Irish public sector attitudes to immigrants....

"Person or Number", a report issued just yesterday by a number of organisations including NASC Ireland makes for very startling reading. (http://www.nascireland.org/ ) . The report cites a number of issues with the attitude of some CWO's and Dept of Social Welfare Officials to immigrants looking to claim benefits here. In one case, a Nigerian man who was refused benefits was more or less told to fuck off back to Nigeria if he did not like it. This was just the tip of the iceberg, most of those interviewed would not make a complaint for fear it would cause an issue with their benefits that they in most cases are genuinely entitled to. Its thanks to the good people at organisations such as Intergrate Ireland and other such advocacy organisations that we can get a message across that discrimination of any kind is not welcome....

A case for Open Borders

I have long been an advocate of this policy and believe its something worthwhile exploring. Here is a different if somewhat very simple look at things. People in a capitalist society and conditioned to be consumerists, to work like slaves for basic wage and in turn this money then leaves the worker whom spends his disposable income on useless stuff that he may want but inherently made not need. This leads me on to a second point which forms the crux of my opinion on what is preventing open borders. When people accumulate all this wealth and their material goods (a lot of capitalist societies produce materialistic beings) they will fight to keep what they have which is a standard of living way above what is par for the norm and this in itself creates an injust and inhumane society. An open border is something which they see as a threat to both themselves and their way of life and this coupled with their extreme insecurities and superiority complexes makes for one giant barrier which while big is not so big as to be torn down.




How do we implement an open border? From the start we need to educate our children in the schools and try and get a number of influential people on board, I’m not talking about currently established leaders but those whom have excellent leadership skills, are diplomatic and trustworthy, where these come from I do not know but I’m sure some way can be created to identify them. These people can then in each country/region of the world where there is extremes such as fundamentalism seek to address moderates in that country and appeal to the working class in such a way as to combat the influence of extremism and fundamentalism and appeal to the people through the offer of a better way of life. In Ireland we would need someone to try and make people drop their materialist values and go back to their humanity and thinking of others. We would end up with a standard of living that is still well above average but takes into account the needs of everyone else.




Over the years we would promote a bicultural model similar to that of Singapore where housing developments would be mixed and people fully explored to promote each their own culture while actively taking an interest in each other’s culture. The Canadians have great legislation in place called the Canadian Multiculturalism Act which was borne out of the ideals of Trudeau in Canada (more info please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Multiculturalism_Act ). It goes some way towards promoting this bicultural model.




The ideas I have outlined are not perfect, they are not the ideas of some happy clappy hippy but someone who believe humanity can benefit from a change in thinking, a giant session of cognitive behavioural therapy if you will. Feel free to criticise (constructively may I add) and to add your voice on what is right or what is wrong about the above.