So, the Minister for Justice is set to sign as many as 500 deportation orders for people who failed to get refugee status. One needs to be muscular nowadays to be Minister for Justice. Clear minded, courageous, lateral thinking, of course, but with signing biceps to match.

Did anyone think of asking any one of the asylum seekers as they queue up for their deportation orders whether they might be able to do anything useful for us, with our booming economy and staff shortages? Does anyone think we might need some help with the rich harvest of work waiting to be reaped?

All employers know that there are staff shortages. Many know that you can apply to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment for a work permit for a prospective employee from outside the EU, and receive permission if there are no suitable local candidates for the position. But let us say I wanted to employ an African as a childminder. Let us say my circumstances are such that I need this form of childminding help. Let us say it is becoming impossible to find a childminder at a rate of pay I can afford. This is not the fault of childminders currently in the market. It is about demand and supply, the same as for houses. Ultimately, I have two options.

I could use my childminding budget for the available hours that I can afford, and work less myself - earning less too, a vicious circle. Or I can break out of that market altogether. The economy will suffer if I work less. My type of work, private sector work, is, like that of many hundreds of thousands of others, profit-generating, work-generating, supportive of social and economic development.

I need cheaper labour. Employers who run businesses for profit as well as people running homes have to think like this. These are not dark, exploitative, "non-PC" thoughts. They are natural conclusions in any circumstance where demand is driving the supply of services to be costly and scarce. I said cheaper labour, not slave labour.

Would I get a work permit for a non-EU childminder, a Nigerian or a Romanian? Would the Department of Justice have a sneaking suspicion that the person was not a "genuine childminder" and leave me to sponge off the State? Would people generally, and public and private services, treat my childminder as a contributor to society, or as "a darkie, a wog, a sponger"? I know what I'd want.

For childminder, one can read waiter, gardener, hairdresser, cleaner, any number of service jobs. I note that last weekend, an ESRI economist argued that only high skilled would-be immigrants should be allowed into the State.

In my view, we need to allow in enough immigrants in whatever sectors and at whatever skill levels where there are shortages. There is a certain level of provision of lower-skilled services that we need to support high value-adding, high skilled jobs. If those services are not provided at an appropriate cost, then our economy will struggle with yet another supplyside bottleneck.

It is clear from a variety of economic analyses that the growth of the labour force is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for continued growth in our economy. There are divisions over how much labour force growth we can expect. If the economy is approaching full employment - and it is already at full employment in some sectors - then economic growth above certain levels will inevitably trigger wage inflation. If the labour force grows, then more non-inflationary growth can occur. Only with growth can we address social problems, provide for the future, provide high quality health and education and pay higher pensions.

We need a sophisticated immigration policy which will respond to the needs of our economy, as it grows or as it contracts, as some sectors are on the up and others decline. A good immigration policy is fair and firm to economic migrants. If we have orderly entry rules, would-be immigrants should know their chances. It also requires an efficient processing system to prevent the real asylum system from being clogged. We owe it to people who are facing persecution not to allow our clumsy system crowd them out with economic migrants. Given that the Government is reportedly spending €65 million on accommodation for asylum-seekers in the queue, and is unable to avoid doing so, there is a strong case for allocating substantial resources to asylum and immigration processing efficiency.

An immigration policy emphatically does not mean that we would allow our long-term unemployed languish in unskilled, frustrating idleness. As ever, the challenge is to avoid "either-or" negativity and to engage in "both-and" solutions.

Oliver O'Connor is at ooconnor@irish-times.ie