How do you know our rulers are spoofing? A cynic might say the tell is that they have their mouths open. But being sweet-natured, I would suggest two sure signs. One is that they are posing as persecuted truth-tellers. The other is that they are implying they will do something they will never actually do \u2013 take on major power centres in the Irish economy. On both counts, the Government is clearly spoofing about migration.<\/p>\n
A big thing has happened in Irish public life in the last month: the Government has decided there are too many migrants coming to live in Ireland and that the growth in our population must be slowed. It is not obvious how this momentous decision has been reached or what detailed studies lie behind it. But both T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris<\/a> and Minister for Justice Jim O\u2019Callaghan<\/a> have explicitly announced this momentous shift in national strategy.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a shift saturated in spoofery. The first tell is Harris posturing as Honest Simon beset by \u201cpathetic\u201d people trying to \u201cshut down … debate\u201d. This combination of self-pity and self-aggrandisement is familiar from the allegedly anti-elitist mode of right-wing populism.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s be clear: Ireland needs a genuine debate about migration. But debate is not sloganeering. It\u2019s not verbal gesturing. It\u2019s not resort to sweeping generalities. It\u2019s not peddling disinformation. It is serious engagement with tangible realities.<\/p>\n Deciding to reduce migration is perfectly legitimate. One may or may not agree with it, but it is a government\u2019s duty to make these big decisions about the future of the country. The only problem is that it\u2019s also a government\u2019s duty to say why it has come to this decision and how it is going to act on it. And here the rest is silence.<\/p>\n So far, the Government might as well have announced that Ireland is too damn wet, that we can\u2019t cope with the floods and that the amount of rainfall has to be reduced. Except that while complaining about the weather is a harmless national pastime, complaining about immigration is assuredly not harmless. <\/p>\n What is especially damaging is the deliberate confusion of immigration and asylum. The Government wants to discourage asylum seekers and speed up the deportation of those who fail to be granted the right to remain here. This is in itself a reasonable subject for debate. But 90 per cent of immigrants are not asylum seekers. They are people who come here to work or study.<\/p>\n In the second category, Government could cut the 30,000 visas it issues to language schools. But it also reiterated last week its desire to make Ireland \u201ca hub for international students\u201d, so presumably those reductions would be nullified by increases in the number of foreign students attending Irish universities.<\/p>\n That leaves us with the workers. Any genuine debate about whether there are \u201ctoo many\u201d immigrants and how to cut their numbers has to start with the facts about the Irish labour market. Where, exactly, does it have an over-supply of workers?<\/p>\n Let\u2019s be a little crude and say that Ireland has two roughly equal economies, one bourgeois and one proletarian. Both have serious labour shortages.<\/p>\n