Ireland’s Immigration Crisis Comes to a Head

Arriving in Dublin several weeks ago on Thursday afternoon, I was greeted by a large gathering of raucous protesters carrying Irish flags and chanting against mass immigration. People of all ages and all walks of life marched along, down one of the streets of downtown south Dublin. Traffic ground to a standstill as buses lined up and taxi drivers cursed. The banners of protesters clearly proclaimed anger, defiance and disgust, working their way to a sit-down protest at O’Connell Bridge:

“You’ll never beat the Irish!” 

“South Dublin Says No: Close the Borders!”

“It’s a free country!” yelled one man. 

“And we’re f*ckin’ payin’ for it, scumbags!” responded another woman furiously. 

Thursday’s anti-mass-immigration protesters were preceded by a much smaller group of about 40 leftist protesters bedecked in rainbow paraphernalia and keffiyehs chanting against “fascists,” “racists,” and “Nazis,” and carrying a large banner that read “Say No To Climate Change, Not Refugees.” 

Speaking to a local Irish bartender, she told me that while she sympathizes with asylum-seekers and migrants looking for a better life, she also feels the country is being flooded. She says there is a definite double standard where newcomers get everything paid for “but Irish families and children get nothing.” 

In an Uber driven by a Pakistani immigrant who has lived in Ireland for the past two decades, the sentiment was decidedly different. My driver said the protesters shouldn’t be allowed to fill the streets during a busy rush hour like Thursday afternoon and called them “stupid.” Nevertheless, he did sympathize with anger at the rising cost of housing and everyday necessities, noting that it’s getting harder and harder to find a decent place to live in Ireland at an affordable price. 

Anti-mass-immigration protests have intensified in the past year in Ireland, reaching a fever pitch this summer outside migrant housing and asylum seeker resettlement areas where rioters swore at police and set mattresses on fire. 

The International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS) has about 200 locations in Ireland for housing asylum-seekers free of charge. Around 400 asylum-seekers per week have been arriving at the IPAS sites since the spring of this year, crowding an already overstrained Irish system. Approximately 50,000 asylum-seekers have come to Ireland since 2019.

Led by Prime Minister Simon Harris of the Fine Gael party, Ireland’s government has adopted a “no cap” policy on asylum seekers, enraging many Irish people. Up to 200,000 asylum seekers will be accepted, adding to the whopping 21.8 percent of Irish residents who are already foreign-born. In a country of just over 5 million citizens that’s an extremely high proportion.

The already strained Irish economy is contending with serious housing shortages, a severely overburdened healthcare system, rising energy prices, and stagnant wages. High inflation, particularly post-COVID, is making it harder for people to buy or rent a place to live and more and more young Irish men and women are living longer with their parents due to the harsh economic reality. In fact, an estimated 440,000 people (and 41 percent of those 18 to 34 years old) are currently living with their parents in Ireland. 

The Irish Senator Lisa Chambers of the Fianna Fáil political party has urged the immediate deportation of any asylum-seeker convicted of a crime, stating that, “anybody that comes into this country, whether they’re seeking asylum or have been granted refugee status, if you break the law, you need to be sent back.”

Leftist commentators like Elaine McCallig of Tortoise claim that the housing crisis is being leveraged by the “far right” to gin up violent opposition to mass immigration and asylum seekers. Others, including the Irish MMA fighter Conor McGregor, have joined the rising chorus of anti-mass-immigration sentiment, tweeting previously that Ireland is “at war!” and offering himself as a champion of the Irish people.

With Ireland’s next general election coming up in six months, expect to see a massive swing to the right.