Tánaiste Simon Coveney was asked about the UN's Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration at a public meeting at the The Goat Bar & Grill in Dublin 14 on November the 27th, 2018. A member of the public asked the Táinaiste whether it was true that Irish government would be signing the compact which he described as a pact to "legalise illegal migration". The Tánaiste confirmed that the government would sign it.
Minister Coveney was told that Austria, Australia, America, Slovakia, Estonia, Croatia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Hungary, Poland and Israel have refused to sign the compact so far.
Coveney was also asked why there was a media black-out about the compact, and was told that the population of Africa was expected to triple between now and 2070 — many of whom will wish to migrate to Europe and Ireland.
Minister Coveney made no comment about the media black-out despite acknowledging that one of the most divisive issues today is migration. The Global Compact says that safe, orderly and regular migration works for all when it takes place in a well-informed, planned and consensual manner.
He described the pact as the UN's attempt to get a global consensus on how countries should respond to what Coveney described as the "challenge of migration in terms of getting the balance right between countries having the right to protect their borders while responding in a responsible and humanitarian way to people who are either refugees or seeking asylum".
However, one criticism that the Austrian government had about the pact is that it did not adequately regulate migration and failed to adequately distinguish between legal and illegal migration. They objected to the creation of migrant as a category that did not exist in public law. The government also took issue with the goal of helping irregular migrants achieve a regular status based on individual assessment.
https://www.politicalirish.com/threads/austria-to-withdraw-from-un-migration-treaty.27702/
Coveney admitted that many people "on the move" were economic migrants and he believed the UN was right to try and get a set of standards for dealing with them. However, he admitted that the EU was struggling with this question "which had caused a lot of tension in EU nations". He said efforts to distribute migrants who had arrived across the Mediterranean has created deep political divisions. He described the numbers of these migrants as relatively small in a global context.
In early 2018, it was estimated there were 500,000 failed asylum seekers in Italy. 200,000 were being processed while only 30,000 had been granted asylum.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/05/silvio-berlusconi-says-illegal-migrants-social-time-bomb-race/
Coveney said that the continent of Africa was expected to have an extra billion people over the next 25 to 30 years and that "we need to find new ways of addressing the realities of the mass movement of people by trying to create societies and economies that people want to be part of". Coveney said Ethiopia needed to create an extra 2 million jobs a year which were impossible numbers.
Coveney said that EU needs to help African countries lower their birth rate by elevating their development in a much more ambitious partnership with Africa.
Coveney also spoke of his fears that if migration is not handled correctly, electorates will continue to push European governments towards "the hard right".
He finished:
"I happen to be somebody who is quite liberal on immigration. I believe that Ireland has been enhanced significantly by the fact that so many people who were not born in Ireland are now part of our society and economy, but of course we need to also ensure that we can manage the numbers that are being welcomed and that they can integrate appropriately.
We estimate over the next 20 years that the population of Ireland will certainly grow by an extra million people. Linked to that estimate is that half of that number won't have been born in Ireland. I think that will be a really good thing for Irish society but we do need to manage it carefully so we don't allow the politics of migration to play a big part in Irish politics because I think it pulls us down a dangerous direction."
The UN has previously released a proposal for what they called "Replacement Migration" in Europe due to falling birth rates in which they suggested bringing in migrants en masse to European nations to boost population figures. The UN recently scrubbed the document from their website after it received wide publicity.
Archive link: http://archive.is/9eeKs
Archive link: https://archive.is/bDI5t
https://refugeesmigrants.un.org/sites/default/files/180713_agreed_outcome_global_compact_for_migration.pdf
