Why nobody in Sinn Féin can offer clarity on immigration

Sam McBride,  Sunday Independent, August 18th, 2024

Last Wednesday, Sinn Féin's press office issued a statement encapsulating the party's brazenness and its desperation. Tipperary TD Martin Browne's statement called for "dialogue and calm” after gardaí were required to ensure busloads of asylum-seekers could make their way through protesters to accommodation in Dundrum.

Browne's statement, which would have been agonised over at party headquarters, referred to the lack of local housing, but added: "Those well-founded frustrations cannot and should not be taken out on vulnerable people arriving here fleeing traumatic situations.”

Neither Browne nor Sinn Féin posted this statement on Facebook. Instead, the party posted it on X, whose users are on average wealthier and more left wing. But even there, it was met with derision. One user responded: "They're 'fleeing' the UK!” Another said: "Fleeing persecution from Bristol. Give us a break.”

As recently as last year, Browne expressed concern at the numbers of asylum-seekers coming to Cashel, saying it involved "poaching homeless accommodation” to house them. Just eight months ago, he addressed an anti-migration rally in Roscrea. This is the political equivalent of a wolf putting on and off his woollens — and people can see that.

For Sinn Féin, this is nightmarish. More than two months after its disastrous June elections, the party's immigration stance is more hopelessly contorted than ever. In recent weeks, it has sought to refocus on housing, but it's not working — in part because housing and migration are inextricably linked.

Last month, the party put great effort into a new policy document which attempted to reconcile the irreconcilable: the party is fundamentally pro-migration involving both economic migrants and refugees, but most of its supporters are not.

The document called for asylum centres to only go where there is "the capacity to deal with them and where services exist to support them”. Those terms weren't defined — it seemed a crude attempt to keep migrants coming, but place them where few people vote for Sinn Féin.

The document also demanded communities are "consulted” on where asylum-seekers go, attempting to make this sound tough by saying the authorities would be "obliged to have regard to” the response. Indeed, this is legally meaningless. The authorities could simply disregard opposition.

While Mary Lou McDonald trumpeted its new policy as "a significant intervention”, it was indeed regressive. The new document was 2,400 words — fewer words than are on a page of the Sunday Independent.

Yet in 2001, Sinn Féin produced a meatier document on migration. That 6,600-word policy spoke explicitly about issues on which this new document is deliberately vague or silent.

It had said all asylum-seekers who arrived by the start of that year "should be granted an amnesty”. It said that "the experience of Irish people as undocumented persons in the USA should sensitise politicians in Ireland against labelling people as illegal immigrants”.

It suggested allowing asylum-seekers to work, said that the entry process for migrants "should be simplified”, said Ireland had a "specific responsibility” to "extend the rights of asylum-seekers and refugees”, and said refugees should get to vote.

It denounced a proposal to fingerprint asylum-seekers and said that "integration does not mean assimilation or indoctrination. Refugees and asylum seekers must not have to trade off their native culture and traditions in return for equal participation in Irish society”.

Even if you disagreed with that document, it was coherently argued: Sinn Féin believed migration was fundamentally positive, that asylum-seekers should be treated more favourably, and that Irish people had a unique responsibility to show kindness to new arrivals, whether legal or illegal.

Nowadays, no one — not even Mary Lou McDonald — can articulate with any clarity what the party believes.

If you want to understand what Sinn Féin really thinks about immigration, don't read its current documents or listen to recent interviews, but go back in time. Short of its support for Irish unity or endorsement of the IRA, there were few things on which Sinn Féin was clearer.

The party's 2010 manifesto said immigrants "are increasing the diversity of our society ...something to be celebrated and embraced”. It made clear: "The changing face of Ireland is not transient; it represents a significant and long-term change in our country.”

Last year, Sinn Féin tried to amend the hate speech bill to make it a criminal offence to express hatred based on someone's "migration status” — clarifying this included legal and illegal migrants. It's now politically inconvenient for the party to say what it once said, but this is what it believes.

Glaringly absent from the party's new policy is any mention of the Border. The party has previously denied it ever supported an "open borders” policy. Yet its central policy is to keep the Irish land border fully open, and to maintain the Common Travel Area which means the GB-NI border is also open.

The party's manifesto for last month's Westminster election made no reference to borders or migration — despite both issues being reserved matters for Westminster rather than Stormont. In June, Michelle O'Neill said she opposed gardaí stopping buses after these crossed the border to search for illegal migrants. It's one thing to not want the border to exist, but pretending it's not there won't make it go away. The Government says thousands of migrants have entered the Republic from the North this year, with that now being the primary entry route for asylum seekers.

To credibly grapple with this, Sinn Féin needs to decide whether it backs checks at the land border or supports the creation of a sea border for people as well as goods between Britain and NI. The former is anathema to republican ideology, while the latter it cannot deliver.

Ireland's ageing population and low birth-rate means that massive inward migration is likely for decades. The only credible position for Sinn Féin to take here is that in which it truly believes: that this is a good thing.

But that could mean wipeout in the looming election.