Until quite recently we've been sleepwalking through the issue of "asylum-seekers", allowing piety and the fulsome waffle of the professional anti-racism lobby to be a substitute for policy. Happily, we've seen a harder edge appear towards self-styled asylum seekers in recent times; and the Supreme Court ruling - that parents of children born here do not have the right to remain - has given the State another weapon to protect the rule of law and common sense.
Like - I imagine - most people, I'd prefer to see the parents of the 10,500 Irish-born children be allowed to stay here only if they are genuine asylum-seekers. For we would be idiots to assume that crooks and terrorists have not been exploiting the incredibly lax "asylum-seeker" laws in Ireland and in Britain. Indeed, we know that they have; and we must brace ourselves for the consequences.
If anyone had argued in this newspaper before 9/11 that there was a major Islamic terrorist conspiracy against the West, with tentacles everywhere, they would have been denounced as imbecilic dupes of the CIA. Yet the truth was, as we now know, infinitely worse.
Training in Afghanistan
We have no idea how many al-Qaeda operatives are based in Ireland. But what we do know is that 1,200 British Muslims went through al-Qaeda training in Afghanistan. Some of them were killed when then Taliban regime was overthrown. Most have probably since returned to Britain, where they no doubt have formed a welcoming net for other al-Qaeda operatives, and from where, of course, they can have unhindered access to al-Qaeda cells in Ireland.
In part, we are the victims of the brainless British social services culture, which up until recently saw every wide-eyed foreigner on a quayside, clutching a bag and looking tearful, as a victim. Not merely did we import that culture; we probably imported sleeper terrorists with it. Thousands of "asylum-seekers" in Britain simply vanished the moment their application for "asylum" was rejected. Of the 16 Algerians detained for alleged involvement in terrorist conspiracies in Britain recently, 10 were "asylum-seekers". These include the man accused of murdering PC Oakes in Manchester.
We know from British experience that there is a huge and expert network of illegal immigration and social security fraud. A single raid recently on the home of a Nigerian couple in Britain revealed 13,000 forged documents, including blank electricity and gas bills, British and Nigerian birth certificates, driving licences and - God help us all - nursing qualifications.
Indeed, the only genuine document found in the house was a letter from the British Home Office granting the wife an indefinite stay in Britain. Moreover, hundreds of French and Belgian passports have been forged and stolen by Islamic terrorists. We would have to be utter imbeciles to ignore such stark realities.
UN convention
Other terrorists have probably arrived in Britain claiming protection without documentation, under the UN Convention on Refugees. Freed of any need to prove who they are, they can invent an identity, and the British State then provides them with the documents which confirm the fiction. Even in the absence of a terrorist threat, such a frivolous approach to "asylum" would be absurd: but given that the West is facing the largest non-state terrorist threat in its history, this is bureaucratic criminality.
Already, more than 3,000 Algerian "asylum-seekers" have disappeared in Britain. If they wanted to come here, of course, they could do so without even a cursory check of their passports. And they could easily be detected in Dublin Airport by their gales of hysterical laughter, once they discovered that passport control is purely voluntary. Because since passengers from Britain and Europe arrive at the same terminal, and pass through the same gates, immigration officers are reduced to shouting, "Passport holders, this way please". This is moral infantilism. As we face up to the world we are actually living in, rather than some Tír na nÓg, happily free of adult concerns, we're going to have to protect our State against internal threat. And that threat is real. What precautions have been taken against terrorist attack at Shannon Airport? What security precautions exist for internal flights in Ireland? Kenya thought it was safe. Tanzania thought it was safe. The Indian Parliament thought it was safe. Bali thought it was safe. The US thought it was safe. No doubt poor PC Oakes, RIP, thought he was safe. Why, he even actually removed the handcuffs from an arrested terrorist, who then promptly returned his kindness by killing him.
Hounding prostitutes
So why would al-Qaeda not operate from Ireland? We've been utterly witless so far - for example, squandering thousands of garda-hours hounding prostitutes, and meanwhile ignoring the real threat of Islamic terrorists. And now, after all the warnings we've had, how many gardaí speak Arabic? So is there a single reason why we should not now put the security of this country and its residents clearly and resolutely above the putative needs of immigrants who say they want to live here?
Feeble-mindedness and doctrinaire sanctimony have been the substitute for reasonable scepticism in our policy towards immigrants. As Michael McDowell said the other day, 90 per cent of "asylum-seekers" are in reality economic migrants. And since 40,000 economic migrants were given work visas last year, why should we not instantly expel bogus asylum-seekers? September 11th, 2001 was a declaration of war not just against the US, but against all our common values. Neutrality and smugness as a national policy finally became irrelevant that day. Now we know the score: so what are we doing to make this State safe from Islamic terrorism?