The Secretary General of the Department of Justice, Seán Aylward, appeared before the Dáil's Public Accounts Committee last week and stated his belief that the vast majority of asylum seekers coming to Ireland were economic migrants seeking to better themselves and their families and that in doing so were invariably prepared to "lie through their teeth". His point was not to "demonise" asylum seekers but to point out that most of them were economic migrants. The department revealed the total cost of the asylum process to taxpayers of was €1.1bn over the past three years, including €375 million in 2005. The senior civil servant offered the view that the Irish state would have to get tougher in the future and try to distinguish economic migrants from genuine asylum seekers.
For such remarks the official was predictably attacked. Labour's Joan Burton described his remarks as "prejudicial" and the chief executive of the Irish Refugee Council, Peter O'Mahony, said Aylward's remarks were "without foundation" and couched in irresponsible language that would "clearly fuel hostility". This is ridiculous. Trying to establish accurate figures in terms of the numbers of asylum seekers and the cost of processing them over the past few years should not lead to knee-jerk reactions. We need a real debate on immigration and asylum issues, one that is informed by accurate information that is capable of easing people's worst fears. At the same time we have to recognise that there is genuine anxiety about how immigration will impact on existing communities. Such a debate ought to be framed in terms of what we should reasonably expect from new citizens in terms of both rights and duties. For liberal and left opinion it is important to arrive at a realistic position that addresses people's concerns.
The problem for progressive opinion is that such issues are often framed in terms of a universalistic, cosmopolitan liberalism and that any deviation from this is inherently reactionary and dangerous. In the Irish case it's also a question of viewing the issue through the prism of post-colonialism. We are a people who were once the victims of colonial oppression and we have to view asylum seekers in a similar light. At the same time there is a voracious demand for migrant labour that shows no signs of abating. We congratulated ourselves for our enlightened approach, when, along with Britain and Sweden, we did not impose restrictions on immigration from the 10 new accession states of the European Union. A Sunday Times editorial from early in the year stated that this was "both pragmatic and morally sound".
Ireland’s economy needed the workers those countries could provide and, as one of the great beneficiaries of EU membership, Ireland was not prepared to deprive new members of the opportunities that it had enjoyed.
But immigration is not just a matter of economics; it is bound up with notions of identity, community and citizenship - who belongs and who doesn't belong. With this in mind I would suggest a couple of useful articles that have appeared recently that could help frame the debate along what might be called "liberal realist" lines. David Goodhart, editor of Prospect magazine, has published an article that is based on a much longer pamphlet, Progressive Nationalism: Citizenship and the Left, published by the think tank Demos. Goodhart is explicitly trying to draw the various strands of the immigration and identity debate in Britain into a coherent liberal realist position. Goodhart wants to make the case for a "progressive nationalism"—comfortable with Britain's multi-ethnic and multi-racial character and its place in the EU—is part of the answer to the progressive dilemma, the tension between solidarity and diversity.
A government's first priority must be to its own citizens, all of them. This may seem obvious, but it often collides with the assumptions of the internationalist left (and the business elite) as well as the xenophobic right (who refuse to recognise the non-indigenous as full citizens)...the uncomfortable truth for many progressives—is that the modern nation state is based not on a universalist liberalism but on a contractual idea of club membership. If we offered membership to the rest of humanity—through having no barriers on entry—it would quickly lose value. And it also follows from a liberal realist notion of citizenship that we should be far from indifferent about who becomes a fellow citizen. Yet a studied indifference has in the past been a distinguishing characteristic of progressive belief.
Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of the Danish paper Jyllands Posten and the publisher of the Muhammad cartoons, airs his views on related issues. He notices the way sections of the western left have internalised the arguments in Edward Said's Orientalism and have therefore condemned their own societies as being inherently racist and islamophobic and, as a result, sound very much like middle east dictators and radical conservative clerics. Thus a "culture of victimology" arose:
The role of victim is very convenient because it frees the self-declared victim from any responsibility, while providing a posture of moral superiority. It also obscures certain inconvenient facts that might suggest a different explanation for the lagging integration of some immigrant groups—such as the relatively high crime rates, the oppression of women, and a tradition of forced marriage.
Rose believes that European conceptions of national identity, being essentially "historically cultural" (or blood and soil, if you will) is a serious impediment to the integration of immigrant communities. The United States, with its essentially political definition of nationality, is in a more advantageous position in terms of absorbing newcomers.
Equal treatment is the democratic way to overcome traditional barriers of blood and soil for newcomers. To me, that means treating immigrants just as I would any other Danes. And that's what I felt I was doing in publishing the 12 cartoons of Muhammad last year. Those images in no way exceeded the bounds of taste, satire, and humour to which I would subject any other Dane, whether the queen, the head of the Church, or the prime minister. By treating a Muslim figure the same way I would a Christian or Jewish icon, I was sending an important message: You are not strangers, you are here to stay, and we accept you as an integrated part of our life. And we will satirize you, too. It was an act of inclusion, not exclusion; an act of respect and recognition.
Integration of immigrants is a two way street involving a mutual process of rights and duties. Ireland has to find a way that avoids the extreme assimilationsim of the French model and the subsidised multiculturalism that was a feature of Dutch society, at least before the appearance of Pim Fortuyn. The trouble with muticulturalism is that it all too often becomes a paralysing cultural relativism where reactionary and oppressive practises fail to be condemned by squeamish progressives. Welcoming immigration in our societies does not mean forsaking the values of the Enlightenment. Both immigrants and native born citizens will all be better off if we can all be a little clearer about what is to be expected. As Rose concludes
For the immigrants, the expectation that they not only learn the host language but also respect their new countries' political and cultural traditions is not too much to demand, and some stringent (maybe too stringent) new laws are being passed to force that. At the same time, Europeans must show a willingness to jettison entrenched notions of blood and soil and accept people from foreign countries and cultures as just what they are, the new Europeans.
I think most people's problems with Aylward's comments were not the questioning of the numbers, etc, but the apparent branding of all asylum seekers as liars. It may not be what he meant (although, having dealt with the DoJ on several occasions in relation to any type of immigrants, it wouldn't surprise me), but it's how it was always going to be recorded.
Posted by: Keith | June 26, 2006 at 03:39 PM