Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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The Irish left wing open borders position alway confused me. Isn't being upset about British immigration 300 years ago their whole thing?
I don’t think it makes sense to liken them, modern immigration doesn’t involve the state confiscating your land to give to immigrants.
They're more analogous than you think.
The English rulers wanted to increase the number of domestic supporters so they imported supporters from England and seized land to give it to them.
The Irish left wants to increase it's number of domestic supporters so they bring in politically loyal but violent foreigners. They lavish them in tax dollars and pay them to live in local neighbourhoods. The imports commit violence against locals, but it's a hate crime to fight back. Eventually the locals flee.
So their goal is essentially the same result with a few more steps.
Here's how I see it, your description was true for other countries and the related policies have since become a dogma to export via UN resolutions and American soft power or enforce via EU law. There is no real immigrant voting bloc in Ireland, the biggest left-wing party Sinn Fein has flipped their stances on the hate speech bill and the EU migration pact because the last year has caused division within their base (working class vs woke middle class), there was no 5 figure increase in 3rd world immigration until like 2 years ago. The immediate consequences of this situation (though not so immediate when there's an election coming up) work against the left defined strictly, though of course the woke wings of the centrist parties are pretty happy about it.
The conditions for this situation to arise thoughtlessly on the other hand have been present for a long time. Ireland paved the way for the present immigration situation at a time when we faced little consequences for it, the Irish government got to pass laws that made them look good in the eyes of the EU, UN etc while the actual immigration numbers (excluding EU migrants) were minimal. Immigration was simply not that important an issue until recently and there was no cost to winning over the striving middle class who have always been ashamed to be stuck in a backwards Catholic country. Now that Ireland is actually facing consequences for their eagerness to ape the big important countries the cracks are starting to show.
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