Dublin's migrant tent city is gone, but the crisis continues
Ezra Levant returns to Dublin, where hundreds of migrants were previously living in tents near a canal. Even though the tents are gone, the country's mass migration crisis continues, only this time in a less visibly shocking way.
There's so much amazing history in Ireland. In Dublin, there are many gorgeous stone buildings and bridges and even a beautiful canal. But all around that canal is ugly fencing, which blocks off the grassy space next to it. Why would the city do such a thing?
Well, it's because hundreds of migrants camp here — they set up tents and live here, which was becoming both an eyesore and a danger to the neighbourhood. When we explored the area a few months ago, we encountered some hostility from some of the migrants we spoke to.
With so many migrants in the area, would you want to be a young woman going for a jog by yourself passing by hundreds of foreign men, men who have a very different cultural approach to seeing a woman out for a jog?
The government finally bowed to public pressure by removing the tents, only to erect an ugly crowd-control style of fence instead. But just because the migrants have left the makeshift tent city, it doesn't mean they're gone altogether.
Where have they gone now that the problem is hidden? What's happening across Ireland is that hotels, community centres, nursing homes and institutional buildings have been commandeered by the government, at very high prices in many cases, to provide free housing to those migrants.
We previously visited the village of Dundrum, where a four-star hotel and country club is going to house hundreds of foreign migrants. So many, in fact, that it will be larger than the village population itself.
Instead of the shocking display of urban refugee tent camps, the crisis has shifted to a less visible way of housing the migrants. In the end, it's still displacing Irish people who need help with housing and accommodation. It's driving up rent, and, in the case of Dundrum, it's utterly changing the character of the village.
I don't have a good answer for why Ireland is doing this; whenever I ask people why, they say it's to please globalists at the UN or the World Economic Forum. But I find it strange that people would sell out their own country for the appeasement and favour of foreign oligarchs.
Another answer that I find more credible is that it's just money.
Follow the money — there's an industry that's cropped up around these refugees. The people who own the hotels, the people who are the social workers, the countless NGOs; they're all getting tens of thousands of dollars per migrant. This can extend further, to lawyers, to people to who cater to migrants, people who like to see housing prices goes up and like to see wages go down.
I think the answer is partly ideological, partly woke beliefs like critical race theory which have infected most Western countries. But at the end of the day, I think it's just plain old cash: enough people are willing to sell out Ireland for the costs of a hotel or an NGO program.
Ezra Levant
Rebel Commander
Ezra Levant is the founder and owner of Rebel News and the host of The Ezra Levant Show. He is the author of multiple best-selling books, including Ethical Oil, The Libranos, China Virus, and most recently, Trudeau's Secret Plan.
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