Anti-immigration rhetoric never ends with 'just a protest'

We need to teach our children that fear cannot be the loudest voice in the room

Mon, 15 Sep, 2025 - 01:00

Orla McAndrew

You don’t have to be a mother to feel it, the instinct to protect children. For some it begins with carrying life inside them, for others it comes through nurturing, teaching, mentoring, or simply having the opportunity to observe their pure innocence. However it arrives, once you’ve felt a connection, it rarely limits itself to “your own”. It expands outward to the children of the world.

That’s why I can’t stand quietly when I see the rise of anti-immigration protests across Ireland. I am raising three girls, and I want them to grow up in a country that greets others with open arms.

We should know better. For generations, we were the ones on the boats, the ones at the mercy of landlords, the ones whose accents marked us as outsiders in London, Boston, Sydney. And yet here we are, in 2025, with people standing outside accommodation centres shouting “Ireland is full”.

I know what fear does. When a community feels overlooked by the Government, when housing and healthcare feel precarious, anger looks for an easy target. Immigrants have become that target. But we can’t afford to let fear dictate who we are.

The ongoing genocide in Gaza has really opened my eyes. Thousands of children killed, entire families wiped out. Every night I go to bed thinking about mothers there, mothers like me, who would give anything just to keep their children safe. And then I see people here, in Ireland, raging against families fleeing bombs and poverty. The disconnect breaks my heart.

Lately I have noticed Irish flags cropping up in unexpected places, tied to motorway bridges, draped over railings, taped to lampposts. I used to see that flag and think of sport, of celebrations, of unity. Now I wonder if the person who placed it there meant welcome or warning. Symbols matter. When national pride is twisted into a banner for exclusion, we all lose something precious.

This is about children. It is about whether we are willing to let a Syrian child, or an Afghan child, or a Gazan child find safety on our shores. It is about whether we look at those families and see human beings or “problems”. Food has taught me something about this. At my table, flavours from other places are not a threat. They are a gift. Irish food has been enriched by Arabic spices, by Asian herbs, by African grains. Dishes tell the stories of people, and people bring richness.

Yet while we happily eat falafel or sip flat whites, too many of us still slam the door on the people who carry those flavours with them.

I don’t pretend things are simple. Our housing crisis is real. Schools are crowded. Hospitals are stretched. But here is the obvious truth: immigrants did not cause those problems, and scapegoating them will not solve them.

Michael Byrne pointed this out clearly in these pages only last week, reminding us that while immigration does add pressure to demand, it also strengthens supply through labour, investment, and contribution. The real root of our housing crisis lies in policy failure, planning bottlenecks, and speculation, not in the families arriving here in search of safety.

We pride ourselves on being the land of a hundred thousand welcomes. But a welcome is not a slogan. It is a choice. It means putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes, remembering the times we too were pushed to the edges, and deciding that we will not build our future on exclusion.

There is another truth we must face. Anti-immigration rhetoric never ends with “just a protest”. It corrodes trust, it fuels violence. We have already seen children targeted, immigrant families attacked. Once you normalise hate, you cannot control where it goes. And as a mother, I cannot stand by while that seed is being planted in my daughters’ Ireland.

If we are willing to welcome people into our kitchens, to eat their food, to profit from their labour, then we have a moral obligation to welcome them into our communities.

I want my girls to inherit an Ireland that remembers where we came from, that knows the taste of exile and the relief of belonging.

I want them to grow up understanding that humanity is not a zero-sum game. That kindness is not diminished by being shared. That the bitter notes in life, like in food, can add depth if we are brave enough to face them.

So the next time you see footage of an anti-immigration protest, I ask you to look harder. Look past the banners. Look at the flags draped across railings and ask whether they represent the Ireland you believe in. See the children hiding behind their mothers’ legs. See the fathers wondering if they have made a mistake bringing their families here. And ask yourself: what kind of Ireland do we want our children to inherit?

I know my answer. I want an Ireland that opens its doors. I want an Ireland that teaches my girls, and yours, that every human life has value. And I will keep saying it, as a mother, as a caterer, as a supporter of Palestine, and as someone who believes that we cannot call ourselves free if we deny freedom to others.

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Because when we strip it all back, this is not about “them”. It is about us. About who we are choosing to be. And I refuse to let fear be the loudest voice in the room.