Today's Irish Times featured two articles about immigration/emigration. While I wasn't surprised at all by what the articles said, the story they tell is no less annoying in my mind.

The first article, "Poll shows hardening of attitude toward migrants" says that according to the newspaper's poll, "the vast majority (72 per cent) of people want to see a reduction in the number of non-Irish immigrants living here." They go on to say that young people (ages 18 to 24) feel this most strongly. YET, the article goes on to say that the poll also showed that "some 40 per cent of those in the 18-24 age group say they are likely to emigrate" -- the highest of all the groups. So many of the same people who want to get rid of immigrants also want to become immigrants themselves. That's sort of hypocritical, don't you think?

The sad part, to me: "People in rural areas and those from less well-off backgrounds are also more likely to support a reduction in the number of foreign workers based here." That is, people who are most exploited by the government and capitalist system are least likely to blame the actual problems causing them to have lowered access to work rather than the scapegoat of the immigrant.

The other related article was called, "Lack of jobs brings change in attitudes to migration." The article seems to justify people's misguided fears, saying, "With mounting job losses and increased competition for scarce posts, it is little surprise to see enthusiasm for immigration has cooled significantly." Sure, it's not surprising. But it's also frightening. With these attitudes come action. Violence against immigrants has risen by a third over the past two years. I have personally seen people with dark skin on the street get yelled at by Irish nationals on more than one occasion. (Three, to be exact.) And yet the Irish are literally sprinkled around the globe. The proclivity for the Irish to migrate is a well known fact. So why this attitude? Maybe those who have chosen to stay and tough it out feel they have more rights than other people. I've heard people say that Irish-born have more of a right than non-nationals to get State financial aid. But what makes one human being more deserving of food, water, shelter, and health care than another one? It's an attitude I cannot get my head around. People who emigrate do so in search of something better for themselves, just as the Irish themselves have been doing for hundreds of years. We are all the world's citizens. I don't understand why we can't try to take care of each other.

I grew up reading about America's founding ideology of "The Great Melting Pot." And in my formative years I read about the fallacies of that ideology, of the ways in which it fails, the ways it can be deconstructed, the ways in which the "melting pot" melts away upon closer inspection. And despite the fairy tales in history books about how our borders welcome all peoples, I remember being seventeen years old, working in a warehouse with a middle-aged woman who had lived in Chelsea, Massachusetts in the same house her entire life, working in warehouse jobs like that one for over twenty years. She talked on and on about how the Japanese were taking over the country, moving in, taking all our jobs. Being so young, I knew nothing of economics, but as the grandchild of immigrants, her speeches repulsed me. I knew instinctively that there was something wrong with this attitude, even though I couldn't say why.

Over the years I've heard this speech many times, about various ethnic groups. In fact, it seems like no matter where in the world you go, you can find someone saying this same thing about a group of immigrants, whether they are legal or illegal residents. It really makes you wonder what people with this opinion expect. Do they expect everyone in the entire world to stay put in the countries where they were born, for their entire lives, forever? Should no one cross boundaries?

A puzzling attitude I've seen here is the animosity towards people from other EU countries. It's as if people have forgotten that the benefits of having EU status works both ways: Irish citizens are free to work and live throughout the EU, but that means they must receive people from other EU countries. Then when it happened, in reality, it seems like people have panicked and would like to push them all out.

And the news reports don't seem to be helping. Take this article just from today, entitled, "Foreign nationals at higher risk of injury." The article says that since foreign nationals are usually doing a different job from the one they are trained to do in their country of origin, they are more likely to get injured on the job here in Ireland. In addition, "The researchers also found that the foreign workers sustained more severe injuries than Irish employees." And the newspaper doesn't fail to point this out that "The study, published in the current issue of the Irish Medical Journal (IMJ), found that most of the foreign nationals injured were from the new EU accession states." The message of the article is clear: hire Irish if you want the job done right and without a mess, and don't hire any of those new immigrants.

In other news from last Thursday, this article, called "Names hinder job search - survey", states, "Job-hunters with foreign names are twice as likely to be blackballed by potential employers than obviously Irish candidates, new research revealed today...The joint report by think-tank the ESRI and the Equality Authority also found high-levels of discrimination here compared with other countries." As many of you know, I have a very "ethnic" sounding name, so this article was yet another explanation as to why I haven't managed to drum up much action on my job applications in the past 5 months.

It all leaves me with a lot of food for thought. I never valued the American ideals before, always thinking of them as meaningless lip service. But I find that I am actually starting to miss that lip service. Maybe it was smoke and mirrors, a kind of dog and pony show. But when I look at the successes of my family and the families of my friends whose parents and grandparents were immigrants to America just one and two generations ago, and I think back to that incredibly hokey Naturalization ceremony I went to in September, I wonder if maybe it's impossible to get people on board to an idea without a little song and dance. I've had to go to "Diversity Training" and watch corporate videos on "diversity," until it's become a joke. But now it doesn't seem like a joke anymore. I understand what they were trying to do, even though their methods were probably ineffectual (you aren't going to turn a bigot around with a corporate video after all) -- they were trying to make the ideology of inclusion part of their corporate culture, just as America makes cultural inclusion part of their national identity.

Of course, it still doesn't actually work. I don't have to tell you about the racism that is rampant all over the United States. But it's something the ideological machine gets millions of people to strive for every single day. There are parades, school events, clubs, fundraisers, websites, and groups all over the country promoting cultural diversity. We let it hang out. Because if you ask your average American about their ethnic background, you're bound to get a mix. Personally, I'm Italian, Irish, English, and Native/French Canadian. My family certainly didn't come over on the Mayflower, that's for sure! I don't think America is ever going to re-brand away the Melting Pot story, and while I used to think it was a load of crap, I have begun to be glad for it. I would never say that I'm proud of my country, because sadly it has committed too many atrocities for me to feel any kind of American pride. But when I think about home, I think about that dog and pony show, and even though I know it's fake, it still gives me hope.

I sort of naively thought that, Ireland being an English-speaking country, it would sort of be like living in a different state of the US, like moving to the deep south. I figured, ok, people will talk differently, act differently, in a quirky sort of way. But at the root of it, I didn't think much of how Irish values would differ from those I'd been brought up with, whether I'd grown to buck them or not.

However, the differences in the two countries' governments, I think, are really at the heart of what makes me truly, truly feel like a foreigner here, more than my accent or the fact that I say "Excuse me," instead of "I'm sorry," when I'm trying to squeeze by someone in a tight grocery story aisle, or that I still don't understand the differences between rugby, gaelic football, and football (aka soccer). First, there is the lack of separation of church and state. I know that America fails on this account sometimes, especially when anyone named Bush is in office. But it's there in our Constitution to fight for if we so choose. When I first arrived here, Mark explained to me a big news story about a woman who had been molested for years by the Head Teacher of the Catholic school she went to. She was recently taking legal action against the government for what had happened to her. The Church said it was nothing to do with them; it was the Department of Education's deal. The Dept. of Ed claimed no responsibility. But here's the thing: back home, if you go to Catholic school, it's because you paid for it. All public schools provided by the government are secular. But here, at the time of this woman's childhood, if you wanted a secular school, you had to pay for it. So this woman had no choice but to go to that Catholic school. If she didn't, she would have had a truancy officer coming to her house. To me, that is the most backwards thing I've ever heard, with or without the molesting Head Teacher. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. The woman made it clear that the case wasn't for money, but for someone to take responsibility for what happened to her as a child. Where is the accountability? But if the government takes responsibility and says, "What happened to you shouldn't have happened and you shouldn't have been made to go to that school," then it apparently makes a statement that they are unwilling to make. Which is terribly sad and makes this country look spineless and unevolved. And then do you know what they did on top of it it? They claimed damages against her for court costs. Talk about insult to injury.

Mark and I just finished listening to a radio program that completely incensed us both. It was about (what else?) the employment situation here and the amount of foreigners working and on the dole. Because of the high unemployment rates, people in Ireland and the UK are absolutely rabid about foreigners "taking up" their jobs. Never mind that the jobs they are "taking" are statistically for very specifically trained, higher-educated positions. Never mind that this is what being part of the EU is about. Ireland is part of the EU so that there *can* be a free exchange of the work force. Irish workers enjoy the like freedom to travel to other countries, which they do, and work there. Which is a point no one seems to bring up here. It's just conveniently forgotten about the thousands of Irish workers that go to other places and get work and benefits. The radio show featured a man from the Department of Social Welfare who cheerfully outlined how many foreign countries have people on the dole in Ireland, and specifically which ones have large numbers (and what those numbers are). What is the point of that? Just so you know who you can be angry at when you get the misguided notion that foreigners are bleeding all the tax dollars? He pointed out that the numbers of people with large immigrant groups coming here, from, say, Poland and China, have gone down by a very large margin. There was another man on there who was talking about how great it will be when Ireland makes it more difficult for people to immigrate here. Like that is going to solve all the problems. Some people here think that sealing off the country and keeping benefits away from non-nationals is going to solve the economic crisis. From what I've read in the want ads, not with the current work force it's not. And reading the statistics of how many Irish hold higher education degrees versus the rest of Europe, they need to do a much better job at educating their population if they want key industries to grow. People want the rules of the EU bent for them, just because things are rough. Well, it just doesn't work that way.

There's another case in the news of a woman seeking asylum here to prevent her daughters from undergoing genital mutilation in her country of origin. She already had one daughter undergo the procedure and die from it. Apparently after pleading for years, Ireland was just about to kick her out when the EU stepped in and said they couldn't kick her out until the case was reviewed by them. Of all the people who get to come here, here's someone with a legitimate reason for coming over, and they were just going to bounce her out on her ass. And so she's waiting and hoping. You would think that public support for this woman, who, by the way, is gorgeous, and so are her children, would be overwhelming. I think if she were white she'd have her own reality TV show by now. But because she's a black asylum seeker, no one seems to have the appropriate amount of compassion for her, in my opinion. It appears to be an inherent mistrust, or else she would have her asylum and be living comfortably by now without fear for future and those of her children.

And maybe this is something I understand, being from a place that is part of a union -- you live in a State, a part, that is a piece of the whole, the Country. The negotiation between the two is awkward sometimes. And sometimes the larger governing body decides stuff that the parts don't jibe with. But that's the way the cookie crumbles if you want to reap the benefits of being part of the larger mass. But Ireland should give its rampant bigotry and racism if it wants to be accepted by the international community.