As 2025 rang to an end, the government introduced harsher immigration laws, targeting what Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration Jim O’Callaghan deems a “worryingly” high rate of population growth. Among other measures, it has been made even more difficult for refugees to reunite with their loved ones.
Moreover, in the coming months, Ireland will implement elements of the EU Migration Pact, which likewise seek to reduce the numbers of refugees.
This comes amid an uptick in rhetoric from government politicians seeking to lay the blame for the deepening crisis on migrants. According to Micheál Martin, international protection applicants are a “significant factor in the growth of homelessness”. Not to be accused of heartlessness, Simon Harris said that migration outside of international applicants is also too high.
Class anger in distorted form
Polling suggests that 72 percent agree with the new laws attacking asylum seekers. This may be the first popular thing this government has done!
As communists we are emphatic that it is the decaying capitalist system that is to
blame for the crisis facing Irish workers and youth. In 2025 there were 13,160 applications for asylum, which is a reduction from previous years. This in no way explains how average rents have managed to race past €2,000.
Blaming migrants only serves as a distraction from the artificial scarcity produced by the profiteering of landlords and developers.
That said, it shouldn’t be surprising that a growing number of workers support harsher immigration controls. According to one poll, 82 percent think the government is not doing enough to address immigration. In the absence of a clear class alternative, the only ‘answer’ being offered to workers for why their lives are growing more miserable is inward migration. Martin’s comment about homelessness figures reveals the whole truth – this is not about migration per se, but housing along with the healthcare system, education etc.
Ultimately, the anti-immigration mood among a layer of workers signifies class anger being expressed in a distorted form.
Sinn Féin
Besides distracting from their failures in government, another reason for Martin, Harris and co. to play the immigration card is as a way to attack Sinn Féin, their biggest electoral rivals.
Since their plateau at the doorstep of power, SF has made couched efforts to appeal to ‘anti-migrant’ voters with references to a ‘rules-based immigration system’ and calls for speedier deportations. That said, SF is also cautious not to veer too far right on immigration and risk losing the workers and young people they won in the past 15 years by presenting themselves as a left alternative. Simply put, on this question they are vulnerable from all sides.
The government must know their migrant-bashing won’t actually win over workers who despise the political establishment. But they hope that by bringing the question of immigration to the fore, they can keep the mass anti-establishment feeling among workers and youth split, thus weakening SF.
Overture for things to come
Before his departure for a cushy job at the World Bank, Paschal Donohue often hailed migration as the magic bullet for Ireland’s labour shortages – a workforce that would build the country out of the permanent infrastructure crisis. Of course, he never had a viable plan for how these migrant workers would be housed and trained to make this possible. Incidentally, the same is true of those on the left who proclaim that ‘refugees are welcome here’ but won’t fight for the revolutionary measures necessary to give everyone in this country a decent life.
The point is that plenty exists in Ireland to give everyone a good house, decent healthcare, a quality education and much more – but it needs to be fought for against the capitalist class. And for the fight to be effective, the working class needs utmost unity, including between Irish and migrant workers.
With Donohue gone, the key figures in both government parties now agree on the need to throw migrants under the bus. In FF, Jim O’Callaghan sees himself as the successor to the growingly weak Micheál Martin. He hopes to stand out within the party by making plenty of noise on the hot button issue of immigration that forms part of his ministerial brief.
This new direction is a sign of the growing desperation of an establishment that is utterly discredited. FF and FG will continue to veer right on migration as they try to distract from the increasingly savage attacks workers will be subjected to by this government.
But that won’t save them from growing more despised by the day.
Against division, for class unity!
The pessimists on the left talk about a ‘period of reaction’ because of the sway right populist trends currently hold across the world. Lacking a revolutionary alternative, in Ireland too, the anti-establishment mood might find a political expression on the right.
But for Irish workers, neither right populist rhetoric nor immigration controls will put food on the table nor a roof over their head. Many of the workers calling for stricter immigration laws today will be won to socialism tomorrow. But only once there is a strong force on the left that doesn’t concern itself with abstract, middle-class moralising, but boldly poses the question in revolutionary, class terms. That force must be built now.
