Ireland's Population Hemorrhage

...The Catholic Bishops' Commission for Emigration in the capital has described the government's handling, or nonhandling, of the issue as "deplorable...

...No work permit is necessary...

...Labor Minister Bertie Aherne, who has taken the brunt of the criticism, concedes that no remedy is in sight...

...It is a fact," he said, indulging in understatement, "that some young Irish people will, for the foreseeable future, be unable to secure employment in Ireland...

...The young woman at Eason's cash register said the book was selling well...

...In fact, illegal immigration from Ireland to the United States is known to have risen sharply during the 1980s...

...At the same time, however, Ireland is threatened by the impending elimination of immigration restrictions within the 12-nation European conglomerate...

...For the pluses of EC membership have in no way changed the reality that not nearly enough jobs are being created here to stem theoutflow...

...Although the memory of its former status as an oppressed British colony still rankles, Ireland has long found Britain a convenient place of refuge for its excess labor force...

...The emigrants today include many who have lately been laid off in hard-pressed industries or have grown frustrated with the long-term employment picture...

...And, indeed, this has been of some help...

...Anyone lacking first-hand information on beating the system can turn to readily available publications for the "proper" procedures...

...The fear in Dublin is that this will servetoescalate the already substantial exodus from Ireland...

...It had been hoped that membership in the European Community, and the growing prosperity of the EC as a whole, would lift Ireland out of its economic malaise...

...The effect is to increase the general dissatisfaction that is behind the emigration hemorrhage...

...Economic forecasts certainly bear him out...

...In addition, it is not uncommon for people in Ireland to have relatives who not only have outfoxed the INS but who make trips home to see the family from time to time...

...Britain, in turn, has gained enormously from the Irish influx, notwithstanding the occasional howls that arise in London's tabloid press when newly-arrived families are discovered to have jumped a local public-housing queue, or appear to have emigrated solely for the purpose of receiving larger social welfare handouts...

...The government is so resigned to its inability to alter the situation that it has begun expressing concern about the young people leaving not having sufficient skills to give them access to the better jobs abroad...

...Most of these people head for Britain, a mere three hours away by ferry across the Irish sea...

...Asof 1992, citizens of all the EC countries will be able to reside, work and receive the protection of welfare provisions anywhere they choose in the Community...

...The book tells would-be immigrants how to prepare their visa applications so that they will gain approval to enter the United States, and provides answers to the potentially tricky questions they might be asked by immigration officers upon arrival...

...It complains that politicians do not so much as engage in informed debate on why that many young people are pursuing new lives on foreign shores...

...This saves them the cost of contributing to national social welfare schemes, but it deprives the part-timers of adequate welfare coverage and compounds the problem of low wages...

...Britain has become a still more attractive haven for Irish immigrants in recent years as a result of the tightened immigration restrictions in other Englishspeaking nations, notably the United States...

...Yet it would be wrong to suggest that legal barriers have succeeded in stopping those determined to make their way to New York, Boston or points west in quest of work and improved living conditions...

...If he could not find a home for himself, local British government councils were required to provide him —like all other legal immigrants—with a place to live...

...Most Irish immigrants arrived unskilled to find work as manual laborers or service-industry personnel, but their Anglicized offspring include countless members of Britain's professions and business community...

...Corresponding arrangements exist for Britons emigrating to Ireland, but there is very limited traffic in that direction...

...Norman Gelb writes regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...

...Moreover, their strength appears to be growing despite the relentless problems...

...Evading the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) inspectors assigned to tracking them down and sending them home has become something of a science among the Irish...

...But it is not only the young who are packing their bags in hope of improving their lives...

...But other factors are at play too...

...Throughout the next decade, Ireland is expected to be one of the few places in the European Community where the labor supply will significantly exceed demand...

...Even before the European Community provisions were formulated, an Irish immigrant unable to find a job in Britain could immediately receive unemployment benefits there...

...A largely elderly population, the commission adds, would further erode the country's prospects for supporting a workforce...

...The country receives a variety of budgetary handouts funded by wealthier EC states to promote the improvement of conditions in less affluent member states, and farmers in particular benefit from the Community agricultural subsidies that so anger the U.S...

...Unemployment is rife, and there is agrowing trend among employers to rely on part-time help wherever possible...

...are relatively easy to frustrate, especially with the assistance openly offered by such Irish-American support organizations as Project Irish Outreach in New York, which condemns the immigration restrictions as unjust and discriminatory...

...Travel restrictions have never existed between Ireland and Britain, despite the complications this causes in the effort to control IRA terrorism...

...Published in the Irish capital but written by a New York lawyer, it offers advice to persons who may find themselves "inaccurately referred to as illegals"—inaccurately, it says, "because there can be no determination of illegality other than that made pursuant to a hearing in a court or administrative proceeding...

...With so little to risk, and with an easy return journey if things do not work out, it is understandably tempting for Irish men and women to try their luck in London or Liverpool...

...Yet recent public opinion polls show that the ruling Fianna Fail Party and Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Charles J. Haughey enjoy far greater support among the electorate than the country's opposition parties...

...Poverty is endemic," reports the Dublin Sunday Tribune, engulfing "whole areas" of Ireland's cities and countryside...

...No other democratically elected government has remained so immensely popular while presiding over conditions that are driving great numbers of its people into exile...

...These attitudes undermine whatever advantages opposition politicians might gain from holding Haughey accountable for Ireland's inability to cope with the changes in European markets resulting from new technologies...

...A recent report calculated that a steady stream of some 1,100 young people are leaving Ireland each week to seek employment elsewhere...

...It also describes the rights of illegals in the United States, and lists the support groups to whom one can turn for assistance...

...In the Irish backcountry, especially, there is a measure of fatalism about economic hardship...

...Immigration Game...

...No passports have to be shown at entry points...

...Haughey's "I'm more Irish than they are" stance is no doubt partly responsible for this, its effectiveness deriving from Dublin's apparently unresolvable differences with Britain over the status of Ulster and the question of how to deal with the enduring sectarian animosities there...

...the nation's long history of mass emigration is similarly accepted almost as a natural phenomenon...

...No permission is needed to establish residence...

...The regulations against unauthorized residence in the U.S...

...If present trends continue, the Bishops warn, Ireland will be in danger of becoming a "European retirement home" to which Irish-born and -educated expatriates return only when their working days are over...

...At the checkout counter of Eason's, Ireland's largest bookstore, located on O'Connell Street, Dublin's main thoroughfare, there is a stack of paperbacks entitled How to Win the U.S...

...An estimated 5 per cent of Britain's present population is believed to be of recent Irish ancestry...