Is It Always the Same Pattern?

In a cab the other day, I was listening to one of Dublin’s many talk radio stations–the Irish, a nation of talkers, have cottoned on pretty quick to the idea–as the host and his guests discussed immigration and racism. Immigration, especially by Africans, is a big topic in Ireland, although not as big as in the U.K., where the Tories are living down to every worst stereotype of conservatism by blaming the country’s relative trickle of asylum-seekers for all the troubles ailing Britain.
If the U.S. is a country of immigrants, Ireland has traditionally been a nation of emigrants: Throughout most of the twentieth century, it was hardly uncommon for population statistics to show a drop on an annual or even a decennial basis because of immigration to England, the States, or elsewhere in the English-speaking world. Since the recovery of prosperity, this historical pattern has reversed, and Ireland is more populous now than it ever was during the previous century.
Yet the immigration hasn’t just been Irish returning home or Europeans taking advantage of the common market. There’s a global, and hence a multicultural and a racial, dimension as well. In city centre in Dublin, some streets can look almost diverse as a large American city or London. Eastern Europeans, sub-Saharan Africans, and large numbers of Chinese have taken up residence in Dublin (although the Eastern Europeans and the Chinese have also settled, to lesser degrees, in the rest of the republic).
This is a perplexing matter for many Irish, because the public discourse hasn’t caught up with the multicultural reality that’s only a decade old. “Irish” identity is still a major issue here; there’s Sinn Fein and the peace process in the north, but there’s also the emphasis on a retention of Irish as a language (to be a lawyer, one must prove minimal competency in Gaelic, because it is the first language of the nation). Whatever one feels about the preservation of Irish (and having finally heard whole conversations conducted in the tongue, I am less suspicious of it than before), it’s clear that asking people to learn not just the language of business, politics and culture–English–but also the language of the Ireland that mainly disappeared during the famine is a recipe for maintaining some pretty high walls between peoples.
The discussion on the radio sounded a lot like a discussion about immigration would sound in the farm counties of southern Indiana and Illinois or, I suspect, much of the rural American South. Suspicion that immigrants are welfare cheats? Check. Suspicion that the government favors immigrants over natives? Check. Resentment over supporting these welfare cheats and anger toward politicians? Double check. Belief that Asians are harder-working than Africans? Yup.
So what’s going on here? Why is this pattern such a typical one: That Asians become, almost by default, a “model minority,” and that all immigrants are always thought to be undesirables, and that public discussion of these matters is led mainly by the extremes, while the middle is afraid to voice its thoughts for fear of being called racist or national traitors. If I were a Marxist, I think I could analyse this pretty well; but I’m not, and I’m finding my liberal-free-marketeer (and, yes, over here I’m a “liberal,” in precisely the same sense of J.S. Mill) toolkit really can’t handle the problems.