Immigration traditionally ‘a weapon’ used to change demographics; Ireland overwhelmed

The United States isn’t the only country overwhelmed by an influx of illegal immigrants, as Ireland is suffering a similar fate.

“God be with the days when it was just Polish immigrants,” YouTuber Keith Woods tells Lauren Chen. “People will be nostalgic for that soon.”

“It’s happening in all the anglosphere countries, but like Canada, the U.S., Ireland — they all increased their population by about 3% in just the year after COVID purely through immigration,” Woods continues. “Ireland had a 3.5% increase in a single year in 2023, which is one of the biggest population increases ever in any country for any reason.”

According to Woods, illegal immigration has exploded in Ireland “because the government has essentially advertised the services that are on offer here for asylum-seekers.”

Woods also warns that Ireland has welcomed 10 times the EU average of Ukrainian refugees.

“So within the last three, four years, there has been this kind of convergence of record legal immigration, record illegal immigration with asylum-seekers, so-called, from outside Europe, flooding in from countries like Nigeria, Algeria, and then also the Ukrainian crisis,” he explains.

While skepticism of illegal immigration has existed among citizens, it hasn’t been matched politically.

“Every political party supported this; there was total elite consensus, total consensus across the political paradigm, entire media consensus. So it’s an interesting case right now,” he says.

Chen notes that the stats reflecting Ireland’s immigration boom might not sound that serious, but they are.

“Speaking of 3%, I think when we just hear that number, that doesn’t sound that big,” Chen says, “but what I think people really need to understand is that left to their own devices, I’m pretty sure Ireland’s own native birth rate is below replacement.”

“So the fact that it’s growing by 3%, it’s actually even more than that because I’m pretty sure there’d be a slight population decline if there were no immigration,” she adds.

Woods notes that immigration isn’t simply to help others, either.

“Traditionally, this has been a weapon that’s used to change the demographics,” Woods says. “That’s a difficult thing to reverse.”

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