Conjuring up images of millions of Polish people coming to take Irish workers' jobs was dangerous and must be cautioned against, globalisation expert Prof Ronaldo Munck said yesterday.
The DCU professor was reacting to the Irish Times/TNS mrbi poll which found that 78 per cent of people wanted to reintroduce work permits for people from the 10 new EU member states.
"I don't stay awake at night wondering will the 40 million Polish sink the island of Ireland," he said. "Conjuring up images like that is a very dangerous thing."
He said racism was no longer shown as a prejudice against colour. It was a much more complex issue and was evident when people "retreated into their cultural bunkers" and adopted an us-and-them attitude.
Prof Munck was speaking at the publication of Students and Professionals in Ireland: an Analysis of Access to Higher Education and Recognition of Professional Qualifications by Integrating Ireland, a network of refugee, asylum-seeker and immigrant groups.
The report found that immigrants from non-EU countries experienced major problems in accessing higher education and in having their academic qualifications recognised here.
Immigrants felt that Irish universities had a patronising and uninformed attitude to universities in non-EU countries, particularly African countries.
However, within three years, an Irish system for recognising international qualifications would be fully functional and well known, Seán Ó Foghlú, chief executive of the National Qualifications Authority of Ireland said.
An agreement on qualifications recognition would soon be signed with China, and attempts were also being made to make an agreement with India, he said.
Nigerian teacher Bunmi Salako said immigrants were losing their past because this State was ignoring the years they had spent in education.
She said she wanted to do a higher diploma in education management but could not afford the €6,000 fee levied on overseas students. When she has worked for three years she will be eligible for the lower Irish fee.
She said she had been trying since 2003 to get transcripts from her university in Nigeria to prove her qualifications.
She knew another Nigerian who had arranged to have transcripts sent to a regulatory professional body in Ireland on three separate occasions at great expense. Each time the Irish body said it had not received the documents.
