Reply #5: Ireland is an EU success story, and that's meant immigration, where [View All]

there was little before. For most of modern history, the Irish were leaving Ireland, and there was little reason (except for perhaps retiring Irish-Americans, and those celebrities wealthy enough to live on private estates) to move to Ireland. Since the technology revolution came to Ireland, and again since they joined the EU, the younger Irish are staying, ex-Irish are returning, and it's an extremely popular destination for immigration. Oh, and their health care is, of course, better than ours. I met a group of traveling seniors in Cong one afternoon who informed me that seniors get their medications for Free. Wow. :D



You can guess why the law was toughened when it was. I recall on my last visit in 2005 seeing a poster about a family trying to stay on the basis of a child born there; it was quite the controversy. That's when I first heard to my surprise that, unlike the US, but now like the rest of Europe, "anchor babies" weren't an entree to residency/citizenship.

I hope the good news here is that with the government bringing this out in the open something can and will be done.