Sir, - It is irritating to find correspondents such as Shane Harte, who wish us to grant unrestricted access to immigrants to this country, constantly drawing a comparison between Irish emigrants going to America in the last century and present-day economic immigrants into Ireland. In the last century the US eagerly sought immigrants to people its vast uninhabited regions and to engage in the tremendous labour of digging canals and laying railway-tracks across its immense territory. But even then, the US did pick and choose. Many emigrants were turned back at Ellis Island. Nowadays, the story is very different. The US has very tight immigration laws, and, apart from visa applications and work permits, its borders are policed around the clock in an effort to turn back illegal entrants.
In proposing to set up a situation in our very small country analogous to the melting-pot of the US (a huge country with almost unlimited resources) Shane Harte is putting forward an untenable suggestion. Whatever about his sneering reference to racial purity and various invasions of the country, the fact is that we have here a tiny homogeneous population, whether that is acceptable to him or not. Before the arrival of some maurauding Vikings about 800 AD, the Celts were the undisputed inhabitants of this island for more than 1,000 years (undisturbed even by the Romans across the Irish Sea), during which period the Irish language, the place-names for every hillock and stream in the land, customs, beliefs and art-styles were indelibly ingrained in the culture of the people of this nation. Because of our ancestry we are what we are today. That great scholar, Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich said of the Irish: "Later settlers added to them and adapted to them but the core is unmistakably Celtic."
It would appear from his letter that Shane Harte longs for the days of unrestricted movement of peoples across present-day boundaries. He would like to travel back a very long way in time - some thousands of years, I believe. - Yours, etc., M. M. Ireland,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.