I have notice a massive influx of Immigrants from our EU Eastern European countries. You still hear locals giving out crap that they are taking away our jobs. But how come I still see "wanted help" posters in many businesses in cities like Dublin and Limerick. I would assume this would be the same for other towns and cities around Ireland. And unfortunately, some of these people are exploited for the cheap labour. And from the Indo article Mary Robinson, she said:
"There are economic implications, but I think it's clear that the migrants who come are actually helping part of the Irish economy [...] very important that employers don't exploit the potential of cheap labour at a standard that's not acceptable."
From my point of view, I thing the immigrants have kept things going. Even my parent's restaurant has hired Polish staff. What I found funny was, the Polish hired is a kitchen porter, he didn't know much English, and the kitchen staff mainly spoke Cantonese and Mandarin when they work. Given that communciation is vrey important whilst working in the kitchen, it still worked out in the end. It just started off with bits of English, pointing and hand gestures. My mom was impressed, as he was hardworking (ok, maybe a bit attached to talking to his mobile), but hardworking nonetheless. They even learnt curse words from each other. And the reason why we started to hire Polish people as staff... locals don't stay long, Macauans and Mainland Chinese just bugger off without notice as soon as they learn the skills (which they should have in the first place), and the rest have no work permits (which we don't hire anyway). All many businesses want are people would are willing to work, just because it's catering, retail etc., and not like IT, or other white-collared jobs, does not mean they are easy take up. It's all hard work, and they don't get to sit down for breaks much either.
Ireland is changing, and whether people like it or not, we need the immigrants. The Irish use to be the immigrants to US, UK, Austrailia etc. Why do we forget the abuses to the Irish as immigrants in other countries? We should be treating immigrants here, just like how we would have liked other countries to treat the Irish working in their countries. Maybe we are too proud to admit we need help, as I mentioned in the beginning, just look around at all those "wanted help" signs.
Comments welcome at the IBC forum.