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Ireland


HERE'S WHY IRELAND IS AT BOILING POINT OVER MASS IMMIGRATION


IMMIGRATION INTO IRELAND HAS MORE THAN DOUBLED OVER THE LAST 20 YEARS WITH 22%
OF THE POPULATION NOW MADE UP OF NON-CITIZENS

By Michael Dorgan Fox News
Published May 12, 2024 9:07am EDT
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The Irish government’s unwavering commitment to housing and feeding an
unprecedented influx of migrants in the wake of a severe housing and cost of
living crisis has brought the Irish electorate to boiling point. It has many
similarities to the migrant crisis in the U.S.

Hundreds of protests in towns have sprung up around the country with people
calling on the government to end what they say is an "open borders" globalist
agenda that is putting the needs of migrants ahead of its citizens -- many of
whom are struggling to pay for everyday items and unable to buy or rent homes as
Ireland’s homeless numbers skyrockets. 

Several high-profile crimes linked to migrants have also driven fear into the
native citizenry, culminating in the shocking knife attacks on young children
and their teacher by an Algerian-born Irish citizen in November that triggered
rioting and looting in the nation’s capital.

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34 ARRESTED IN IRELAND RIOTS AFTER CHILD IS STABBED IN DUBLIN

On Monday, thousands of protesters carrying Irish flags rallied in Dublin
calling for an end to mass migration and demanding that a new nationalist
government take its place. (Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images and Gript.ie)

Those who want immigration laws enforced and numbers reduced say they are being
ignored by the political establishment.

"Ireland is a tinderbox at the moment," Irish journalist Fatima Gunning told Fox
News Digital. "At this point, I don't think anything would surprise me."

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On Monday, thousands of protesters carrying Irish flags rallied in Dublin
calling for an end to mass migration and demanding that a new nationalist
government take its place.

Chants of "get them out" in reference to the government, echoed throughout the
nation’s capital while others carried signs reading "Irish lives matter" and
"under siege, invasion." Large banners reading "mass deportations" and "end the
plantation" hung from a bridge. 

The protesters say they represent the silent majority of the electorate – around
75% based on several polls – who say immigration is too high and that the
country has taken in too many refugees.

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MEDIA

Their anger is also being fueled by how they are being treated by the mainstream
media, which is dominated by liberal news outlets as well as the semi-state-run
broadcaster RTE, who seldom cover protests or do so with bias, they say. 

Think of an America without Fox News. 

For example, last Monday’s march was described as a "large crowd" by RTE and
afforded just six lines of coverage on its website. Gript, a relative newcomer
to the media scene, has been filling the void and has covered many anti-mass
immigration protests.

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"For the past two years, they've been calling people like that ‘racist’ or
‘far-right extremists,’" Gunning says. "Politicians and the mainstream media,
official Ireland, that of strata of society say immigration is just totally
positive. There's no negatives whatsoever and then anyone who even says
something like, Oh, ‘I do agree with immigration but I think there should be
controls on the numbers,’ is a racist, that's how it is."

Tents housing asylum seekers near to the Office of International Protection, in
Dublin on April 29, 2024. The "tent city" has been dismantled, though many
migrants set up more tents nearby. (Niall Carson/PA Images via Getty Images)

Immigration into Ireland has more than doubled over the last 20 years with 22%
of the population now made up of non-citizens, meaning Ireland has the fourth
largest non-national population of all 27 EU member states percentage-wise,
according to published EU statistics. 

The steady increase in migration first started with the free movement of people
agreement under the EU’s Nice Treaty in 2003. It posed little problems as mainly
eastern Europeans traveled to Ireland to work in the Celtic Tiger economic boom
era.

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But in recent years, droves of high numbers of asylum seekers have been arriving
at Ireland’s shores and are being handed all sorts of taxpayer-funded welfare
benefits and housing, while Irish citizens struggle to make ends meet with high
inflation, a crippling housing crisis and an overwhelmed health system. 




UKRAINIAN REFUGEES 

For instance, Ireland has taken in more than 104,000 Ukrainian refugees since
the onset of the war, the largest number per capita in Western Europe despite
Ireland being the most westerly located nation in the whole of Europe. The
figure equates to 2% of Ireland’s 5.12 million population and every Ukrainian
refugee has been provided with free accommodation, free health care and, until
recently, was being paid a weekly wage of around $235.

Another 30,000 non-Ukrainian refugees are currently being housed by the Irish
government with taxpayers churning out more than €1 billion in the first nine
months of 2023 accommodating migrants, according to government data. Meanwhile,
the country’s debt is among the highest in the world per capita, standing at
€223 billion in 2023.

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Accommodations, including modular homes, have been built for migrants but very
little, if anything, they say, is being done for the homeless population, which
hit an all-time record last month. Planning rules to build some of these homes
have been ignored in order to get the refugees housed at rapid speed. 

"There's a really palpable feeling that these non-national people are being
prioritized over Irish people, which they are," Gunning says. "I mean, it's not
even a matter of opinion that they are. There are Irish people who cannot get
medical cards (health benefits) for whatever reason. These people are all given
medical cards regardless of need and that's obviously a priority [of
government]."

And it's not just the perceived unfairness that has angered Irish people. Just
like in the U.S., Irish people feel that many of those seeking asylum have
dubious claims and are essentially economic migrants who are draining taxpayer
coffers.

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DUBLIN SEES HEAVY POLICE PRESENCE, 11 ARRESTS AMID 'IRISH LIVES MATTER' MARCH
AGAINST MASS MIGRATION

Protesters take part in an anti-immigration protest in the center of Dublin. 
(Evan Treacy/PA Images via Getty Images)

In terms of those making asylum seeker claims in Ireland, Georgian nationals
have had the highest numbers of claims despite it being designated a "safe
country of origin" by the Irish government. Asylum seekers have also been
arriving from Nigeria, where 2,000 have arrived already this year, as well as
Algeria, Somalia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe. Countries that
don't share customs or traditions with Ireland.

Serious concerns have also been raised about a large percentage of those asylum
seekers being single men, that background checks have not been carried out on
them and that they are loitering around towns and cities with nothing to do. 

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"Some people get very upset when they hear it's just men because there's leaking
footage from City West [hotel] in Dublin… of them just rioting inside the place.
And, you know, last year it kicked off, around Ramadan, they were just rioting
and throwing chairs at each other," Gunning says.

"So people feel frightened about that because ultimately these people are
unvetted. You'll hear that they are vetted, they're not. Their fingerprints are
run through this thing called Eurodac, which is not a criminal vetting system,
it's just to see if they have made other asylum claims elsewhere or if they have
been caught doing illegal border crossings. It doesn't have any criminal data to
it at all."

"So the government consistently uses that to say that they're vetted when in
fact they're not."

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LOCAL PROTESTS

Gunning, who reports for Gript.ie, was at the scene of an ugly encounter two
weeks ago when Irish police in riot gear clashed with locals of a small town who
were protesting against plans to convert a shuttered care facility into a
shelter for 160 male migrants.

The town, Newtownmounkennedy, is a typical rural community with a population of
about 3,000 and is starved of services. Gunning says locals told her that the
government promised them that the facility would be used as a much-needed
community center for the town, while they were also concerned that the men are
unvetted. 

Gunning says locals were also incensed that foreign men in masks were seen
working on the site, leading to comparisons to the plantations of Ireland in the
1500s and 1600s when the British confiscated Irish-owned land and gave it to
settlers. Hence, the "end the plantation" banner at the protest in Dublin on
Monday.

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After weeks of peacefully protesting and pleading with the government to
reconsider, the riot police were deployed in Newtownmounkennedy to stamp out the
demonstration. But the forcefulness of the response sent shockwaves through the
community, which rallied in even bigger numbers in the days that followed.

In the end, it was all in vain as the first wave of migrants began arriving at
the site around the same time as a migrant "tent city" of about 200 tents in
nearby Dublin was being dismantled by the government. The tents were set up
outside the country’s International Protections Office, which processes claims,
and for many Irish people the tents became a visual example of the government's
handling of the crisis. Many of the migrants have now set up their tents along
Dublin's Grand Canal.

The situation at Newtownmounkennedy has been happening throughout Ireland and
the locals, despite their protests, say they have no say in the matter. In some
towns, local hotels have all been converted into migrant shelters, decimating
tourist industries. 

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Meanwhile, and just like in the U.S., some hoteliers and construction companies
are profiting as government contracts ensure full occupancy and a steady stream
of building work keeps the revenue flowing. 

"It’s just emerged that there was a whole estate being built without planning
permission, and now they've filled that with international protection
applicants," Gunning says. "So it's really crazy. And there's a lot of money
being made here, an awful lot of money."

Tents which have been pitched by asylum seekers along a stretch of the Grand
Canal, Dublin, near to the International Protection Office (IPO) on Mount
Street, Dublin. (Niall Carson/PA Images via Getty Images)


GOVERNMENT NOT LISTENING TO CONCERNS

As the cries grow louder and the government refuses to change course, anger
among demonstrators has exploded.

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Some have protested outside the homes of the new prime minister, Richard Harris,
and integration minister Roderic O’Gorman. The latter has been accused of making
Ireland a popular magnet for migrants after he posted online a notice in eight
different languages detailing the attractive benefits they will get if they
claim asylum in Ireland. 

Members of Irish Justice Minister Helen McEntee’s family were evacuated from
their home last week following two hoax bomb threats. McEntee has faced
tremendous pressure for her handling of the crisis due, in part, to the
country’s low deportation numbers. 

Thousands of Irish protesters gathered in Dublin city center for an anti-Mass
Immigration protest (Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

For instance, McEntee recently revealed that of the nearly 7,300 people refused
refugee status in Ireland since the beginning of 2023, less than 100 have been
deported. She also said that more than 90% of people seeking asylum in the
country are now crossing the land border with Northern Ireland amid the UK's
clampdown on ineligible refugees via its Rwanda policy.

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Who are these people flowing into the country and where are these people now,
critics ask?

According to the government’s figures, 85% of people who applied for
international protection at Dublin Airport in 2023 arrived without identity
documents or with false identity documents, which is illegal, yet very few were
even prosecuted. 

But the Irish government has long argued that it is bound by "international
obligations" to accommodate those who arrive claiming asylum, while critics say
the same level of urgency is not given to Irish people who are homeless. 

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RIOTERS CLASH WITH POLICE, TORCH CAR AFTER KNIFE ATTACK IN DUBLIN

The European Union’s new Migration Pact is being held up as a silver bullet
solution, a "game changer," according to McEntee, but some critics say it will
only exacerbate the situation. The pact aims to cut the time for security and
asylum procedures at external EU borders and increase the number of people being
sent back to the Middle East and Africa.

"We always do the right thing [in Ireland], and for me, the right thing is
providing protection for those who genuinely need it," McEntee said recently.
"The world is a changing place, there’s significant increases in conflict across
the globe, climate change is having a massive impact, and there are people who
are genuinely fleeing starvation, persecution and war.

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"I think as a country -- particularly people who have sought refuge in other
countries over the years -- there is an onus on us and people want to us to
provide that protection. And at the same time, those who are coming here seeking
economic benefits, and we don’t blame them for that, this is not the right
system to use."

A protester holds a placard while thousands gathered in Dublin city center for
an Anti-Mass Immigration protest.


POLITICAL CLIMATE

Much of the despair and disillusionment of those on the right who oppose mass
immigration is that they are not represented in the political process.

Fine Gael, McEntee’s party, is part of a coalition government in office since
2020 with Fianna Fáil and the Green Party. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil would once
have been viewed as center-right but have shifted left and embraced
progressivism and globalism.

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Ireland’s main opposition party to the government, Sinn Féin, has been in
lockstep with the establishment throughout the crisis, creating a void for a
populist, nationalist movement. 

The result has been an explosion in novice candidates running for office in next
month’s local and EU elections representing newly formed right-wing parties. 

It is, of course, unclear what kind of impact they can make. 

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CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

However, thrown into the mix is the fact that refugees and asylum seekers in
Ireland are able to vote in local elections. 

An Irish migrant group bragged on X Thursday that it had just registered 1,500
asylum seekers to vote, with all likely to vote for candidates to back their
cause. 

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Fox News Digital requested comment from Ireland’s prime minister, justice
minister and integration minister, as well as the Irish Refugee Council, but did
not receive any responses. 

Michael Dorgan is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business.

You can send tips to michael.dorgan@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @M_Dorgan.


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