[See also "Legalize Me, I'm Irish"  by Brenda Walker.]

It's a great day for the Irish—not least of all for the "huge number" of Irish illegal aliens in the United States.

The bold pups can rest easy knowing that Bertie Ahern, An Taioseach (Prime Minister) of the Irish Republic, has sought the cover of a St. Patrick's Day's visit to the White House to "help illegal Irish immigrants in the US".

Perhaps Ahern doesn't appreciate that some Americans might feel just as outraged by an Irish politician interfering in their affairs as they would do if the offender were, say, Mexican. [VDARE.COM note: this is a joke.] However, the screams of outrage that would rise from Dublin to Donegal if a British politician were to interfere in Irish affairs would have Ahern fighting the Easter Rising all over again.

But Ahern, who appears to be as interested in Bangalore as Boston or even, God forbid, Ballina and who was once described by Charles Haughey, his most skilful, devious and cunning predecessor, as "the most skilful, the most devious, the most cunning of them all," certainly doesn't seem to appreciate that as a direct consequence of the volume immigration into Ireland he has enabled, his small country of four million has become a perfect laboratory for studying mass immigration's negative effects.

It's become so bad that the nation that survived The Great Famine of the 1840's might one day refer to the Ahern era as "The Great Displacement."

The extreme levels of immigration into the Irish Republic are a consequence of the Treaty of Nice, which expanded the European Union to the old Eastern Bloc. Membership of the EU makes the theoretical demand that labor be permitted to move freely between member nations.

So even if Europeans wanted to have the kind of scenes which play out every day on the USA's southern border, we couldn't, because the right to control who lives within our own countries has largely been delegated to Brussels.

Unlike the British, however, the Irish people actually got a chance to ratify Nice via referendum. And, on June 8 2001, they rejected it.

Or so they thought.

Ahern was not deterred by a matter so slight as the will of the Irish people. He held a second referendum in 2002, which the pro-Nice camp won, on a turnout of 48percent; after considerable interference by the Eurocracy.

The desire to interfere in other countries' affairs must be contagious.

On May 1, 2004, the new members joined the EU at a ceremony in Dublin's Phoenix Park. Provisions were put in place for the Western nations to restrict the number of migrants from the new admission states; but only the UK, the Irish Republic and Sweden permitted unrestricted access to their territories.

Recently, on December 9 2005 100,000 Irish joined a strike in support of the staff of Irish Ferries, whose management was seeking to displace them with cheaper Eastern European agency labor. Irish Ferries later got its way, but only by guaranteeing the Eastern Europeans the Irish minimum wage.

Even more recently, on January 9 2006, Pat Rabbitte, the leader of the Irish Labour Party, stuck his head above the parapet and suggested that a work-permit system be introduced to control the numbers of people entering Ireland.

The Irish public agree with him. On January 23, the Irish Times published a poll which showed that 80 percent of Irish voters wanted the introduction of work permits, with 41percent wanting a complete halt to immigration, citing fear of displacement.

The Irish Republic is as likely as any other Western nation to be hit by offshoring's labor arbitrage. In a country the size of the USA, the loss of 38,000 jobs, although bad, is not as catastrophic as in a country with a population of four million. And that's what the Irish Congress of Trade Unions fears is on the cards.

In February it was reported that Ireland's youth unemployment rate is rising, particularly amongst unqualified school-leavers—the group always most likely not to be given the chance to do the jobs the immigrationists say they can't or won't do.

Yet how can youth unemployment be rising when 2005 saw "the highest jobs growth in five years"? The thought that this might be connected to mass migrant labor now comprising 9 percent of the workforce and providing 50 percent of jobs growth does not appear to have occurred to An Taioseach Ahern.

And lo and behold, the Irish wage rate is falling; an inevitable consequence of packing a small workforce with more and more people.

That all this could have happened within a space of just under two years shows just how devastating an impact mass migration has had on the Irish Republic.

Bertie Ahern might feel happy to speak up on behalf of those Irish criminals who displace Americans on the building sites of Chicago. But what about speaking for Ireland?

Unless Ahearn is actually as skilful, devious and cunning as his old boss thought him to be, Irish voters might leave him out on the street come his next election.

Given his record on immigration, that's an outsourcing that might just be worthwhile.

Martin Kelly (email him) is a Glasgow, Scotland-based blogger.