Ireland and U.S launch working-holiday visa

The Irish Government has announced a new deal with the U.S. whereby up to 20,000 students will be able to come to the U.S for a 12-month working holiday. The visas will not be available to undocumented Irish already in the U.S. Read the official press release here

Micheal Martin signs new visa deal

The Irish Govt has signed a new visa deal which will give college grads the chance to live and work in the US for up to 12 months. More here from The Irish Times

ILIR meets with Candidate Sen. John McCain

ILIR vice-chairman Ciaran Staunton met with Presidential Candidate Sen. John McCain at an Irish American Town Hall in Pennsylvania this week. Sen. McCain told Ciaran that he will address comprehensive immigration reform in his first term if elected.

Ciaran Staunton Discusses Student Visa on RTE 1

The vice-chairman of the ILIR was on RTE's News at One today discussing his meeting this week with presidential candidate Sen. John McCain. Sen. McCain told Ciaran that he would address comprehensive immigration reform in his first term if he was elected.

He also spoke about what he knows about the new student visas. You can hear the interview here. Also, we will be posting information on the new student visas when it becomes available. As Ciaran points out though, they will not cover the undocumented.

McCain Pledges Immigration Reform at Irish Event

Presidential candidate Senator John McCain today pledged to create a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Senator McCain was speaking at an Irish Town Hall in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His remarks drew wide applause from the audience.

News stories about working holiday visas-

There have been reports in Ireland of a new 12-month working visa which would be available to Irish people coming to the U.S. on working holidays, similar to the agreement between Ireland and Australia and the U.S. with Australia and New Zealand. This visa is not intended to be a replacement for any work being done by the ILIR. We will post more information on these visas, as and when that becomes available from the Irish Government. However, this 12-month working holiday visa is not our focus as it is not the long-term solution we are pursuing. In the meantime, if the news reports are correct, it IS a step in the right direction as it demonstrates the new Irish administration's commitment to restoring Irish American ties.

Irish Times weighs in on US election

Would an Obama presidency be best for Ireland?

Kate Fitzgerald argues 'yes', Obama would benefit Ireland by reviving the economy, remaining engaged with Northern Ireland and favouring diplomacy over aggression, while Grant Lally says 'no', Barack Obama's suggestion that there might be no need for a US special envoy to Northern Ireland shows his naivety and lack of experience.

Familes on move from Ireland

The Irish Independent has been following the continuing brain drain from Ireland. A story this week shows that the rate of emigration is at its highest for 20 years. The story does not say whether some of the outflow includes immigrant workers to Ireland but still, the numbers do show that Irish people are on the move again. In particular, Irish construction workers are being wooed in Canada and Australia.

Obama Reaches Out To Irish America

At last! Someone in Obama's campaign (or maybe it was the senator himself?) has reached out to the Irish American community. The Irish Voice, says that Obama has picked an "A Team" of Irish American experts to do just that.

Obama had foolishly left that role to Ms Trina Vargo who heads up the US-Ireland Alliance. That was a ridiculously bad move for Obama given that one of Vargo's first efforts included a statement suggesting that an Obama administration would abolish the post of US special envoy to the North of Ireland.

The statement caused uproar in the Irish American community which worked so hard to secure the posting, a role which has helped maintain the fragile peace in the North. It also pried open a doorway for Senator John McCain to take advantage of the Irish American vote.

Now, the "A Team" includes such stalwart Irish Americans as Senators George Mitchell (retired, Maine), Chris Dodd (Connecticut), Edward Kennedy (Massachusetts) and Pat Leahy (Vermont), Governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland and Congressmen Joe Crowley (New York) and Richard Neal (Massachusetts).

Where does this all leave Ms Vargo? We fervently hope she is removed from any position where she has the power to influence Irish American policy. Those of us who toil in the world of immigration reform are well aware of Ms Vargo's contempt for the Irish - despite the fact that her work is funded by the Irish taxpayer

Candidates and immigration

The New York Times has created a handy side-by-side chart of how the two presidential candidates stand on immigration. Clearly, while we think we know where McCain stands after hosting him at several ILIR events, we have huge concerns about Barack Obama purely because of the involvement of Trina Vargo in his campaign.

Ms Vargo seems to understand the ordinary Irish people as much as Marie Antoinette understood the ordinary French. "Let them eat cake," and all that. In her haste to dissasociate herself from the un-hip, un-wealthy and un-popular undocumented Irish immigrants, Ms Vargo seems to have fallen hard for the overblown myth of the Celtic Tiger. It must be a bit hard to see the ordinary Irish struggling with balloon mortgages, unemployment and lousy health care when you're quaffing cocktails at Ireland's ultra-exclusive Ryder Club.

Anyway, you can see the chart for yourself here.

Unemployment Surge In Ireland

RTE is reporting today "shock" figures (no shock to those of us counting the new arrivals in NY, Boston, Philly and SF) which show unemployment in Ireland at 6.1pc. What's more, the reporter says the figure is expected to jump to 8pc by the end of the year.

"Men accounted for 73% of the increase over the past 12 months, reflecting the impact of the very sharp downturn in the construction industry."

The numbers are even more startling given that unemployment rarely rises in August because more people are working in seasonal (or summer) employment.

And where oh where does Ireland Inc think the laid-off construction workers are going to go?

Democrats see immigration as key voting issue

And they're off! The Democrat convention kicks off today in Colorado, and as CNN says, there is some serious selling to be done there. Mostly selling Obama to the American voters.

However, they are also using immigration reform to do a strong sell to Hispanic voters who could hold the balance of power in swing states.

The Hill newspaper says that Democratic candidates are promising to address immigration reform in the next Congress, when they expect to hold bigger majorities in the House and Senate and perhaps control the White House.

Exit polls from 2006 showed that Hispanics made up about 30 percent of voters in New Mexico, 13 percent of voters in Nevada, 12 percent in Arizona, and 11 percent in Florida.

GAA players NY-bound despite lack of visas

Interesting piece by David McWilliams in the Irish Independent yesterday. McWilliams has devised what he calls a GAA club transfer index which shows the following:

In January, not one club player transferred to a club outside Ireland. This month, over one third of all transfers involved lads leaving the country and signing up for clubs in New York and London.

McWilliams reckons that this is the thin end of the wedge as young Irish men get back on the emigration trail. Well, all he needed to do was call the Aisling Center in New York to find that out. However, at the very least, McWilliams has started some realistic debate. There is an urgent need for a long-term and short-term solution for Irish immigrants in the US. And he has also shown Ireland needs an "ordinary" visa; one that will give the carpenter, nanny and office worker the same kind of opportunities as the guy with the PhD.

FG's McHugh set for Democratic Convention

Seems that FG TD Joe McHugh is going to Colorado to lobby presidential hopeful Barack Obama on the immigration issue. We're not sure how successful this will be given that Trina Vargo's name is increasingly being bandied about as Obama's Irish liasion.

If Obama wants to reach out to the Irish how come he's not talking to the people behind the Irish American media? There has been no reach out to the publishers of the Irish Echo, Irish America magazine, or Irish Voice. A source from his campaign said he would bypass the Irish American media in favor of appealing to the Irish through their faith.

Far be it from us to point out that the last president to win the Irish vote by appealing to their religion was Ronald Reagan.

It's the economy, stupid

A lot pf people have been on to me over the weekend over the piece posted last week after I got back from Ireland.
Seems there's a growing awareness in Ireland that there are hard times ahead and this is filtering out back here.
One woman was telling me that her family have decided to come out en masse for Christmas this year. She's been here for 14 years and has missed the past 13 family Christmases at home.
She said she was ready to move home earlier this year but decided to hold on until after the elections here.
Now she says that people back home are advising her to stay put because "you won't get any work back here."
"What's my choice now?" she said. "Stick it out here - where I have a good economic future if nothing else - or move home to a very uncertain economic future?"
It's amazing how much the undocumented Irish immigrants - as well as every other immigrant group - are contributing to the economy here. Pity Congress can't start looking at it that way.

Ireland and America - Time to start talking

There's a lot of disquiet in the Irish American community over Obama's failure to reach out to Irish America. Great piece by Tom Hayden in the Huffington Post this week which we have posted below. Given the economic upheaval in Ireland, now would be the time for an Irish American initiative which will bring both countries closer together. As others have often noted; Irish people are closer to those in Britain, Australia and the US. Unfortunately for those of us concerned with Irish American ties, it's simple for an Irish person to move to Britain or Australia. It's almost impossible for an Irish person to move here - or indeed, for an American with Irish ties to move to Ireland.

Back from Ireland

It's nice to know so many people actually read the blog! There have been tons of emails complaining about the shortage of postings over the past few weeks. They don't call August the "silly season" for nothing you know!

Anyway, I was in Ireland for a few weeks and the outlook is pretty grim there (and that's not including the incessant rain). The father of a friend of mine had to deplete his savings to pay for an operation in a private hospital. He's 89 and he was looking at a 12-month waiting list for a public bed. Doesn't matter that he's worked in Ireland his whole life and paid hundreds of thousands of euro in taxes. Back to the end of the line for him.

Jobs-wise, the bottom has fallen out of the market. People are being asked to take pay cuts, raises have been frozen, interest rates are going up, and they're even talking about bringing back college fees. You know things are bad when they go after the easy targets.

O'Bama and Irish America

From the Huffington Post
By Tom Hayden

Barack Obama needs the huge Irish-American vote in closely-fought Pennsylvania battlegrounds like Pittsburgh and the Philadelphia suburbs. There are similar pockets of Irish American swing voters in other key states. But this Irish dimension is so far being lost or downplayed in the prevailing political discourse about whiteness or Catholicism, and Obama himself has stumbled in his outreach efforts.

Interviews with journalists, political leaders and activists in Belfast this week - including some whose publications are widely read in Pennsylvania - revealed widespread interest in Obama's candidacy but also concerns about his approach to white ethnics like the Irish.

For example, Hillary Clinton was "treated like a queen" by Irish throngs during Pittsburg's St. Patrick's Day parade, according to Larry Kirwan, while Obama went missing. In his fabled Berlin speech in July, Obama declared that the walls between Catholics and Protestants had come down in Northern Ireland, when in fact the barriers separating communities have increased since the Good Friday Agreement. Obama's top adviser on Northern Ireland, Trina Vargo, recently left the campaign after being involved in sharp public disputes with the Irish immigration lobby in Washington.

Vargo, a former adviser to Sen. Edward Kennedy, has been replaced in the Obama campaign by Carol Wheeler, whose background includes involvement in children's charities. Wheeler denies this account, saying she is an "addition", not a replacement, and is now the "voluntary coordinator for Irish American outreach" and works with the campaign staffer who does "advocacy outreach.". In any event, Vargo's falling out with Niall O'Dowd, who was a major Hillary Clinton backer and a central force in Irish immigrant politics, has been a divisive setback.

After Vargo openly criticized Irish immigrant advocates for being racist in seeking special treatment, O'Dowd answered in the Irish Times that Vargo "should stick to Hollywood galas and stop insulting Irish illegal migrants to the US who are trying to regularize their positions." [Nov. 20, 2007]. O'Dowd's position, supported by every Irish-American group, is that should seek to regularize their immigrant status, as they have on occasion in the past, while at the same time supporting an alliance of all immigrant groups pursuing comprehensive reform.

On another vital Irish issue, "We need America to be a watchdog against extremist behavior" in Northern Ireland, says Mairtin O'Muilleor, a prominent publisher in both Northern Ireland and the US. O'Muilleor cited the recent episode in Belfast in which Iris Robinson, wife of First Minister Peter Robinson, castigated a Gay Pride parade and proposed therapy as an alternative cure. No one from the US spoke out, O'Muilleor noted, even though the American government is an important party to the Good Friday Agreement. Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party [DUP], which Robinson represents, has deep historical ties with the US Republican Party and evangelical Christians.

More important, O'Muilleor stressed, the peace agreement needs to be "cemented with jobs", especially in the heavily-Republican and Loyalist neighborhoods which suffered most during the 30-year war. Investment, however, is skewed heavily towards Protestant-dominated institutions and neighborhoods, even though a Sinn Fein leader, Tom Hartley, is the mayor of Belfast and Sinn Fein is the city's largest party. In a response Obama could endorse, the New York City controller's office has initiated pension fund investments in disadvantaged communities of Belfast, a move that may be copied by other US officials, O'Muilleor said.

These are proposals that Obama could support as a candidate, which would resonate in Irish-American communities, O'Muellior argues.

The point he and others make is that there is an Irish-American vote to be won through concrete steps to recognize the distinct needs of the Irish, a path followed with great success for Bill and Hillary Clinton. The Clintons became heroes to the Irish on both sides of the ocean, starting with Clinton's bold support for a visa for Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams in 1992, a step that helped unlock the peace process of the later decade.

With the Clintons now supporting Obama, John McCain is vulnerable in Irish-America. This year he excoriated Adams and Sinn Fein at a huge Irish-American fundraising dinner with Adams in the audience. The diatribe was an echoing reminder of the ugly polarizations that preceded the peace process. McCain is out of step with that process. Even George Bush, according to the Irish, seems fully briefed in his diplomatic role in supporting the fragile process.

To ignore this Irish dimension serves to the advantage of the implicit Republican appeal on racial issues like affirmative action and religious issues like abortion. Winning more Irish Democrats and independents to Obama will require an understanding of the progressive dimensions of Irish-American culture, rooted in an immigrant working class experience and nationalist ethos.

Aside from producing some green O'Bama tee shirts earlier this year, the Obama campaign has not yet displayed the rhetoric or resources necessary to win its share of the Irish-American vote. Given the Electoral College, the November election may hinge on this redefinition of race and ethnicity.

TOM HAYDEN recently returned from one week in Belfast and Dublin. He is the author of Irish on the Inside [Verso].

Cowen ushers in new era for Irish America

Irish Taoiseach Brian Cowen ushered in a new era in Irish- American relations in New York last night with a rousing speech which underlined his commitment to solving the Irish immigration issue. Mr Cowen, (pictured here with ILIR vice-chairman Ciaran Staunton) said: "It's a priority for our administration to try and sort this out."

Taoiseach signals new campaign on illegals
Irish Times, Ireland - 15 hours ago
THE TAOISEACH, Brian Cowen, yesterday signalled that the Government would be launching a new drive to resolve the issue of the undocumented Irish in the US. ..

Cowen 'more genuine in commitment to illegal Irish'

Irish Independent, Ireland - 9 hours ago
The Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform in the US says it believes Brian Cowen is more genuine in his commitment to helping illegal Irish immigrants than his ...

Cowen in visa bid to resolve emigrant plight
Irish Independent, Ireland - 12 hours ago
By Fionnan Sheahan in New York TAOISEACH Brian Cowen wants to grant more visas to Americans to come to Ireland as a way to resolve the plight of illegal ...

Obama jeopardizes Irish American support

You may or may not have heard of a woman called Trina Vargo who has been extremely hostile to undocumented Irish immigrants. Unfortunately, (at least according to Vargo) she is the outreach woman for Barack Obama on Irish American issues. This is some surprise to the ILIR, let me tell you, given that we are the largest active group in Irish America. She's never done any outreach to us, and she'll never be forgiven for likening undocumented Irish to lipstick and pigs. Hopefully someone in the Obama camp sees this train crash before it happens. Vargo will seriously jeopardize his chances of winning the Irish American vote. See below for two pieces by Brian O'Dwyer and Niall O'Dowd.