Donald Trump is scapegoating people such as asylum seekers and migrants to deflect anger away from the failure of people like him and the billionaires he represents to address the cost-of-living crisis. He is scapegoating vulnerable immigrants, people seeking asylum or those who are undocumented, including Irish people, in the most horrendous way. We have seen the consequences of that now with Seamus Culleton being treated in what he described as a modern-day concentration camp. That is what Trump is about. This Government is leaning into that stuff. What it is doing is not as absolutely blatant and obscene as what he is doing, but it is leaning into it and the human consequences are appalling, just as they are for Seamus Culleton. The latter is working in the United States. He was not documented, so he probably did not have everything that was necessary for him to be deemed fully legal. However, he is contributing and wants to continue to contribute to American society. We are all rightly appalled that he should be treated in this way because we understand that he is going to contribute in the same way that as millions of other Irish people who have to the countries all over the world to which they have migrated. People then say that too many of these people are coming to Ireland. The hypocrisy and double standards are appalling, and the human consequences are terrible. I raised the case of Bilal Butt here earlier this year. Bilal has been living and working here. He has two children who were born here and who have lived here all their lives. He was locked up for 50 days pending deportation. This is a man who is contributing to our society. There is no value for him or his children in deporting him. I warned at the time his case arose that his health was in danger. I have written to the Minister, who sitting there looking at his phone, three times about Bilal.

Sentiment score: -0.17

I have still not received a response to the communications I sent to him about Bilal. His family were worried that he was going to have a heart attack. He did have a heart attack and was in ICU. Thankfully, he is out of prison. This is a man who is working. His employer wants him to continue to work. He is contributing. There is nothing good about deporting him or deporting another family I have also been asked to mention. Deputy Bacik mentioned them earlier. This is the family of Titilayo Oluwakemi Oyekanmi and her three sons Samuel, Joseph and Genesis. She was training as a healthcare worker, had a QQI level 5 in healthcare and hoped to work as a care assistant. One of her sons was just about to do his leaving certificate. They have been packed up to be deported and thrown out of the country. This is just brutal stuff; it echoes what Trump is doing. It leans into all that stuff. We heard statements from the former Minister of Finance. who left to join the World Bank, to the effect that there are too many immigrants in Ireland and so on. That is just leaning into both the stuff to which I refer and the toxic agenda of the far right. The truth about immigrants coming to this country is that the number of asylum applicants is tiny. It was down to 13,000 last year and 18,000 the year before. It is a tiny proportion of the number of people coming into the country in the first place, which was 149,000 in 2024. It is a very small number. Michael Taffe, in a very good article I would encourage people to read on the perverse logic of the Government’s immigration policy, details how every serious study that has been done anywhere in the world shows that the benefits of inward immigration far outweigh the negatives in any country, as was the case with the Irish going abroad. This is true here and it is true everywhere. The economic benefit of people coming into a country is multiples of any of the costs involved. This should be obvious when we look at the contribution immigrants to this country are making to our health services, construction, hospitality and to retail. This country would not be able to function without immigrants. We are facing labour and skills shortages in every single area of Irish society and these are people who want to contribute to our society. We have Government bodies saying how the ageing population in this country and lack of young people is becoming a massive problem because the working population is declining as a proportion of the overall population, and I am on the Committee on Budgetary Oversight which is studying this. We are getting older so we need immigrants in order to sustain the working population to be able to pay for pensions and all of the other things we need. It makes no sense to be leaning into this stuff and suggesting that immigrants or asylum seekers are somehow causing a problem. This is a Government essentially trying to deflect attention away from its failure to address the housing crisis or indeed its culpability for that crisis in the first place. When we look at the numbers, we have 149,000 in inward immigration. As I said, there were 13,000 applications for asylum. Do Members know how many tourists came here in 2024? There were 6 million. Is anybody running around saying we have to stop the tourists coming in because they are such a problem? No, because we all recognise they bring economic benefits even if they also rely on the infrastructure and so on. That exact argument applies to a far smaller number of people seeking asylum or to immigrants coming into this country. We should stop the scapegoating and leaning into the far right and the toxic politics of Trump.

Sentiment score: -0.05