Ireland has begun its ‘utterly outrageous’ mass amnesty for illegal immigrants, despite significant doubts remaining over the number of illegals residing in the country.
Ireland’s Europhile government has begun its mass amnesty of illegal immigrants, opening up applications for the scheme on Monday.
Headed up by the island nation’s Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, the scheme — which has been criticised as “utterly outrageous” — will reportedly aim to “regularise” illegal migrants resident in the country.
According to a report by the Irish Times, the minister expressed a desire to “move on this as quickly as possible” regarding the process.
“This scheme will provide an opportunity for those who meet its criteria to remain and reside in the State and to become part of mainstream Irish society rather than living on its margins,” McEntee said.
The minister also emphasised that having a criminal record will not automatically disqualify an illegal immigrant from the amnesty, despite the scheme requiring an applicant to be of “good character“.
The scheme will also reportedly put illegals who are granted the right to remain in the state on the pathway to citizenship.
Speaking to Breitbart London on the scheme, the President of the Irish Freedom Party, Hermann Kelly, slammed the amnesty as “utterly outrageous”.
“It’s utterly outrageous that the Irish Minister of Justice would reward criminality and make those who have respected our laws and borders go to the back of the queue,” Kelly told this publication.
“At a time when there are over 8,000 Irish homeless and many people cannot afford a house because of sky rocketing demand and prices; it is virtually insane to hand out citizenship to illegal migrants who have shown no respect to our country,” the part president continued. “Helen McEntee must feel the consequences for her outrageous contempt for national security at the ballot box.”
Despite its extremely lax criteria, as well as the lack of a hard cap on the number of those illegally residing in the country who can avail of the scheme, Minister McEntee has insisted the scheme for illegal migrants is not “open-ended”.
However, significant doubts have been raised regarding the accuracy of estimates regarding the number of illegals the Department of Justice reportedly believes there to be in Ireland.
State-funded broadcaster RTÉ reports that the Department of Justice has publicly put the number of illegal immigrants in Ireland at 17,000 people.
However, according to conservative media outlet Gript Media, it appears that the figure repeatedly floated by the department may not be true, with both the department itself as well as Minister McEntee so far refusing to put forward evidence supporting the statistic.
According to the publication, the minister has claimed that the figure was provided by the Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland (MRCI), an NGO operating in the country, while the department has claimed that there were multiple studies backing the figure.
Despite these claims though, neither the MRCI nor the department has reportedly been able to provide information regarding these aforementioned studies, with Gript claiming that MRCI representatives claimed that they could not even remember their names, let alone their details.
McEntee also refused to provide the names of the studies when asked to do so in an official Parliamentary Question submitted by Carol Nolan TD.
Gript has also claimed to have lodged a Freedom of Information request with the Department of Justice in December regarding what it thought was the likely number of illegals in Ireland.
However, the publication has said that the department has failed to provide the requested information within the required timeframe, with no reason reportedly being given for the department’s failure to respond to the FOI.
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