I am quite conservative in my views, but I like to think I'm not completely closed or open to other thought. I don't know you, at all so can't comment. I mentioned the fact I was a journalist, not to intimidate you with academia, nor as a means to puport that I was college educated. I'm not a smart-ass, I have a lot to learn. I learn every day. (Why the hell do ye think I check in FR, frequently?)
Nowhere in your post do you indicate whether these immigrants are legal or illegal; also on the one hand you claim that Ireland needs these qualified professional workers, and then on the other hand you claim they are either sponging off of the system or working menial jobs. Which is it? Don't blame the anti-immigration crowd because your government refuses to clean up the mess created by your immigration and social welfare laws.
Yes certainly there are problems, quite a few actually. My main problems with the laws in Ireland is that these people aren't immediately issued (once registered) with some sort of temporary work visa, so they can work in the State for six months while they are processed). At the moment, they arrive and tax-payers fund their stay (processing can take 2 years). But many are professionals, many are hard working, decent individuals wanting to eeek out a living and a life for themselves. I have NO problem with that at all. MY god, haven't all our ancestors done the same? I am Irish (a nation where I should hate Britain for being the big enemy in terms of politicism)...but I see that country as one which gave my uncles a living when they couldn't find one here...in my little green Utopia.!!! !
Frankly, your post is one long feminine whinge about how awful things are for immigrants, and how (by implication) anyone who complains about this situation is really just a big meanie and a racist. The central thrust of your message is that immigration law should be based on what's good for the immigrants (as they define it) rather than what is good for your nation. This is a recipe for disaster, which you will be tasting of shortly.
Your need to use ``feminine whinge'' shows your inability to argue. I am in an Irish household with many men who can argue to their last breath...my sexuality never came into it. (Your need to mention my sex (yeah, I know, your next post will be classing me as some sort of feminazi, which I'm not!...just grow the hell up) shows your inability of same). I have never implied you to be rascist...and I don't need to call anyone a big meanie!! (I'm not in kindergarten for Chrissakes)
More and more people are growing tired of the dominant elite's disdain for democracy and traditional culture, and its overweening desire to turn the world into a police state that looks like a giant version of Disney World, sans mouse ears. This kind of evasion (implying your opponent is racist) isn't going to fly in future; and Ireland is in nowhere near as bad a situation as the USA. But give it time.
I don't class myself as elite. Not at all. In fact I class myself as reasonably practical.
In fact, if I dare, to put it in American political terms, I'm most possibly Reaganesque. (So friggin' sue me!).
As such, when someone shows up out of the blue, and makes emotive appeals based on the plights of the "poor persecuted unfortunate immigrants" the logical assumption is going to be that the person in question is making a backhanded slap at those opposed to immigration (not unlike the backhanded slap at conservatives every time Bush talks about "compassionate conservatism"). I am sure you did not intend this consciously, and text-based communication forums like this are notorious for misunderstandings; you may not consciously have intended to condescend or imply racism/bigotry, but you should understand why others might assume otherwise.
I will make my point clearer: if you are going to continue to make emotional appeals based solely on the needs of immigrants as the immigrants and their spokesmen define it, rather than hard-headed decisions based on the realities of what is best for the national interest, then you are engaging in the kind of soft, emotive politics which have been poisoning and destroying the West for these past 50 years or more. If you don't like my calling this kind of "thinking" feminine, then, fine, call it something else. But recognize the thing for what it is, whatever you chose to call it.
The future of what is left of Western Civilization depends upon clear thinking and hard choices, not hand-wringing and barely suppressed fears of transgressing against social taboos.
I don't class myself as elite. Not at all. In fact I class myself as reasonably practical. In fact, if I dare, to put it in American political terms, I'm most possibly Reaganesque. (So friggin' sue me!).
My alarm bells go off whenever I hear "Reaganesque". During the 80's the conservative movement and the GOP were highjacked and taken over by neo-cons flying under the false flag of Reaganism. It is these people who have turned the GOP into what it is, on the all important issues of immigration, especially.
Now, you may be as conservative as you say, but if you chose the wrong side on immigration, all of that carefully marshalled conservatism will be meaningless, because before long you will have nothing left to conserve, as millions of native Americans have discovered in recent years, as they were driven out of their native lands or reduced to a tiny and despised minority.
As to elites...you misunderstand me. You don't have to be part of an elite to be subtly controlled and manipulated by elite values, and to thereby be a purveyor and enforcer of elite-inspired and elite-created social taboos (indeed, part of being a true member of the elite is the freedom to disregard the propaganda bilge about diversity and tolerance which you force your social lessers to adhere to in public).
The primary motive driving adherence to elite values by non-elites is status anxiety; this is the fear of being seen as declasse, and there is nothing that will get one labeled a rube and a lower class person faster than being seen as transgressing elite values on immigration, race, globalism, and related issues. Indeed, the more one sees one's self as a "practical" and a "reasonable" person, the more one is likely to be open to status anxiety and manipulation by elite values, if being "reasonably practical" in fact means acceptance of de facto situations and accepted values, without reference to first principles or long-term goals, independent of what others may think about these.
I have never found a bigger flock of those suffering from status anxiety and herd mentality than amongst journalists. I hope you are an exception to this, but I stand by my generalization. Journalists on the whole are not an elite, but they are the effective and informal enforcers of the social taboos of political correctness, and their reality-distorting coverage of the news is the primary function of journalists in modern, media-saturated Western societies. As such they are one of the primary tools of elites in their effort to mold public opinion and thereby make democracy a hollow word.
You might want to investigate further for your own benefit the realities of immigration, both in the USA and in Europe. Mass immigration is brand-new in Ireland, and as such many people in Ireland are in the same stage of denial which the USA and the rest of Europe was at a few decades ago. You simply cannot trust mainstream journalist coverage on this issue, as on many others: the lies, evasions, suppressions, and distortions perpetuated by journalists in the media are massive and only fully realized by those who have first hand experience of the facts on the ground. You literally have to read modern news coverage like you would read an old issue of the communist Pravda: between the lines, and in code. Realization of these facts takes time and effort, and cannot take place at all if one is subconsciously driven by fears of social taboos or emotive sob stories generated to deflect hard questions about the public issues that really matter.