XPost: alt.politics.economics, alt.politics.immigration, alt.society.liberalism   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: progressives@suck.com   
      
   On 28 Mar 2022, pothead  posted some   
   news:t1tj1l$38qa3$95@news.freedyn.de:   
      
   > The lazy immigrants have no skills and do not want to work for   
   > anything they get.  They want everything handed to them and they   
   > accept no responsibility for the wrongs they do.   
      
   Republican voters are turning against Sinn Fein as they reject the   
   party’s open borders stance   
      
   Ireland’s anti-immigration backlash has spiralled into country-wide   
   unrest. Protests, arson attacks and hardening anti-immigration views   
   have transfused Irish politics with a fervour not seen since the   
   Troubles.   
      
   I went to Ireland to make a documentary for The Telegraph to find out   
   what Irish people make of the growing strife.   
      
   I started my journey in Dublin, where hundreds of people turned out for   
   an anti-immigration march. Amid a sea of Irish tricolour flags,   
   protestors chanted “get them out” about the government over its support   
   for mass migration – which many felt was conferring already sparse   
   housing and public services to foreigners, to the detriment of Irish   
   citizens. One woman said she was scared to leave the house because of   
   the amount of “unvetted male people” who’ve arrived in Ireland in recent   
   years.   
      
   The Irish government were not the only villains of the event – much ire   
   was directed at “higher powers’’, variously the European Union and the   
   World Economic Forum. Leo Varadkar’s trip to Davos last month when   
   anti-immigration protests across the country reached a high-point no   
   doubt did little to disabuse them of the impression that his priorities   
   lie elsewhere. Some gripes were flagrantly conspiratorial: Mr Varadkar’s   
   government, not known for its Anglophilia, was accused multiple times of   
   being in thrall to King Charles.   
      
   Demonstrators also belted “Ireland is for the Irish” and other slogans   
   which would usually be the preserve of the republicans of Sinn Fein. But   
   the party’s support for mass migration has alienated their Irish   
   nationalist base, with many at the march branding them “traitors”.   
      
   To find out more about where the anger is coming from, I travelled to   
   Roscrea, a sleepy town in County Tipperary, where locals have been   
   protesting for three weeks outside of the town’s only hotel – closed   
   down last month after the government struck a deal with its owner to   
   house more than 160 asylum seekers there. Mary-Claire Doran, a Roscrea   
   resident, told me the town had been transformed by an influx of around   
   1,000 refugees in recent years, swelling the town’s population of 5,000   
   by 20 per cent.   
      
   Unlike in recent years in Britain and continental Europe, immigration   
   has never been a dominant issue in Irish politics ahead of an election.   
   But the surge in asylum seekers arriving in Ireland has catapulted it to   
   voters’ number one concern, with most of the Irish public now in favour   
   of tougher immigration controls, according to recent polls.   
      
   I discussed the political fallout with Ben Scallan, a journalist for   
   Gript, a media startup that has become a formidable challenger to the   
   progressive orthodoxy espoused by the Irish government. “I think the   
   Irish government is primarily concerned with appearing to be a modern   
   European country,” Ben said. “They admire their European colleagues;   
   they admire Scandinavian countries like Sweden which are progressive and   
   very trendy.”   
      
   Ben said he was baffled that the Irish government was repeating the   
   blunders of its European neighbours by ramping up mass migration, with   
   little consideration for the dissenting views of the Irish public. “It   
   seems like having seen the failure of that policy in countries like   
   Sweden, Germany and France, they want to replicate it for some reason   
   that I don’t really understand.”   
      
   Protests against the government’s immigration policy have been mostly   
   peaceful, but some have turned violent – including in Dublin last year   
   where riots broke out after three young children and a woman were   
   stabbed, allegedly by a man of Algerian origin. There has also been a   
   spate of more than a dozen arson attacks in Ireland over the past year   
   on migrant facilities and venues wrongly thought to be housing migrants.   
      
   The Irish state last year accepted more refugees than it could   
   accommodate, forcing the government to offer asylum applicants tents and   
   sleeping bags as they arrived in Dublin. Since the Russian invasion,   
   nearly 100,000 Ukrainians have also been offered sanctuary in Ireland. I   
   spoke to one Ukrainian refugee outside of an asylum processing centre in   
   Dublin, who told me that despite sleeping rough in Ireland, he was   
   nonetheless grateful for refuge from Vladamir Putin’s forces in Ukraine.   
      
   The number of asylum seekers arriving into Ireland has shot up to more   
   than 26,000 over the past two years, the highest annual figures on   
   record, and a growth of nearly 200 per cent from 2019. Last year, most   
   asylum seekers arriving in Ireland came from Nigeria, Algeria,   
   Afghanistan, Somalia, and Georgia.   
      
   There are some TDs who have spoken out against “unsustainable” levels of   
   immigration in the Irish parliament. Six of them have formed a loose   
   coalition called the Rural Independent Group. I sat down with one of   
   their members, Carol Nolan, to hear their side of the story. “I have   
   never seen the feeling as strong on the issue of immigration as it is   
   now,” Ms Nolan said. “I do feel that people will protest at the ballot   
   box and I do feel that if the government doesn’t change direction   
   quickly…that they will be punished.”   
      
   Ms Nolan said she felt anti-EU sentiment was being stoked by the   
   government’s immigration policy. “There is a lot of frustration over the   
   EU dictating everything a country should do – the numbers they should   
   take in and so forth. So there is definitely frustration over that   
   dictatorship as some people see it.”   
      
   Leo Varadkar’s government says it can tackle the problems around   
   immigration with better messaging and tougher laws to censor what it   
   deems as “hate speech”. But the Irish public say their concerns are   
   legitimate – a view which is becoming harder to ignore as it gains   
   political momentum. It’s beginning to look like the Irish government’s   
   vision of an Ireland which looks more like its European neighbours is   
   coming true – a multicultural country, ripe for a populist revolt.   
      
   https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/19/mass-immigration-bringing-eur   
   opean-style-populism-ireland/?li_source=LI&li_medium=for_you   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)