They come in the early morning, usually before 7 a.m. Catch people unawares, before they've stumbled into consciousness. Knock and wait and if there is no answer kick the door in.

The Garda teams are often reluctant executioners of the deportation orders they carry. This, after all, is dirty work. The person named on the order is given a few minutes to pack some clothes and say goodbye to loved ones, if there are any. Then it's down to Mountjoy or a police station for the night. Catch the early flight the next day to London, and then on to Bucharest or Moscow or wherever - so long as it's off the Irish radar screen.

This year, so positive in many other respects, marks the first time in its history that Ireland has begun to deport people in large numbers. The first deportation orders were served on a Russian man and a Ukranian in February; by December, more than 60 people had been expelled from the State, many of them forcibly.

Hundreds more have been served with deportation notices, so the pace of expulsions is set to increase further next year.

It was always inevitable that people would have to be deported after their applications for asylum were refused. Even the liberal former Minister responsible for refugees, Joan Burton, said so. And yet it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

It might have to do with the asylum procedures, which remain highly secretive and less than independent. Or the thought of what fate might await deportees in their home country. Mostly, though, I think it's simply sadness that Ireland, at a time of unprecedented economic well-being, is increasing the quotient of human misery in the world

But there is misery too - unnecessary misery - in asylum-seekers' lives in Ireland. Following a spate of racist attacks in Dublin in the spring, gardai in two inner-city areas advised asylum-seekers for their own safety not to go out at night. The worst attack, an unprovoked beating which took place in broad daylight on a city-centre street, left a 17-year-old Congolese with over 20 stitches to his face and head.

Non-white people in Irish society, whether they are newly arrived asylum-seekers or long-time residents, say they have become the constant butt of demeaning racist remarks. A recent survey of overseas students found than nine out of 10 said they had been subjected to racial abuse.

The vast majority of asylum-seekers live bleak existences in inner-city areas. Many are housed in hostels or specially rented apartment blocks. More than half of those in the Eastern Health Board area live in two north inner-city areas. Already prevented from working or studying, they are now prevented from obtaining driving licences. There is little chance of contact with the local communities, who fear their numbers and resent the standard of their accommodation.

There is as yet no sign that Irish society has come to grips with the phenomenon of immigration. The Department of Justice has made admirable efforts to put more resources into handling asylum cases (while doing nothing to modernise the procedures) with the appointment of 140 additional staff.

The kind of delays in hearing cases over the past few years should become a thing of the past. Asylum cases will be dealt with in three to six months, and the backlog will be substantially cleared. Yet the question of immigration will remain for as long as the economy continues to boom.

But aside from giving a £20,000 grant to an anti-racism committee, the Department has done little to lead Ireland into a multicultural era. The Minister for Justice, John O'Donoghue still talks about asylum-seekers in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, and the only laws he thinks of are restrictive ones. Nothing is heard about the circumstances from which refugees flee, or Ireland's obligations towards some of the world's "huddled masses" now that the State has joined the club of rich nations.

In this season of goodwill, it's worth recalling that some Irish people responded with more traditional generosity of spirit. Communities in Castleblayney, Co Monaghan, and Millstreet and Youghal, Co Cork, opened up to accept groups of asylum-seekers who ended up in their midst. In various parts of Dublin, local communities came to the aid of families who were threatened with deportation, forcing the Department to back off.

As the sight of black faces on Dublin streets becomes more familiar, much of the initial hostility seems to have worn off. For many people, antagonism towards asylum-seekers was founded on a fear of the unknown, stoked by inaccurate media reports about the threat they posed. A survey during the year found that only 1 per cent of people had had contact with an asylum-seeker, but this has surely changed.

Shops selling exotic vegetables or offering Afro hairstyles are helping to rejuvenate once-derelict areas of inner-city Dublin. The lucky few who have gained refugee status, or who have been allowed stay here on humanitarian grounds, are beginning to make their way in society, enrolling for courses, opening businesses or taking up work.

FOR the moment, most have to organise their own integration, as the State has little to offer in this area. Proposals to give the Refugee Agency responsibility for all refugees and not just the Bosnian and Vietnamese currently under its wing, have stalled, as the Departments of Justice and Foreign Affairs fight a turf war for control of the agency.

Unfortunately, deportations - perhaps as many as one a day - will dominate the headlines next year. Some of these battles will be fought out in court, others will see would-be asylum-seekers dragged kicking and screaming out of the land of the Cead Mile Failte.

And then, sometime in the future, someone returned to their home country (to Somalia or Algeria, for example, via France or Germany) will be killed. But will we ever know?

The phrase in our introduction is taken from a sonnet, The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, which is inscribed on the plinth of the Statue of Liberty, erected in New York Harbor in 1886.

. . . Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses yearning to breath free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.