Immigration And The New Ireland

All right, I'm going to admit it straight up. I'm prejudiced. Yes, I'm a racist.

I have certain likes and dislikes about the immigrants coming to Ireland and I'm particularly prejudiced in favour of the Polish. I think they're wonderful and an absolute addition to any community.

Now that the nice stuff is out of the way (and I will return to it later) let's get on to the - oh, careful here, Brady - other stuff.

For any of you reading this in the States, who perhaps left Ireland even as little as twenty years ago or less, you would not recognise the country to which you may be returning.

Let's leave aside the fact that nobody trusts our major institutions anymore: whether they be the corrupt church, the many equally corrupt politicians that we have and who will never do time; or the lawyers and barristers who have made themselves millionaires by way of that corruption.

Two decades ago, to see a coloured face or to hear someone talking with a French or Bulgarian accent would have been considered to be exotic in the extreme. Today it is the norm, and that is as it should be.

I remember working in Limerick between 1979 and '82 during a period when a small group of Libyan students came over here to work for a while.

There were shock waves of intolerance throughout the Land of the Welcomes, culminating in one of these poor souls, far from home, dying with a screwdriver through his head.

One of the very bad things that they did was to date Irish girls, you see. How unforgivable is that?

Things, mercifully, are different now. Only unevolved apes - unfortunately there are many of them - strive to get their thought processes working in that hate-filled manner these days. However, I will have to add a few points of my own here.

The first stopping off place that a refugee is supposed to take refuge in is, by law, the first country that they come to.

So how come a small island like ours, right on the edge of the Atlantic, is being expected to take more than its share?

You'd have to jump across half a dozen other countries first to get here.

Then again, those countries don't have the soft welfare system that we have.

When I say "soft", of course you'll understand that this is towards immigrants.

Our own out-of-workers don't get it soft, that's for sure. €197 per week is not going to get you too far in modern- day Ireland. And that would be fine if there were a level playing field, but that there surely is not.

Being Irish and out of work is something to be ashamed of here. The welfare authorities - yes, I'm talking about you smug little jobsworths who sit behind your desks - will, rather than be supportive, actually make the person who is looking for help after, in many cases, having paid his taxes for years - feel like a sponger and less than human.

Being an immigrant and out of work, on the other hand makes the welfare authorities go goo-goo-gaagaa over the poor family who have had to fight their way across half of Europe in order to get here to the Land of Milk and Honey.

I welcome most immigrants - hell, was there ever a country more given to roaming the globe than Ireland? - but at the moment we are having the vernacular taken out of us.

There are at the moment 300 jobs being lost every day in this small country. One in five who are now on welfare are non-Irish.

So these are legitimate concerns for people and should not be dismissed lightly.

There are certain well- organised groups landing here on a daily basis, while our cowardly government does nothing about it just in case they are called -oh no, there's that word again - racist, and who know immediately on landing here in the Land of the Suckers how to get to the nearest welfare office where they are welcomed with open arms.

They are entitled to far more than the out-of-work Paddy is entitled to and that's for damned sure.

How do you explain the amount of immigrants landing here who are eight and a half months pregnant but delighted that their child will be born on Irish soil?

This is information that I have collected from frustrated nurses, Ward Sisters and doctors over the last few years.

Come on, can you or I imagine landing on the African continent and knowing how to immediately get to the nearest welfare office?

I didn't think so. And as soon as you have arrived start giving out stipulations as to how you wish to be treated?

I can imagine how that would go down in some of these places.

You would be handed your testicles to play with and that would be if these guys were in a good mood.

Hell, we actually had one character here in Ireland six months ago who explained quite casually to the immigration authorities that since he had (and admitted it) raped and killed in his own country, he could not be sent back. The mind boggles. That was his reason for not being deported!

I am privileged, through my job, to travel a great deal and one of the things I always do - especially if away for a length of time - is to chat to and get involved with the community into which I have been welcomed.

Here, arriving every day, are people that we WANT to welcome but who insist in ghettoising themselves. This is bad. This leads to resentment.

As one Nigerian said to me: "We don't wish our women to go to these places of entertainment that you have here."

Well, at the risk of sounding-yes, racist - I think that non-nationalists who are living here and yet despise us and our way of life should take a bloody hike.

We seem to have learned nothing from the nightmare that England has turned into.

Instead of being allowed honest debate such as I wish to encourage it turns out that to write something like this is to be called a racist.

That's always the final word of the incompetent fools that one tries to engage with when this comes up.

Racist.

You know what? I don't care if that's what you think I am. Go ahead and think it, if it makes life easier for you to digest.

We have had here recently a disgraceful episode: Kevin Myers, a fine and respected journalist, wrote that perhaps it is time to stop sending the pointless amount of aid to Africa that we have haemorrhaged over the last two decades, ever since the rich rock singers Bono and Geldof made everybody feel guilty because no one felt the world's pain like they do.

Mr Myers, despite the obvious sanity of his suggestion was immediately reported to the authorities by the Organisation of the Usual Bloody Suspects.

For airing views that I consider to be completely legitimate he faces the very real possibility of two years in jail.

To his credit he didn't back down. To the discredit of Irish journalists there were no cries of utter outrage at this attack on the freedom the press.

There was one very honourable exception that I know of and that came in the form of one of our most fearless journalists, Mary Ellen Synon, who has indeed in the past faced what Mr Myers faced.

Will we ever get it into our heads that the money we send generally ends up in the hands of dictators?

If you (in Ireland) visit New York in September you will never cease to be amazed at the amount of stretch-limos that are around the place, or the amount of five star hotels that have the poor Africans and their thirty-strong entourage hanging out of them.

Hey, good luck to them. After all, we're the gobdaws who are paying for them - Ireland being per head of population the eejits who give more to Africa than anyone else in Europe.

Probably because we think that Bono will approve and so we turn a blind eye to the fact that as soon as he had to start paying tax in his own country he was gone like a light to Amsterdam.

Please, don't sicken me. If you have some spare shekels give it to anywhere except Africa because nothing will change there in my lifetime, for sure.

I promise you this, Bono, should you chance to be reading this on your new yacht on the Med - or is it The Edge's, no one seems sure - I will never give a penny to anything that you are concerned with. Nor will anyone that I can convince not to, in my own small way.

What makes me laugh about our crowd of so-called journalists (and I'm not including the great Gene Kerrigan or Richard Waghorne and a very small amount of others) is that these same pseudo-intellectuals will fight the corner of every bowsie who comes along, on behalf of their 'uman rights.

Pity they wouldn't start by backing one of their own.

To return to the start of this article: I love the Polish community, and there is quite a large one here.

They are friendly, integrate seamlessly with the community in which they have chosen to live (probably more than I do, come to think of it) and are humorous, happy and bloody hard-working.

Here in Galway they have their own newspaper now and, well, I just really like them.

This is the way we should be handling multiculturalism and the undoubted benefits that come with that.

But no, we choose to stifle debate by calling time on anyone who wishes to instigate such a thing as racist.

Another reason that I like the Polish became clear last week when it was announced that Poland will be the first country in the European Union to force convicted paedophiles to undergo chemical castration.

Here in Ireland we have the ludicrous situation whereby paedophiles can choose whether or not they wish to be counselled or not.

Me, I think that once you are locked up for such an offence you don't get the right to choose.

Oh, and by the way, only a few go for it. The other lot give the finger to the victims, the system and the taxpayer who is shelling out to keep these vermin in a nice, safe and cosy environment.

So, good for Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk (who has soared in the polls since his announcement).

Needless to say the usual whining bleeding-hearts are on his case.

European civil liberties groups have condemned his decision, saying that - yes, you guessed it - it violates their 'uman rights.

To which Mr. Tusk replied: "I don't think that you can call such individuals - such creatures - human beings. Therefore, I don't think that you can talk about human rights in such a case."

Perfect answer, Prime Minister. Just one thing: does it have to be chemical castration?

What's wrong with the good old fashioned farmyard castration?

Don't answer that, I know: the 'uman rights brigade, who care more for the perpetrator than the victim, might get their bearded, talk-to-the-plants and plant-a-tree for the Antarctic and kill anyone-who-eats-meat diapers in a twist.

If I'm not pushed off the twig in the meantime (always a possibility when you speak your mind) then I'll see you next week.

Same bat-time! Same bat-channel!