Today's Times (UK) reports on accusations circulating in Lithuania about the treatment of children of Lithuanian immigrants in the Republic of Ireland. At first they sound bizarre --
Rimante Salasevicuite, the Lithuanian Ombudsman for Children, made the claims after visiting Ireland last week to study the conditions in which an estimated 120,000 of her countrymen and women live. "In one Irish town Lithuanian children are beaten only because they are more beautiful than Irish ones," .... Aruna Teiserskis, director of the Lithuanian Association in Ireland, who met Ms Salasevicuite, said: “Her comments have probably been a little overhyped, but we have had parents giving us examples of what I would consider racist attitudes.
"Children have been prevented from speaking Lithuanian. We don’t want our children to lose their language. And violence does happen in some areas, usually after school. We like to dress well and perhaps that annoys some Irish, who expect immigrants to look poor."
It's not encouraging for the veracity of the claims that apparently the Irish ambassador couldn't get anywhere in terms of names of towns or specific instances where the alleged behavior happened. But the latter analysis excerpted above does perhaps have the ring of truth to it, though again may be based on only a couple of instances. As the article notes, immigration is an issue that never surfaced in the election campaign just past, and it usually gets in the news in the context of workplace exploitation cases rather than ethnic tension. Maybe an economic slowdown will change things.
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