How many immigrants have we got?

Who knows? The government certainly doesn't....

Level of immigration 'underestimated'
From ireland.com
Monday, 17th September, 2007

Minister of State for integration Conor Lenihan has said that he believes last year's census gave a "serious underestimate" of the number of foreign nationals living in the State.

It was "pretty much acknowledged" in Government circles that the level of immigration was higher than that set out in official figures, and he speculated [speculated!] that non-Irish nationals could account for 13-15 per cent of the population. Asked if he thought that immigration would continue at current rates, Mr Lenihan said: "Yes, and in fact a most interesting feature is the actual levels that are being reported by the Central Statistics Office are a serious underestimate of the number of [ non-Irish] people."

"All my contact with the migrant groups and different representatives say there's huge under-reporting. And that even extends to the groups that you would think would most show up on the radar, in terms of them having a full legal right to be here - the eastern European migrants."

Mr Lenihan, who was speaking to The Irish Times on Saturday after addressing the annual conference of Akidwa, the African women's network, said the number of Polish nationals reported in the census (62,495) was a "huge underestimate" and suggested the true figure is likely to be 160,000-200,000. While it was difficult to speculate on immigrant numbers, he said the proportion of foreign nationals is "probably more likely to be 13 to 15 per cent".

Such discrepancies could be explained in part by the fluidity of migrant movements and by the "multiple occupancy" of apartments, which made it difficult to arrive at accurate numbers. A traditional suspicion of the State in some migrants' country of origin meant many had "no particular desire to log in with the State".

(...) [Link]