US Ambassador - Our links with US are still sacred

THE US Ambassador Thomas Foley is unlikely to agree with the weekend remarks made by the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams about the war in Iraq.

In a stinging attack, Archbishop Williams has compared America’s actions in Iraq to the worst excesses of the British Empire.

Mr Foley has expressed the hope, and let us hope he is right, that the recent decline in car bombings and civilian casualties will bring a stable government and support for the rule of law all the closer.

The ambassador was reassuring on how he saw one of the most, if not the most, important international relationship for Ireland, the relationship between this country and America.

“I think the strength of the relationship is very solid,” he said, describing it as being more like family than friends. He also referred to an issue that will play on the hearts and minds of many Irish people as Christmas approaches, the undocumented Irish in America.

He pointed out that there are about 12 million undocumented people in America and that it is believed that less than 50,000 of these are Irish.

Though a solution is being sought, it is unrealistic to expect that processes less demanding than the ones we impose on immigrants wishing to live in Ireland will be applied to Irish people wishing to live in America.