If you’re black, there is no queue

TWO wealthy lawyers sat round a table at the Justice Committee on Wednesday pontificating about the contemptuous poor.

Michael McDowell boomed out his favourite crowd-pleaser, the scourge of ‘bogus asylum seekers’ (backing vocalist Jim O’Keeffe sang in harmony throughout, his only bum note was that we weren’t firing them out quickly enough).

You have to hand it to McDowell, though. Just when you think he can’t ratchet a debate up any more, along he comes and does just that.

McDowell prides himself on telling it like it is. He claims (and he’s probably right) that the majority of people are behind him on this issue.

But giving the people what they want is a dope peddlers’ argument. Nobody will ever gain votes calling for extra immigration into a Western European country (even though we will need it very soon). A politician who is brave enough to say that we have little enough to worry about on the crime front might as well collect his P45 there and then.

Politicians (and the media for that matter) know there is an innate conservatism within us that fears change of any kind. They know that tougher laws (like ASBOs) can be passed on the back of (bogus) perceptions of growing crime rates and street anarchy.

They know too there is a ‘soft’ hostility to asylum seekers and to immigrants in general. The nice word for all that is populist. The not-as-nice phrase is ‘playing on people’s fears’.

Throughout Europe, there are a lot of McDowells out there.

During his verbal rampage, the minister declared: “There’s a large amount of political correctness going on in Ireland and a large amount of this is bogus.”

This has become the standard preface for saying something that is objectionable and, often, indefensible.

Lenihan’s kebabery paled in comparison with McDowell’s outburst.

He railed against bogus asylum seekers with their “cock-and-bull stories about ritual sacrifice”. He followed up with promises of even quicker return-to-sender action.

If he had his way, a system would be in place where “I could have an interview at the airport, find out the cock-and-bull stories” and kick them out on the next flight.

“Unfortunately, the UN Convention requires me to go through due process in respect of all these claims.”

McDowell, in that statement, seems to suggest that, like Michael Howard, he would prefer if Ireland was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention on Refugees. If that is the case, he has lost the plot.

But for all his attacks on the soft liberals, McDowell’s argument is a dishonest one. He fails to point out that there are ‘genuine’ asylum seekers. People who aren’t as clever won’t make the distinction; for them, his contemptuous term ‘bogus’ covers them all. It isn’t helped when his party colleague Tom Morrissey later spouts the statistic that 94% of applications fail, which is untrue. The correct figure is 83% after appeals.

The core argument of McDowell (and of Jim O’Keeffe for that matter) is that these people are queue jumpers. In fact, under direct provision, asylum seekers get indigent allowances (€19.10 per week) and are given no right to work.

Immigration is as old as the human race. It rose during the past decade because of unprecedented turmoil and warfare in many African and Asian countries and because of the increasing gap between the rich northern and the poor southern hemisphere.

It’s rich for Government parties and for Fine Gael to be wailing about undocumented Irish in the US while out-toughing each other to hound illegal aliens from Ireland. The sheer cant of it all.

And as for the queue-jumpers, if you’re from Africa and you are black, there is no queue. You can’t claim like the Irish in the US you’re going on holidays, because you’ll get the bum’s rush. The only way you can get in is by seeking refugee status.

Look at the statistics for legal immigration and you’ll see the cherry-picking going on. Hundreds of work permits have been given granted so far this year to the well-educated from Asia, Australia and South Africa (which got 623).

For the rest of Africa, it is a different story. The stats are grim: Congo has got two so far this year; Iraq (one); Nigeria (29); Senegal (one); Sudan (four); and Zambia (three).

It’s the rich wot gets the pleasure. It’s the poor wot gets the blame.