Imigration Control Platform Plan Recruitment Drive

dublin | racism & migration related issues | news report

Tuesday August 01, 2006 12:16

by Marcas MacCaoimhín

Whither the left?

The Immigration Control Platform (ICP) are set to try and crawl out of the woodwork once again. It has been brought to the attention of this activist that Aine Ní Choinaill's bid to halt ethnic and cultural diversity in the name of a "homogonous nation" is to begin a recruitment drive in Dublin City centre.

The ICP has been meeting recently in a pub on Caple Street and is set to launch a recruitment drive at Stalls outside the GPO. A leaflet asking people if they "Feel like foreigners in (their) own country" is to be distributed. The leaflet will be aimed at recruiting fifteen to forty year olds and to see if their is any support for the ICP position among the general public. A member of the group stated that the ICP wishes to voice their opinions "without being called racists". He went on to say that he is "sick of walking down the street and hearing nothing but foreign voices."
Obviously as uncertainty in the economy increases and people are forced to accept lower wages to compete in the labour market with super exploited migrant workers, there will be more of a niche for groups like the ICP. The question must now be posed to those on the left of how the threat of racism, both thinly veiled and open, will be countered. It must also be put to the trade union movement that ultimately the best way to halt tensions between Irish workers and immigrants is to fight the "race to the bottom". A unionisation drive among migrant workers should lead to resistance of "the race to the bottom" and unite Irish and Immigrant workers.