Sir, - In the current debate on immigration and asylum policy, there is a degree of confusion on the issue of assimilation. Some EU member states encourage assimilation, understood as relatively easy acquisition of citizenship based on knowledge of the local language and a public commitment to the values of the host society (e.g. respect for law); others make it more difficult. Both approaches can result in ghettoisation, but the phenomenon is more marked in the less "assimilationist" member states.
I doubt that anyone expects new immigrants to conform to every aspect of Irish life (if only because there is no longer one single way of being Irish) or disagrees that tolerance of difference is desirable. Not all differences, however, are good. Some cultures traditionally discriminate against, and even mutilate, women. A desire to be "multicultural" should not lead us to abandon basic values like equality between men and women, or to tolerate, for example, female genital mutilation. - Yours, etc.,
Niall Leonard, Ankara, Turkey.