Ireland’s Indian Migration Spike: A Statistical Breakdown

In the last few years, there has been extensive immigration to Ireland. A lot of the migration has come from reasons related to the Russian-Ukraine conflict, inflows through other asylum pathways, and then illegal migration.

The purpose of this piece is to examine what’s happening in the Republic of Ireland with respect to inward non-EU visa-driven legal immigration from South Asia, specifically India. The scale of which has become obvious if you walk around Ireland for a few hours these days. This will likely further intensify in the years to come. I’ll attempt to present some numbers which describe the scale of what is occurring.

This decade alone, from 2020 to 2024 the Irish government’s immigration policies have increased the population by ~7.6%, an additional 379,000 people added to the population, according to Eurostat figures. One of the highest figures proportionately in Europe, if not the world. 

All forms of inward migration have an impact on Irish infrastructure. These relate to housing markets where median home transaction prices have increased 31% since 2020 but also health, sanitation, transport, and nearly all other areas of state spending. This rate of immigration seems perfectly fine for the Irish government in the midst of a general infrastructural crisis.

Let’s ignore familiar criticism of refugee tourism and concentrate on legal immigration paths and disabuse the use of the often touted rebuttals “As long as they are working” or “the country would collapse without migrants”.

These lazy phrases are used as a justification for the endless replacement scale immigration and for people to hand wave away concerns – you would be mean to be criticising the working man and wouldn’t the country collapse if we didn’t have the immigration tap on full. Explored here is one of the largest elements of legal immigration which is the easily manageable visa immigration from India and its geographical sphere which is a huge component of current inward flows of migration.

The Indian Summer

Population numbers from South Asia are absurd and hard even to conceptualise; as of 2024, India itself has about 1.42 billion people. Adding the populations of nearby nations like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, which together have 196 million people, and Pakistan, with 240 million people, the total population of this South Asian region exceeds more than 1.85 billion people, this is excluding the many and growing overseas communities.

There are about the same number of people living in India proper as live in Africa in its entirety. More people live in India than in North and South America combined. 

India’s Youth Bulge Spills Over

The population pyramid of these “Indian” countries has a much larger base than Western countries. Half of the Indian population itself is under 25 years of age. ~22 Million births are recorded there a year, 550 times the 40,000 births that are recorded to Irish mothers a year in the Republic of Ireland.

Statisticians estimate that India’s population will peak at about 1.65 billion by 2060, a stark contrast to the “just” 400 million people it had in 1955. This enormous growth is partly due to the excellent fertility of Indian soils, rich fisheries, its lush tropical location combined with annual monsoon rains, and the excellent watersheds descending from the Himalayan Mountains. Other factors driving fecundity are the low education levels among the population, poor relative economic development and weak central governance and planning. Western medicine too has played its part.

Despite India aborting an incredible 16 million pregnancies a year (2016) and massive inward development aid in-flows over the years, fertility rates are now only coming down to the replacement level for its population. A good comparator to India is China, which had come down to a replacement level fertility rate by about 1990, 34 years previously. China has massively outperformed India on every measure in that timeframe with both countries starting from a similar GDP per capita level.

India: Failure to Launch?

The Indian peninsula could be an Eden of sorts and once was. This was a pristine diverse forest environment rising into foothills and then snow-capped mountains but is today the home of an ecological disaster of extreme pollution, overpopulation, and sprawling ramshackle development.

What could be a paradise is quite the opposite and its prospects look quite grim if its development post-independence is anything to judge by.

According to CNN, in 2023, 83 of the world’s 100 most air-polluted cities were in India. In terms of overall air pollution, only neighbouring Bangladesh surpasses India among countries with the capacity to measure such things.

Agricultural, Industrial and untreated waste river pollution are prevalent and extensive, bodies are burned and deposited in rivers alongside extensive plastic and other pollutants.

The minimum wage floor rate in India is 2 euros a day on average. Wages are roughly on average 8 euros a day in Indian urban areas. This is a land of precarity and struggle, you don’t have to go there to get a taste of the lived Indian reality, simply go to Google Maps and drop a Google Streetview pin and you’ll see how it is.

Picking up rubbish off the street shouldn’t be a problem with such an abundant and cheap labour pool but you will find it difficult to find a google street view without trash or debris of some sort strewn on the roads. Exceptions and enclaves of relative and even obscene wealth exist of course but these are definitely the exception. Levels of extreme poverty are only worse (by-in-large) in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The point of highlighting all this is that the vast majority of people living in India and its surrounds would love to come to live in The West and live in a country like Ireland. The children of the upper strata of Indian society have the means to do so and are being invited and they are coming.

Ireland Fertility Cliffedge

From this point to 2060 and beyond the number of native Irish people in the Republic of Ireland will continue to drop in absolute numbers and especially as a percentage share of the population. Irish fertility rates have been below replacement since the start of the 1990s and the near totality of population growth today is from inward migration.

One statistic is that the number of people who self-identify as ethnic Irish in the Republic of Ireland of reproductive and below age has already fallen by 11% in the ten years between the 2011 and 2022 census. A decimation of the native population causes no headlines or alarm among the public, they are not even told about it.

India’s fertility meanwhile is replenishing itself. Even the fertility rates of the richer people from there who come to Ireland are relatively good. Arranged marriages in India are widespread, the average age of marriage there was 19.2 years in the years 2019–21, in Ireland it’s about 36 years of age. As mentioned India’s fertility rate has only now come down to around the replacement rate. India’s neighbour Pakistan’s population is ballooning, and is nowhere near meeting this threshold and won’t for many years to come. Its spill-over population looks westwards too. 

It’s true that fertility rates of migrants drop towards the host populations and sometimes below for subsequent generations born, but this importantly depends on the ethnic group in question. This is also irrelevant to retaining your own countries ethnicities plurality or majority while the immigration tap is near fully turned on and all of your countries population growth is coming from importing people rather than encouraging indigenous family formation.

Only about a 3/4 of the births recorded in Q4 2023, the most recent data I found were to Irish mothers. 

There were 54,678 births in 2023 in the Republic so lets estimate 41,000 were the creations of Irish mothers by self-declared nationality, I am making a presumption that mothers from overseas would use their primary nationality on the form not any acquired one from “citizenship ceremonies”. People tend to be understandably proud of where they come from. 

By historical contexts we had 74k births in the Republic of Ireland in 1980 which was its peak for Irish mothers at any time post the Irish state being established. 

Migration and the Irish Body Politic

Politically, promoting fertility in Ireland isn’t really mentioned in the national parliament unless it’s caged in indirect language like “supporting families”. Family formation in Ireland has been crushed underfoot due to it being totally ignored as a good for the nation and deemed irrelevant to the working of an efficient plantation for the operation of multinational corporations.

The values of the Irish elite in the 21st Century are a mix of Progressive Liberalism, NIMBYism in respect of land and housing, and support of corporate capitalism. Irish people being socially conformist to the trends of the day will tend to adopt to the belief systems of its rulers and especially the media who legitimise our government.

The beliefs of the ruling class are of course antithetical and hostile to Irish births and the continuation of an Irish majority in Ireland.

The reality of the measurably bad outcomes of our system are ignored and hand waved away and the population invent or are given explanations as to why the terrible policies they live under are just part and parcel of modern life. Criticism of the system is framed as malicious or otherwise badly motivated fear-mongering. Mentioning immigration’s effect on the housing crisis is a great example of this. The excuses are wearing thin however for broad sections of the Irish society but not for the managerial classes who well know what the problems are but don’t think it’s not worth the risk or there being any social credits to be gained by taking a public contrary view.

Back to the South Asians, how many are actually here in Ireland?

 As of the 2022 census there were 95,000 declared from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan living in Ireland from a few thousand even 15 years ago to almost none in the 1990s. Today the figure could be well north of 130,000.

In 2022 and 2023, Subcontinentals made up 45% of all work permit visas issued. The issue rate of these is about ~15,000 permits a year. Up massively from even a few years ago. This is also only part of the picture as there are other ways to get visas to enter Ireland. Public service social security (PPS numbers) issued to the 4 national groups I mentioned numbered 31,000 in 2023, 8.5 times the number a decade ago and are double the level of work permits. The discrepancy between visas and work permits could be accounted for by family reunification/spousal visas(which dont require an additional work permit) and then student visas of which the third level sector in Ireland has become increasingly reliant on as a way to expand their own importance and farm revenues. There are colleges in Ireland that are in large part migration funded. Often an applicant will get a 1 year post grad in one of these after graduating from some mediocre Indian university. This ensures a pathway to citizenship and settlement. 

Anyone working in recruitment will have encountered numerous CVs from newly arrived Indians who have obtained visas to pursue one-year courses here. Many of these inexpensive new entrants to the job market make it more difficult for newly qualified Irish trying to find junior positions. You have a lot more competition when you are not just competing with people who can enter from the EU but then this increasing cohort from South Asia. Wage compression effects from such migration are real but you won’t hear a trade union complain about that. Limited immigration might be ok if it was prudent but caps can’t be countenanced less it “scare off” investors in Ireland Inc.

Irregular Migration. 

As an example, a thousand Pakistanis sought asylum here in 2023, with most getting rejected, but with Ireland not having any effective means of deporting people, deportation orders are irrelevant. Such people stay in the state and you can see them working in the service sector in almost every town and village in Ireland.

They make great employees for owners of capital as they don’t wish to make waves and therefore won’t be too fussed about their employment rights or how many people share the room they sleep in. Irish trade unions back this all of course and such peoples numbers swell due to immigrant amnesties and chain migration effects with spousal and reunification visas.

The Irish Housing Crisis’ Indian Dimension

Ireland has seen huge growth in overall work permits to Ireland and South Asian permits are a huge part of that. Presented below is total work permits per year and broken out to show the component that is from the Indian subcontinent.

You can see the minimal effect of covid and the pent up demand for overseas worker releasing in 2022.

Considering just 29,851 new housing units were finished in 2022 and 32,695 in 2023, you can see how work permits would lead to increases in house and rental prices when the supply of such homes is nowhere near meeting demand.

The Irish government basically is involved in making its people compete for the limited housing supply in Ireland with 30k-40k workers from outside the EU they bring in every year at this point. It’s worth noting a small relative number ~ 4% of the visas were to the construction sector in 2022/2023. No politician, even the few who have asked questions on immigration will call for a cap on work permits. Working migrants seem to have a magical lightness of being where they don’t use up infrastructure and resources in the state.

Ireland’s PPS Indian Explosion

PPS ie social security numbers issued in Ireland are a bit more complex subject but the number of which can be used as a rough proxy for people getting into the system in Ireland. 

When looking at just the South Asian countries we can see the discrepancy between work permits and overall PPS numbers issued. At this point for every single work permit issued that would have an associated PPS social security number, another is issued. Reasons for this may be related to visas lapsing, family reunifications and then students visas which the education institutes entertains.

Culture and Integration

Culturally, except for their history as British colonies, Ireland and India share almost nothing in common. In culture, Ireland is a sports mad nation,

India is not, not even remotely. To this point just before the latest Summer 2024 Olympics, India had the same number of Olympic medals as Ireland while having 300 times the population. Indian music or cinema is basically unknown outside of its borders. Its most well-known export culturally is Indian dishes.

By creed, it’s a large Hindu country with a non-trivial Muslim minority, has a significant caste system and the population can be subdivided into dozens of major and thousands of minor ethnicities. About as different from Ireland as you could get.

Winston Churchill had once served as Secretary of State for the Colonies, he remarked in 1931, “India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the equator.”

Indians’ interactions with the host culture are minimal beyond working, roaming around one of our out of town large retail stores and all the time saving up money to buy properties, usually close to each other.

Indians love property, they own more properties in London than English people. First generation Indian migrants don’t tend to integrate into Irish society, struggle to mix in social settings, do not go to the pub or patronise restaurants. This lack of mixing is not a shortcoming of Indians, it’s inevitably what you would expect when you attract people from an unrelated culture in very large blocks. There is simply no need to integrate.

GDP Above All: Ireland’s Migration Attitude

The Irish government’s attitude to the country is for GDP and economic growth maximalism. The amount of product being shipped on the roads and numbers being transacted on databases somewhere that can be taxed.

A pantomime is performed in Leinster House each week to give a pretence of leadership when in fact decision-making in the state is largely handled behind the scenes by civil servants. With immigration, according to recent Irish Times articles, a great barometer of the Irish elites and therefore senior civil servants thinking, Immigration is a great opportunity for arbitraging labour costs across the planet. The more immigration, the better.

Medical and Nursing Sector

Ireland poaches health care workers from many poor countries like India and the Philippines, this is a source of moral blindness across the political spectrum.

The HSE recruits agents who are paid millions of euros to harvest workers in poor countries for the Irish health service. Per capita, Ireland has 14.9 nurses per 1000 population(2021 world bank figures), Philippines has 4.8, India has just 1.7. With doctors, Ireland has 4.1 such specialists per capita , Philippines 0.8 and  India 0.7. Keep in mind  India has nearly 10 times the under 5s mortality rate than Ireland. 

Ireland also makes it difficult for Irish people to train in nursing in Ireland with the educational points requirements being typically from 390-450 college points required for general nursing and a lot more for Midwife Nursing. In the past the barrier to entry was much less, involving sometimes just an interview to get access to training. Today, hundreds of Irish go to the UK to train as it works out more affordable and attainable, this gets them a foot out of the country right away and gives them a taste for emigration further afield. You wouldn’t expect such barriers to training in a country with a medical staffing crisis, the issue of medical staff shortages is  entirely created by government policy. 

Nursing and medical places were also cut during the post housing bust austerity period by the then Labour-FG government, at the same time James Reilly the sitting health minister sent teams from the HSE over to Pakistan looking for their less competently trained doctors to poach. Both left and right-liberals will defend this practice today.

In addition, Third world poaching of health staff has a material impact on patient quality in Ireland with significant numbers of fitness to practice inquiries arising from the medical staff hired from abroad. 

In the UK it’s reckoned the costs of recruiting a nurse trained abroad are likely between £10,000 to £12,000, far less than the £26,000 it costs the government to train a nurse in the UK, according to analysis by the Nuffield Trust.” It’s not a stretch to assume that the same is true in Ireland too.

Ireland’s Consultancy Kings Cash In

Looking at the UK, where Indians are the biggest property owners in London, Rishi Sunak, is a good example of elites having conflicting interest to the people they rule, due to his family’s ties to Infosys, a software management company.

Infosys, a company partially owned by his wife’s family, which imports Indian workers to the West as part of its business model. The connection with Infosys raised questions about Sunak’s stance on immigration, which appeared conflicted given his family’s financial interests.

Additionally, during his tenure, immigration to the UK had reached record highs. Moreover, Sunak had been criticised for overseeing cuts to nursing positions in Northern Ireland, which is the prelude to more of you guessed it – more visas for overseas workers.

Infosys is in Ireland too and similar “consultancy” companies like Accenture, Ernst and Young, KPMG and Deloitte are near the top of the skills visas list in terms of the volume of people they are bringing in, these are basically government aided visa farms for onshoring workers from places like India while ensuring the precarity of permanent employees throughout the IT and fintech industries. Neale Richmond a firm Fine Gael henchman for the oligarchy, even loosened the rules to make family unification for such visa applicants easier.

The West’s Indian Invasion

Canada: 400,000 Indian migrants visas a year are proposed to be added to Canada a year by 2025 which will be about 1% of their population added per year. In the US.

Trump has promised Indian graduates in the US an automatic green card stamped to their qualifications if he’s elected. 

For the UK: The UK took in an incredible 250,000 Indians and 83,000 Pakistanis in just 2023 with rocketing numbers of non-EU migrants in general post Brexit. Australia had 93K Indian migrants in 2023 to add to the already 750K already there. 

New Zealand has a quarter of a million Indians living there with their total population being about the same as  the Republic of Ireland. The governments in all anglophone countries have lost their minds with regard immigration, changing the composition of their own countries’ demographics without any meaningful debate.

Final Thoughts: Dispensing With the “Legal Migration” Dichotomy

Under the continued charade of debate between progressive liberals and right-wing liberals in the affairs of governance of Ireland, the next decades will likely see continued high levels of both legal and “irregular” immigration. It’s kind of irrelevant to even distinguish between “refugees” and visa workers at this point, they are essentially economic migrants brought in to cool wages.

In the not-too-distant future, we will see first a minority of births to the ethnic Irish, and later after that the Irish losing majority status in the country, probably forever, unless a major black swan event such as an economic disruption or war occurs in the next decades.

It would be very easy for the Irish government to cut work permits in half or more, squash the student visa racket, and therefore ease the housing and infrastructure crisis, but they won’t, and you have to ask yourself why this is, why are the incentives for them so strong?

Similar patterns of betrayal are occurring in most western countries, but with Ireland’s small population to begin with the end of an Irish Ireland is on the near horizon. An Irish politician or journalist would be too afraid to go to the part of their mind which might examine why this would be a bad thing. The typical Irish person with a sliver of societal status would rather die than face the social opprobrium of disagreeing with the state religion of Inclusiveness. As a result, their children will inherit a much diminished homeland.