US GAA clubs can cash in on P-3 visa option
“We’re terrible at the moment,” my soccer club mate told me when I asked how his New York senior football club was shaping up for the hot GAA summer stretching out ahead of us.
The conversation happened while we were warming up for an almost end-of-season local soccer league game. It was the eve of Leitrim’s demolition of New York in the Connacht SFC first round on the first weekend of this month.
As he arrowed a precise right-footed strike in off the crossbar to an empty net, he added with a grimace: “They’ll sign Ronaldo and Messi and the whole lot and then it’ll be a different story.”
It’s difficult to tell the precise flow of immigration from Ireland into New York and the US these days. The Irish lobbying groups maintain for their own ends that, in its own way, the numbers coming here are as significant as ever.
This isn’t the 1980s though. Nor is it the 1950s nor any of those unimaginable eras that went before. And the GAA here is feeling the pinch as a result. It’s a perpetual irony that in order for the games to flourish in New York and elsewhere, emigration out of Ireland to the US must be flowing constantly.
Young GAA players are going elsewhere in the world though and it’s only the top clubs with the biggest budgets in Boston, Chicago and New York that can offer the lure of a 60-day sanction, a job, cash and probably even a roof under which to sleep off the endless hangover.
But there are other options open to GAA clubs. One New York lawyer is trying to help teams avoid the tried and tested method of playing hard and fast with the rules, flying players back for a final hoping a second tourist visa will be issued.
Gary Healy, an immigration lawyer, recently gave a presentation about the visas available to athletes and people in the arts. He highlighted for GAA clubs that the P-3 visa could be applicable to the vast majority of GAA players (the LA Galaxy’s Robbie Keane is on a P-1 visa).
“I don’t think the clubs were aware of any of these other avenues,” he told me.
“They tend to take players over for the summer on the tourist visa. They go home before the 90 days are up and they try to get them back out again for the last few weeks of the season.
“This way they can bring them out for the pre-season, get them settled in properly and have them training together with their new team-mates.
“It has the benefit also of helping the GAA here build up summer camps for young players and generating enough interest in youth GAA teams. Doing it all legitimately and above board brings all those advantages.”
Any US individual citizen or entity such as a GAA club could sponsor the petition and would act as the ‘agent’ for the player but not the potential employer.
“This would allow the player to work for other employers within the culturally unique programme of the GAA and in activities related to football, hurling and camogie,” Healy explains.
The added advantage is that through the P-3, a player or coach could obtain a US Social Security Card which allows them to in turn acquire a driver’s license or non-driving identity card. They could also legally work for up to one year in the country within the field or whatever related activity can be created under the realm of the GAA.
“I’ve made this clear to everyone I’ve spoken to about this. You can’t come over on a P-3 Visa or an O-1 [another visa available to those with “extraordinary talent”, inter-county players for example] which is specifically tailored to playing and coaching football and then pick up a shovel on a building site. That’s not the idea behind it.”
Most importantly, the P-3 visa can act as a stepping stone to other types of US visas making it even more attractive for any GAA players beneath inter-county level who are hoping to emigrate to the States.
It would cost a club just under €300 to petition for several players and the processing time is only about two to four weeks. The visas last a year and are also renewable.
Of course, one country’s player drain is another’s rich harvest.
“It’s a beneficial thing for the GAA here if it’s
applied properly,” says Healy, and he’s right.
If the sad reality of emigration can be applied as a positive for Irish culture elsewhere, this is an avenue US GAA clubs need to really consider.
* Email: johnwriordan@gmail.com
* Twitter: JohnWRiordan
