other scandals ensued.

Thankfully the intensity of those scandals - culminating in the Irish Ferries dispute - and the Government’s desire to mollify the unions into another social partnership agreement means that labour regulation will now likely be increased significantly.

But it is too late on some fronts. After years of mixed messages on immigration from the Government, the public appears to have adopted a permanent negative suspicion of migrants.

That was confirmed this week with the surprise MRBI/Irish Times poll showing that 78% of those surveyed wanted to reintroduce work permits for accession workers, a proposal first flagged by Labour leader Pat Rabbitte.

The poll found that most believed migration had been good for the economy and society but at the same time were concerned about jobs displacement.

Pat Rabbitte called the apparent contradiction a “sophisticated response” by the public. Other political leaders adopted a similar tone. To vote to restrict the number of immigrants is not a racist sentiment, it seems, so long as you say you think immigrants are good for society.

That’s not so far from the old classic: I’m not racist but.... Far from being “sophisticated” the response of those polled this week is, if not racist, illogically and irrationally selfish.

The biggest problem with this week’s poll is that the concerns of those who took part seem to have precious little basis in reality.

Unemployment remains the lowest in Europe, with jobs being created for pretty much every sector of the economy at an astonishing rate.

Indeed economists will argue that immigrants are actually creating jobs that would not have been there without them, given that the domestic labour force is just about as close to full employment as is possible.

What a pity the brave decision to open our boarders to accession workers was not accompanied by the wherewithal to ensure their rights could be enforced.

What a pity that when it comes to immigrants, be they asylum seekers or migrant labourers, we seem only capable of viewing them as either a problem or a cheap source of labour.