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The post-budget blues

Last update - Thursday, December 17, 2009, 20:39 By Ronit Lentin

After weeks of speculation, the Minister for Finance delivered his verdict – cutting expenditure all around him, targeting public sector workers, allowances for children and the unemployed, medical card holders and other recipients of welfare.

I am not an economist and will not do a detailed analysis of the cuts. But I do want to reflect on the rhetoric that ‘we all must sacrifice’ for the ‘common good’.
As Fintan O’Toole showed clearly in his recent book Ship of Fools, the deep recession Ireland finds itself in is due to both stupidity and corruption.
As the rich became richer – aided by their friends in government – the less well off, while somewhat better off during the boom, also incurred greater debts, being forced to buy over inflated houses and pay over inflated mortgages.
But what interests me about debates on the budget cuts is the complete silence on migrants.
While the community development sector rightly fought against its foreclosure and forced amalgamation with area partnerships, the consequences for migrants and migrant-led organisations have not yet been spoken about.
Indeed, migrants do not form a constituency worthy of the Government’s attention – many of them cannot vote. Moreover, research has shown that people who were once reasonably supportive of migrants, particularly ‘useful’ labour migrants, are now saying they have other problems – migration is no longer on their radar.
In its response to the budget, the Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI) welcomed the six per cent increase in the budget of the Office of the Minister of Integration, while lamenting the 24 per cent cut to funding for the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service. This, the ICI says, “will lead to a blow out in the already unacceptably high costs and long waiting times involved in administering our immigration system.
“Compared to other countries, Ireland already charges extremely high fees and takes more than two years to process citizenship applications… causing enormous hardship for migrants.
“It is difficult to imagine,” the ICI adds, “that processing times will not increase further when INIS’s funding has been cut by one-quarter.”
But beyond this, not much has been said. So let’s reiterate.
There are some 6,600 asylum seekers still in holding centres, living in limbo and awaiting a decision on their status. In receipt of bed and board and a paltry allowance not raised since 2001, asylum seekers are desperate, often having to resort to a variety of strategies to make ends meet – including, in extreme cases, selling sex to put food on the table.
Secondly, many of those who came here as labour migrants – to fill shortages in the construction, hospitality, agricultural and care sectors – now find themselves unemployed, and in many cases undocumented.
Organisations catering for homeless people report growing numbers of migrants among their clients. Yet nobody speaks about them.

As Metro Éireann has reported, racism is on the increase: from vile online anti-Roma and anti-migrant ravings, to the recent finding by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency that Ireland is among the top ten in discrimination against ethnic minorities. A shocking 54 per cent of sub-Saharan Africans in Ireland report racial discrimination. Yet nobody speaks about it.
Cuts in education, in health, in housing, in training, to welfare allowances and to the INIS budget will all have a negative affect on this country’s migrant population. Yet nobody speaks about it.
It’s a crying shame.

Dr Ronit Lentin is head of the MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies at the Department of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin. Her column appears fortnightly in Metro Éireann


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