We must disown racist attitude to immigrants

ON arriving back in Ireland after living in Chicago for the last year, I took a taxi home.

The driver sympathised with those going abroad for work, describing how his own son was working in Australia and would soon have to leave on expiry of his visa.

Citing his sons’ visa restrictions, he then said that “we should have turned the tap off on immigrants into Ireland” during the boom, the implication being that they were somehow to blame for our current economic collapse and/or were pushing “real Irish people” to emigrate now.