Dispelling the ‘Irish were Immigrants too’ Myth

It seems that whenever the Irish express a desire to control their own borders, they are met with the ‘Irish were Immigrants too’ chestnut. It is fair to say that the notion that the Irish were immigrants on their own islands is propagated by the dumbed-down and those who advocate multicultural societies/mass immigration. And for some, it is a way of denigrating and insulting the Irish all over again.

Well, let’s clarify this illogicality once and for all.

Firstly, Australia, the United States and Canada were embryonic nations with massive landmasses and tiny populations when the Irish and English arrived in the late eighteenth century. Convict migrants to Australia had no say in the resettlement and late nineteenth-century migrants arrived due to the Great Famine, (directly caused by the existing United Kingdom system of governance). Thereafter, the Irish were invited to the aforementioned countries to compete in land dividing free-for-alls with the English, French, German and Dutch (North America) because of basic infrastructure anomalies that were apparent in swathes of empty settlements (what the native Indigenous populations thought of the influx is another story).

More recently, in the 20th and 21st Centuries, the Irish were/are invited over to those said countries because they are now embedded in the civic fabric of those nations, have skills to offer, and are well respected.

In contrast, Ireland is a small island, and the majority of the indigenous population are not in favour of mass immigration.? Besides, Ireland’s infrastructures have already been built and settled, demonstrating a complete incongruence and a different set of circumstances than described above (Irish migration to North America and Australia).

Regarding the notion that the Irish were/are immigrants in England is a colossal absurdity. Historically and socially, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England (although culturally independent states) were and are, part of the same British Island geography and for long periods (700 years and counting) were politically one kingdom.? Nonetheless, before the advent of the country of England (Anglo Saxon Angleland), and before 50 BC (pre-Roman), the British Islands which encompassed our four home countries were all uniform Celtic Tribal lands named after Celtic Deities. The Brigantes, for example, had tribal lands covering a massive landmass of Lancashire, Durham, Northumberland and Yorkshire (England) as well as Kilkenny, Waterford and Wexford (Ireland).

Besides, the peoples and countries of the four states of the British Islands have migrated en masse to each other’s territories and interbred throughout that common history (Scottish/English people plantations in Ireland and Irish people’s migration to England for example).

When the Irish Free State (26 counties) came to being in 1922, there was, and still is an agreed common travel area between the islands directly because of this inextricable social/cultural/historical bind of that island’s member states.?Not forgetting of course that today in 2024, a part of Ireland (the 6 counties in the North of Ireland) is still politically/geographically in the same jurisdiction and part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain (Wales, Scotland and England) and Northern Ireland.

Therefore, how could the Irish be immigrants in/on their own British Island territories?

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