Sir, - To judge from recent reports, there would seem to be a worrying increase in overt public hostility towards asylum-seekers. For many of those writing to this letters column (e.g. Tony Downs, May 8th) the causes are simple: "self-serving fulminations of influential sections of the media and some unscrupulous politicians" pandering to popular prejudice. Excoriating a whipping boy like the hapless John O'Donoghue doubtless reinforces the writer's sense of moral superiority, but would it not be better to confront the fears which underlie this public prejudice? To confront means naming these fears and (if unfounded) defusing them through education and public awareness campaigns.
One such fear must be the scale and suddenness of the phenomenon. The number of asylum seekers last year was about 4,600, the third highest in the EU in relation to the native population. This year's total (excluding Kosovan refugees, who are in an entirely different category), on current trends, will be about 12,000. On the face of it, this latest increase would seem to be connected with the introduction by Britain, last year, of a non-cash welfare system for asylum-seekers. That is not to blame individual asylum-seekers; for those arriving in Britain (as most, presumably, do in the first instance) it is a perfectly rational decision to move onward to Ireland. Ending this disparity in welfare regimes, between Ireland on the one hand and Britain and France on the other, might stabilise the number of asylum seekers and, thereby, give Irish society time to adjust to the challenges of multi-culturalism.
Perceptions that asylum-seekers might become mired in welfare dependency could begin to change if it were made easier for those already here to obtain work permits. If a recent questionnaire of a sample of asylum-seekers is at all accurate, asylum-seekers are much more educated than the native workforce, with some 80 per cent having third-level qualifications. This fact is crucial because it should be possible, therefore, for them to enter the workforce without undercutting or depressing the wages of the lower-paid.
Above all, what is needed is rational debate, free from scare-mongering, on the one hand, and from knee-jerk accusations of racism, on the other. - Yours, etc., P. Lenihan,
Bishop St, Limerick.