Counting the Irish Chinese
Saturday April 07 2007
I knew we would get nothing near the truth on Chinese immigration from the 2006 Census but I had no idea how laughably wrong it would be.
Well-founded estimates have, for quite a while, estimated the Chinese population in Ireland as up to 100,000. This has been the figure used, for example, by RTE.
It was because they were known to be the second biggest grouping after the Polish that Bertie Ahern put his "1916" speech up on his website in Polish and Chinese.
What does the Census show? A hilarious 11,161 born in China, or on an ethnicity basis 16,533.
No one who was illegal, no one who was on a so-called "student visa" but really an economic migrant was going to fill in that form truthfully. AINE NI CHONAILL, IMMIGRATION CONTROL PLATFORM, DUBLIN 2 BRENDAN CAFFERTY, BALLINA, CO MAYO
