Ireland’s New Atlantic Relationship: Will the Patrick Collison Drop the Ball on Replacement Migration?

A diplomatic sigh of relief could be heard on this side of the Atlantic as the Taoiseach avoided a verbal spanking courtesy of the new Trump administration during the perfunctory Saint Patrick’s Day visit. 

A positive diaspora-driven image of the home country coupled with shared interests means Hiberno-American relations are on a surprising upswing. Micheál Martin consciously discarded anti-Trump rhetoric as his government pursued American gas imports and deregulation at an EU level.

Ireland’s relationship with Washington is in real flux for the first time since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement as the island at large recalibrates its economy to a more transactional American executive. 

Blood ties with the Democratic Party and political connections made during the Northern peace process greased the wheels for Ireland’s ingratiating itself into the rules-based world order. Post-Crash, the Republic benefitted from Silicon Valley’s funny money.

To the surprise of many, Ireland may experience a softer than expected landing thanks to Trump’s wish to weaponise the Old Sod in negotiations with the EU. Within this new transatlantic order, new pillars in the Irish transatlantic relationship are being forged.

Chief among them is Stripe founder Patrick Collison, who is understood to be playing a leading role in the Taoiseach’s Strategic Economic Advisory Panel, which manages economic relations with the Trump administration. 

The Tippery-born entrepreneur crossed the political floor in his dealings with American politics in recent years, making sizeable donations to GOP candidates despite prior contributions to Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Kamala Harris.

Part of a wider trend of 2010s tech bros changing their colours to acclimatise themselves to a new anti-woke zeitgeist, Collison’s right-wing pivot appears not to extend to the issue of replacement migration. Previously condemning the 2016 Trump administration for its restrictionist stances, Collison is unlikely to be taking the issue of mass migration to the fore during their stint as transatlantic pointmen in the coming four years.

Replicating broader schisms in the Trumpian right around legal migration, H1B1 visas in particular, Collison is taking his place on the pro-business wing of the new political alignment bedding down in Washington.

Admirable in many respects for his anti-red tape rhetoric and political acumen in understanding that national populism is here to stay in America and eventually in Ireland, one laments, however, if this political maturity is all for naught unless understanding of the migration question.

To put it succinctly, Ireland, no matter who is the resident of the Oval Office, is facing a social and demographic transformation that subordinates all other issues in its wake. Housing, reunification with the North, crime, and international relations all have migration-related aspects to them as Ireland on both sides of the border rushes towards natives becoming ethnic minorities by mid-century.

East Wall, Coolock, and Parnell Street are all glimpses into a turbulent future in Ireland as replacement migration hits home and alters Ireland’s social fabric beyond our wildest dreams.

It is this epoch-defining issue that Collison and company must ultimately take a side on and which, so far, they have been erring on the side of the progressive establishment they are meant to be an improvement on.

By all accounts, Patrick Collison and the generation of Irish tech bros who have come good in time for the new Trumpian age have the right instincts to steer Ireland out of the malaise into which it is complacently wandering.

A migration system that at least recognises the necessity of the Irish to remain culturally dominant in their home island is a conceivable goal at a time when even the U.S Vice President is speaking openly about the “civilisational suicide” Ireland and Europe more generally are lurching toward.

Tech bros, for better or worse, are now a staple of the evolving right-wing infrastructure that looks destined to influence and direct the United States and, in time, Ireland. Within this new zeitgeist, it must be understood that an Ireland where the ethnic future of the native population is secure is a non-negotiable feature in any post-woke world facing all of us.

Whether Patrick Collison knows it or not, he is playing with the future of his homeland, and there is a patriotic responsibility to understand that a nation cannot be run like a start-up where endless supplies of Indian visa workers placate a mode of capitalist production, ultimately doing more harm than good.