Ireland reports record immigration
DUBLIN, Ireland --Ireland is experiencing a record wave of immigration led by job seekers from Poland and other new European Union nations from the formerly communist east, a report published Tuesday found.
The government's Central Statistics Agency said 86,900 people immigrated to the Republic of Ireland from May 2005 to April 2006, the highest since record-keeping on immigration trends began two decades ago. It said 43 percent came from the EU states of Eastern Europe, led by 22,900 from Poland and 6,100 from Lithuania.
By contrast, the report found the rate of Irish emigration to other countries, particularly the United States, declining since 2002 and running at record lows. It said 1,400 Irish citizens resettled in the United States last year, compared with 4,800 in 2002.
Ireland's current experience represents a dramatic reversal from its centuries-old status as a mass exporter of people. The country experienced its first immigration wave in the mid-1990s, when high-tech multinational companies targeted Ireland as the best low-tax base in the EU and began slashing Ireland's chronic double-digit unemployment rate. Aslyum seekers, principally from Africa and Eastern Europe, also began targeting Ireland then as word spread that the economically thriving country had the EU's most liberal citizenship laws.
But the biggest boom has come since May 2004, when the EU expanded eastward from 15 to 25 members -- and Ireland, Britain and Sweden became the only three members to open their labor markets.
The government says more than 150,000 Eastern Europeans, mostly Poles, have settled in Ireland in the past two years. The demographic shift is reflected in Polish-language signs in shop windows and on construction sites and Polish goods on sale in supermarkets.
The immigration has not dented Ireland's current 4.4 percent unemployment, the lowest rate in the EU. Economists say the newcomers are mostly creating new jobs or taking low-status jobs.
Tuesday's report said the population of the Republic of Ireland over the 12-month period rose by a record 104,100, or 2.5 percent, to 4.235 million, with two-thirds of the growth attributed to immigration.
Until the 1990s, Ireland's population tended to fall each year because of the toll from mass emigration. In 1989, for instance, 70,600 emigrated and 26,700 arrived. Tuesday's figures showed 17,000 emigrated in the July 2005-April 2006 period, leaving a record net gain of 69,900.
