Anyone who thinks that immigration will disappear politically and be overshadowed by other issues such as housing, climate change and taxation is sadly mistaken. The recent local and European elections seemed to show that there was no unified movement of nativism and nationalism in the UK in the sense of the Reform Party.

Still, there is a lurking danger of violence among a small number of mostly urban, alienated people who feel threatened by immigration. But the fear of uncontrolled immigration cannot be properly described as “far-right”; it is a reasonable reaction by reasonable people.

In truth, immigration policy is not an isolated political issue. The deep-seated conflation between asylum seekers and economic migration must be addressed politically. It cannot simply be addressed at national level. It must be addressed at EU level through honest interaction and debate among the Union’s member states. The EU sought and obtained legal competence to deal with asylum seekers. It failed. Apart from free movement rights for nationals of EU member states, control of immigration itself has been left to the member states. The problem is that the EU has proved completely incapable of effectively distinguishing between asylum seekers, over whom it assumed competence, and economic migration into the Union, over which member states theoretically remain sovereign.

At the heart of the issue is the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. Article 18 of the Charter gives quasi-constitutional status to the right to asylum guaranteed by the 1951 Geneva Convention and the subsequent 1967 Protocol. In Ireland, the State is constitutionally obliged by the EU Treaties to comply with these Convention provisions in dealing with people claiming asylum and international protection rights, to the extent that the Court of Justice of the European Union so decides. In this we now differ from the United Kingdom, which has regained its independent rights to regulate asylum and migration rights after Brexit, to the extent that it so wishes within the framework of the Convention provisions.

The provisions of the Asylum Convention were never designed to deal with economic migration on the scale and extent that Europe is currently experiencing. It is simply untenable to impose obligations on EU Member States under the Convention to grant asylum, refugee or international entry rights to anyone who turns up at the borders or within the State claiming to be entitled to asylum, a right of entry or to a right of entry. This is particularly true when the right extends to temporary state-granted residence rights, social benefits, legal assistance and lengthy administrative and judicial procedures, including the right to work after six months.

A recent letter to the editor pointed out that the state received 2,000 asylum applications in May. This is close to the “new normal” predicted by Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman: 20,000 to 30,000 asylum applications per year. This asylum rate per head of population is the highest in the EU, he stressed. It must also be seen in the light of Justice Minister Helen McEntee’s claim that 80 percent of asylum seekers have passed through or been in the UK at some point.

It is pointless to debate whether “Ireland is full” – whatever that means. But it is by no means pointless to recognise the obvious, glaring truth that Ireland, in the midst of a massive housing shortage, is unable to add to that crisis by taking in 25,000 homeless migrants each year who are claiming asylum and are legally entitled to state accommodation.

( Michael McDowell: Uncontrolled asylum as a cover for economic migration requires a more radical responseOpens in new window. )

The terrible result is the establishment of tent cities in the State, which will create enormous problems not only for the residents but for the wider population. This is another inevitable humanitarian crisis. It does not matter whether the tents are erected in Mount Street, on the Grand Canal or in Thornton Hall.

The preoccupation with the so-called “radical right” is predictable. Even more predictable is the reality of tent cities in the Irish winter. Simon Harris now recognises that the answers lie at EU level. That is a start. The recently agreed EU migration pact is not a solution to mass migration disguised as asylum seekers. We are not yet in a position to implement the changes envisaged in that pact. Our problems will not be solved by the migration pact. The EU must face the fact that the provisions of the 1951 and 1967 conventions are helpless in the face of massive economic migration.

( What does the EU Migration Pact say and why is it controversial?Opens in new window. )

Our government needs to rethink the sustainability of the current international asylum system for democratic countries with high levels of domestic social protection at a time of massive economic migration. And we need our ministers at EU level to show courage to push for fundamental change. There are many other realists in the EU who are also seeing the light.