The results of a Red C poll published in the Business Post at the weekend probably spoiled breakfast for many ministers and their advisors.
Apart completely from the poor showing in terms of political support for the Coalition parties, the poll dealt with issues relating to asylum seeking, refugee accommodation, and location of accommodation centres in local communities.
The opinions expressed are not all that surprising. 75% of persons polled (especially Sinn Féin supporters) agreed that Ireland is taking in “too many” refugees. All this is in the context that Ireland, while experiencing a profound domestic housing shortage, has increased the number of people housed in public accommodation from approximately 8000 in February 2022 to 86,000 now.
This figure reflects two separate streams of migrants – one composed of Ukrainian war refugees whose status as refugees has been automatically accepted by Ireland, and the other an increasing annual stream of non-Ukrainian asylum seekers from countries including Somalia, Albania, Georgia, the Middle East and other North and West African states.
At the heart of the matter is the important distinction -sometimes blurred, sometimes deliberately conflated or denied – between economic migrancy in international law, and asylum and international protection-seeking in international law.
International law established by successive conventions relating to granting refugee status to those fleeing war and persecution has developed dramatically since its inception after the Second World War. At that point acceptance of persons displaced was radically shaped by economic, geographical and transportation realities.
It simply would not have been possible for the vast majority of persons fleeing the Indo-Pakistani troubles or the Chinese civil war or colonial wars in Africa or Arab Israeli conflict in 1948-9 to get on a plane or a ship bound for western Europe seeking some form of asylum.
Nor did the 1951 UN Refugee Convention or the 1967 Protocol envisage great numbers of economic migrants crossing continents or booking transcontinental air flights (including onward flight connections from safe countries) to present themselves without identity documentation, visas or prior notification in countries chosen by them, thereby obliging the destination state to afford them basic welfare and accommodation while conducting lengthy present-day administrative and judicial processes in respect of their claimed status.
The stark fact is that those instruments of international legal protection were drafted and crafted to deal with circumstances far removed from those existing today on the littoral Mediterranean or, indeed, the English Channel where economic mass migrancy finds some degree of assistance from the procedural protections afforded by those instruments.
The legal concept of migrants’ rights is not by any means equivalent to some international personal right to migrate. Nation states have the right to accept or refuse migrants in accordance with their own laws, policies, and needs.
Even in the case of the EU, the law requires that such migration is for the purpose of engaging in economic activity not simply changing residence as a matter of personal preference or to enjoy welfare or tax advantages.
While the Tories are flailing about with the whole issue of migration and while they notoriously mis-sold the notion that Britain’s need for migrants was solely the result of EU membership, it isn’t simply a case of them being hoist on their own petard.
What is happening in the English Channel is not sustainable at a number of levels – in terms of migrant safety, combatting trafficking, national security, migration policy, maintaining domestic confidence in the rule of law, and fostering domestic support for diversity in difficult economic times. Britain cannot throw in the towel on cross-channel small boat migration without effectively throwing open its borders.
We have our own migration needs in Ireland too. Our economy is hugely dependent on and boosted by migrant workers at so many levels. We need coherent migration programmes. As the ambassador from Georgia pointed out to public representatives in Leinster House, Ireland needs construction workers. Ireland will pay construction workers five to ten times what they might earn in Georgia. Why is there no legitimate programme for structured migrancy in such cases?
A proper, effective and functioning system of migration depends on a proper, effective, timely and functioning system of asylum law that can deal with refused or withdrawn claims. According to data compiled by the Economic and Social Research Institute, 880 applications – or 19 per cent – were rejected at first-instance in 2022, and 41 per cent were rejected at final decision stage. The present international protection system simply cannot deal with mass migration posing as asylum seeking. Deportation is not effective as a deterrent (as the Tories will find out in Rwanda).
Although it may be unfashionable to say it, there has to be a major international re-think on conventions and law on asylum and protection. There is no uncontrolled migrancy to totalitarian states. The present mess is not sustainable for liberal democracies. It will fuel illiberal politics if people’s legitimate worries are condemned as wrong-headed or worse by politicians who seem helpless to control events.