← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Walter Yannis
Thread ID: 15909 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2004-12-07
2004-12-07 10:57 | User Profile
Mon Dec 6, 9:40 AM ET
Chicago Tribune via [URL=http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2027&ncid=2027&e=5&u=/chitribts/20041206/ts_chicagotrib/boomingirelandseespopulationswellto130yearhigh]Yahoo![/URL]
By Tom Hundley Tribune foreign correspondent
Ireland's population has climbed above the 4 million mark for the first time since the 19th Century, when famine and widespread economic hardship triggered a vast wave of immigration to the United States.
According to newly released figures from the Irish government's Central Statistics Office, Ireland's population stands at 4.04 million, the highest figure since 1871, when the census reported a population of 4.05 million in the 26 counties that make up the Republic of Ireland.
Just 30 years before that, Ireland was a crowded island with about 8 million inhabitants, but a potato famine in 1845 resulted in the deaths of nearly a million people over the next several years and prompted an exodus, mainly to U.S. urban centers.
The depopulation of Ireland continued for more than a century, hitting a low of 2.8 million in the early 1960s. By the 1930s, Britain replaced the U.S. as the primary destination for Irish immigrants.
The remarkable demographic recovery reflects what Irish President Mary McAleese, in her second-term inaugural address last month, described as Ireland's "rags-to-riches" story, its overnight "transition from a Third World to a First World country."
For Irish of the postwar generation, the country's renewal during their lifetimes is nothing short of astonishing. Ireland has gone from being one of Europe's poorest countries, whose main export was its people, to one of its most prosperous, with the second-highest gross domestic product in the European Union (news - web sites) after Luxembourg.
In Ireland, population growth and economic prosperity are closely intertwined.
The recent population surge comes from a combination of natural growth--births exceeding deaths--and immigration.[B] Most of the new immigrants are from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe, drawn to the booming economy, but last year more than a third of the immigrants were returning Irish nationals[/B].
The demographic turnaround began in the 1970s, stalled briefly in the mid-1980s when there was high unemployment, and resumed in the 1990s.
"There were a lot of political changes over the years, but no change in the demographic structure until the 1970s," said Chris Curtin, a sociology professor at the National University of Ireland in Galway. "That's when quite a lot of Irish abroad, mainly in the U.K., started to return home."
In more recent years it has been the Irish in America who are returning home. Most of them were job-seekers who went to the U.S. in the 1980s.
One reason for the reverse flow has been the Bush administration's crackdown on illegal immigration after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Many Irish were working in the U.S. illegally, mainly in construction trades, but stiffer visa regulations have made it more difficult for them to come and go.
A more compelling reason, according to Curtin, is the job market. Ireland now offers plenty of opportunities, while the sinking dollar makes working in the U.S. a lot less attractive than it was a few years ago.
No country has benefited more from the European Union than Ireland. EU membership opened Ireland to Europe's markets and kindled an entrepreneurial spirit that capitalized on the country's low labor costs and business-friendly tax laws.
Ireland also did a masterly job selling itself. The "Celtic Tiger" was strategically positioned as the English-speaking portal between the European and North American markets.
U.S. investment in Ireland stands at $55.4 billion--more than four times the amount invested in China, according to James Kenny, a Chicago builder who became U.S. ambassador to Ireland last year.
American businesses have created more than 90,000 jobs in Ireland, but more telling, said Kenny, is the increasing value of those jobs. When Microsoft began manufacturing software in Ireland 20 years ago, the average salary at the plant was about $20,000; today that facility has grown into Microsoft's European Operations Center, with 1,100 employees and an average salary of about $65,000.
If the economy continues to grow, population growth is expected to continue. But prosperity has brought its problems. A spate of new studies has revealed a sharp increase in alcohol and drug abuse, teen suicide, and--startling to a country whose history was so profoundly shaped by famine--adolescent obesity.
Ireland also has had some difficulties adjusting to multiculturalism.
"There has been an increase in the number of racist incidents," said Denise Charlton of the Immigrant Council of Ireland. "Whenever there is a discussion [about immigration], it is usually very negative."
2004-12-08 04:17 | User Profile
Walter Yannis,
Pray for Ireland. Pray for it to be poor once more!
If this is what a good economy gets you I want no part of it!
2004-12-08 05:24 | User Profile
Ireland is gone. The Irish are naive, something quaint until it leads to beautiful Ireland being overrun by muds.
Did you guys read the article in TAC on multiculturalism in Holland (re: Islam and the Van Gogh's murder)? Western Europe is gone. I wonder why people still bother trying to learn German, French, or Italian (let alone Dutch)? According to a Dutch political analyst I saw on German DWTV, the number one name given to newborn male babies in Dutch cities is no longer Jan or Pieter, but Muhammed. Ironically, the hispanization of the US will largely prevent a similar fate here.
2004-12-08 06:18 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Jack Cassidy]Ireland is gone. The Irish are naive, something quaint until it leads to beautiful Ireland being overrun by muds.
Did you guys read the article in TAC on multiculturalism in Holland (re: Islam and the Van Gogh's murder)? Western Europe is gone. I wonder why people still bother trying to learn German, French, or Italian (let alone Dutch)? According to a Dutch political analyst I saw on German DWTV, the number one name given to newborn male babies in Dutch cities is no longer Jan or Pieter, but Muhammed. Ironically, the hispanization of the US will largely prevent a similar fate here.[/QUOTE]
I wouldn't count the Irish out just yet. Or the Dutch.
They've both been through far worse. The deracinated Dutch are waking up (and not a moment too soon) and the Irish are still intensely tribalized and they won't be overrun by boolies without a major shitestorm.
I note a couple of things from this article. First, the Irish seem to have a pretty good birthrate. Second, much of the "immigration" are Irish emigrants coming home. Third, Eastern Europe is a big source of immigrants, and since they're white they'll blend in pretty well over time.
The really troubling thing is this talk of Africans moving there. That's suicide, but like I say, I think that it won't be allowed to run its course.
We don't notice usually when sea changes happen. Maybe this Van Gogh murder and the killing of that fag anti-immigrant politician marked that moment for the Dutch. Maybe the train bombings in Madrid marked that moment for the Spanish. Maybe not, but I don't doubt that the moment will come. It's just human biology. No way will an entire genome go softly into the dark night of mud assimilation. No way. There will be a reaction, and we will win, it's just a question of time.
Walter
2004-12-08 18:36 | User Profile
[url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3199024.stm[/url]
Irish baby laws attract Africans Month-old twins born to a Nigerian mother in Ireland Parents hope their children can have Irish citizenship
A doctor in Ireland says African women who travel to Dublin to give birth are putting their health at risk in order to give their babies Irish citizenship.
Declan Keane, head doctor at Dublin's National Maternity Hospital, says there have been a number of cases of women travelling while actually in labour.
Ireland is the only European Union country that grants automatic citizenship to babies born within its borders.
It has experienced a massive rise in the number of children born to foreign nationals in recent years.
[COLOR=Red]In 1999, only 2% of babies were born to non-nationals. This year the figure will be almost 20%.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=Red]"Most of these women, 70%, are coming from sub-Saharan Africa and the majority of those from Nigeria," Dr Keane told Ireland's RTE radio[/COLOR].
He said a number of women were travelling while actually in labour and there was little time for screening and pre-natal care.
"There is a major disaster waiting there to happen," he said.
Court ruling
The problem was being experienced at all three of Dublin's maternity hospitals, he added.
Last year more than 4,000 non-EU immigrants - 3,000 of them asylum seekers - were granted residency because they were parents of babies born in Ireland.
In January, the Irish Supreme Court ruled that parents and siblings of such children do not automatically qualify for Irish citizenship.
But Dr Keane says mothers are still making the journey in the hope that their child will have the option of returning to live in Ireland when they are older.
"The Supreme Court judgement has done nothing to stop them coming in," he said.