Notes from an Unremarkable Ancestor of an Unvetted Migrant in an Unprecedented Ireland
Like most people, I was appalled by the events in Dublin on November 23rd, where a number of people including children were stabbed outside a school. In the immediate aftermath, I’m sure many teachers had the fleeting thought that this could have happened in any of our schools, despite the Minister for Education Norma Foley’s assertion that schools have “strong security.” In fact, that’s possibly what this article would be about had it not been for what transpired a few hours later in Dublin City Centre — the place I would have grown up calling “town”, the place my parents happily let me roam on my own as a child, the place where I still hanker to come back to since moving “down the country.”
As much as the Minister deserved to be challenged on such a ridiculous sentiment — anyone could walk into any school on any day if they so wished — it was completely overshadowed by scenes of chaos and violence as the city was set on fire, fuelled by a mesh of opportunism and hatred. The Ireland I grew up in would usually find humour in the darkest of places but not this. This was shameful and while some tried to find reasons and excuses about disenfranchised people and quoting Martin Luther King that rioting was the protest of the unheard, there was a semi-agreement that we don’t do that here.
If there was a reason for the rioting, it was because it turned out the person that stabbed the children and care worker was not born in Ireland. If I’m completely honest, it was one of the first things I thought after I heard about the incident — please don’t let the person be a migrant; and when it was, that was the striking of the match.
However, as much as the riots asked their own questions about policing in Dublin, when the cleanup was complete, I found myself listening to much bigger questions — which migrants are welcome in Ireland?
While there was much lauding of people like Eder Santos and Caio Benício who helped to intervene in the incident, questions began about why Ireland let people like the perpetrator of the stabbing into the country. There were then questions about people that recently committed similarly horrific crimes in Ireland, and why they were let into the country. Then this spread to refugees who have come to Ireland and which migrants should be let into the country and which ones shouldn’t — hardworking ones seem to be the general consensus right now — but now I’m hearing some of my friends talking about the threat of unvetted male immigrants.
These people can’t be disregarded as “far-right,” which seems to be the opposite of “being woke” these days, so much so that both terms have now become meaningless. While the term “woke” is much more recent, the far-right is a much better defined term and shouldn’t be bandied about so easily. It minimises what it actually is and having an opinion that might be conservative or even potentially right-wing, does not make a person far-right.
The far-right are a dangerous bunch of people and if they got into power, the least of our worries would be whether a migrant was hardworking enough to stay in the country. Just look at the Netherlands who have recently elected a far-right party — it has promised to ban mosques!
I don’t think the people on social media or at the dinner parties are far-right because they are saying that we need to vet migrants. The reality is they probably haven’t met one and it’s human nature to fear the unknown, especially when some people with far-right agendas begin whipping up patterns where none exist. Often it’s down to bad government policy and opportunism, no different to the rioters a couple of weeks ago.
Despite the title of the article, I’m not a migrant. I’m the product of a migrant. In fact, I’m the product of an unvetted male migrant who came to Ireland claiming to escape the May Laws in Russia. I say “claiming” because I don’t know if my ancestors were genuinely in direct danger or whether they had heard that Ireland was a safe haven and provided work opportunities. Perhaps they weren’t even trying to get to Ireland and ended up here because they couldn’t get to where they wanted to go. Whatever the reason, they arrived and Ireland gave them something I feel is missing from the Irish narrative these days — they gave them céad míle fáilte.
Had Ireland followed the different path of vetting anyone from a migrant background, it’s possible I wouldn’t be here. I don’t come from a particularly different family to anyone else. Most of my family over the last few generations worked hard but not all of them did. Not all of them do now. When I hear about deporting somebody because they hadn’t worked in ten years and so on, I think about people in my family who can’t claim any better.
I just wonder if we are going to be vetting migrants who we don’t deem to be hardworking enough, what are the criteria? What is the threshold? How many generations does a family have to prove themselves before they are allowed to not work hard to stay in Ireland?
I wonder about what other types of vetting we will need for migrants that come to the country if hard-working doesn’t solve all the perceived social problems? Should people from migrant backgrounds be further back in a queue for certain things like housing? What about being a patient in a hospital or a doctor’s surgery or for a medicine or vaccine should one be in short supply? What about school or college places should there be a shortage of these? How long should they remain there? Is it for one or two or three or more generations? Is it until they have worked hard enough to earn the right not to work hard anymore? What about state pensions when they’ve finished working hard? Again, what is the criteria?
People don’t think of me and my family when they say we need to stop unvetted male migrants coming into this country. I’m not sure if people said it about my dad’s generation but he also worked hard (still works though he’s 80!) Perhaps my grandfathers or great-grandfathers had questions about whether they deserved to be in Ireland? I can’t answer that for definite. None of us are exalted in history books like some of our more famous co-migrants and their families.
All I know is that my great-grandparents arrived, unvetted, in Ireland in the 1870s. Their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were born too, many of them in Ireland. Of those, some of them had regular jobs, some of them owned successful companies, some of them had no jobs and at least one of them, I’m sure, committed a crime. I know some of them couldn’t work due to disability and some that needed State welfare. I know that some of them worked hard and some didn’t bother. I know some of them were decent citizens and there are a few bad apples. What I’m trying to get at is that every family, Irish or not, is the same. We’re all just trying our best to get by. Vetting the first generation of migrants is not necessarily a way to solve the problems one is trying to solve. However, it’s not far-right to disagree with me on this. In fact, I’d go as far as to say, I’m not even sure I 100% agree with myself — it is natural to be concerned when bad things are happening. It’s not far-right to think like this but we have to try to prevent those that are far-right manipulating those concerns.
We need to remember how scary a far-right government would be. I remember when Jörg Haider was elected in Austria nearly 20 years ago and how appalling this seemed at the time. In fact, many countries threatened to withdraw their ambassadors as a result. I fear that today Haider being elected wouldn’t draw a blink, and why would it? With so many countries in the EU now with a sizeable far-right party in government, we shouldn’t be complacent, not even in Ireland, where, until now, we have avoided any sort of far-right party taking root. However, I have grave fears that we will have at least a few far-right representatives winning seats in local elections in 2024.
Fear is their building blocks. After the shocking events in Dublin, the fear is that any migrant could stab a child. After the shocking events in Tullamore, any migrant to murder one of our own. After the shocking events in Sligo, there was an effort to put Muslims in the same band and claim that LGBT+ people were at risk from radical Islam. In same breath, these agitators build fear around the LGBT+ people they were concerned about in the last sentence and claim they are part of some big conspiracy to remove women from society and to sexualise children through NGO indoctrination. The conspiracies continue with great replacement theories, governments spying on people through vaccines, climate change being a myth and, yes, the earth being flat all along.
There are so many entry points that you wonder how your once logical-thinking friend all of a sudden believes that the COVID-19 pandemic was a sham and how the American government bombed the Twin Towers. It isn’t a big leap to demand vetting of all migrants with leaving the EU because in order to achieve the former, one must achieve the latter. People forget quickly the benefits of something if they fear something else more.
As for me, I’ll hedge my bets and continue working hard on the off-chance that a 4th generation migrant doesn’t cut it as native enough!
