Who could possibly have imagined that the Irish public would turn out to be no more keen on illegal migration than people in Britain? This is, after all, the country of Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who still travels the world lecturing us all about how the rich world is oppressing the poor and weak through climate change.
The lectures don’t end there. Ireland has prided itself on “standing up” for the Palestinians, to the point it tried to persuade the EU to issue a statement demanding that Israel refrain from any kind of military response to the October 7 terrorist attack. And just last month, its High Court ruled in March that it would be illegal under Ireland’s constitution to designate Britain as a “safe third country” for refugees on account of the evil Rwanda policy.
Ireland was supposed to be the shining human rights citadel on the hill, rising above nasty, racist and xenophobic Brexit Britain – or so the country’s liberal elite loved telling the world.
And yet. The Irish public is suddenly marching the streets waving banners with slogans such as “Ireland is Full”, “Ireland for the Irish” and “Irish Lives Matter” – the latter of which could well earn you a trip to court if transposed to “English Lives Matter” in an English street.
What’s more, it’s not just the Irish public bleating about migration. Suddenly, the government is fed up with migrants spilling over the border from Northern Ireland into the republic. It wants to change the law so that migrants can be returned to the United Kingdom whence they came – the United Kingdom which a few weeks ago was deemed to be unsafe.
Isn’t that what welcoming Ireland is supposed to be doing: offering sanctuary to anyone who fears for their safety in a brutal country like Britain? Yet it seems that Dublin’s enthusiasm has begun to pale a little now the numbers are rising. Rather than an exceptional paragon of woke virtue, it is, in other words, just like Britain – and indeed every other country.
If you needed further proof, just look at Germany. Nine years ago Angela Merkel was chirping her country’s moral virtue through her willkommenskultur policy – which said to refugees: if you can make your way to Germany, don’t worry, we will put you up, feed you and clothe you. What is Germany doing now? Er, considering deporting asylum-seekers to Rwanda.
No western country can sustain a policy of complete openness to migrants for long. There are just too many people in the world whose living standards could theoretically be raised by migrating to the West. Any Western country which opened its doors wide to migrants would quickly have its public services, housing stock and welfare system overwhelmed, making everyone poorer. The fact that Ireland is suddenly moaning about migrants spilling over the border from the United Kingdom just goes to show that virtue signalling only goes so far.
It also suggests that the Rwanda scheme is beginning to work. It might be expensive, and few migrants may ever be deported there, but that misses the point: the scheme is a powerful deterrent which tells economic migrants that if they are thinking of posing as refugees to come to Britain, don’t bother. We will protect you if you are in danger – but your safe berth will be in Rwanda, not here.
Perhaps goody-goody Ireland will soon start threatening to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda, too.