Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late. I had to attend the House where one of my parliamentary questions was being taken and attend another committee.

I have strong views on the vulnerability of undocumented immigrants. I have dealt with a number of people, as we all have, from other jurisdictions who were undocumented in this State but who thought they were documented. They came here on foot of work permits, for example, from non-EU locations and their status should have been updated or upgraded but was not. Eight to ten years later, they found that they did not have legal status and they were in the country illegally. There are serious questions about their welfare, the way they were treated and the tendency for them to be exploited.

This is also a difficulty in the US. I visited the country in a former capacity and met the immigrants associations to hear their concerns and worries. Like my colleagues, I believe there cannot be an Irish solution to an Irish problem. This is not how this works. We must have an immigration policy and an understanding of each other's position on immigration. I acknowledge the US is in a difficult position with its next door neighbour having a huge population and there being a huge antipathy among its own population towards Mexicans, legal and illegal, which I have read about and studied for a long time. I hope it might be possible to work out a general arrangement through which, first, a staggered amnesty might be offered to those who have been there for a long time because the issue will not get better as time goes by and, second, to regularise what has been happening. There are many social reasons people want to move to a better economy but human rights issue also arise from time to time that we are not always aware of but should be.