Undocumented Irish - Ahern’s real agenda is Irish in US
This was not about securing extra rights for Irish people to immigrate to the United States, but about the 25,000 Irish people who have been living there for years without proper documentation.
These people have settled in the United States, as did millions of Irish people during the past two centuries.
In earlier times, primitive travel facilities often prevented immigrants from ever getting back to Ireland on a visit, but travel is now relatively easy in the modern era. However, the undocumented immigrants cannot return to visit their aging parents, or attend their funerals, without running the risk of losing their livelihoods, or enduring separation from their new families.
The ILIR rally received a boost from the presence of Senator Chuck Schumer, who helped to organise the Democratic Party’s recent stunning success in capturing control of the US Senate in the mid-term elections.
Thus, it would seem to be an opportune time to focus again on the campaign on behalf of the undocumented.
President George W Bush has shown himself to be quite amenable on the issue of the undocumented, as have some of his strongest opponents.
Both Senators Ted Kennedy and John McCain have been sponsoring by-partisan legislation to deal with the vexed question.
Critics have denounced the legislation, but the 25,000 undocumented Irish are really a small factor in the overall equation. They fade into relative insignificance in comparison with the 9 million undocumented Mexicans.
The complexity of the issue probably helps to explain Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern’s approach in dealing with the issue of American aircraft landing at Shannon. His delicate, sure-footed attitude is not prompted by any personal desire for a St Patrick’s Day invitation to the White House, but by an appropriate concern for the thousands of undocumented Irish people in the United States.
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