NYT: An Irish Face on the Cause of Citizenship

[Pirate Smile]

By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: March 16, 2006

Rory Dolan's, a restaurant in Yonkers, was packed with hundreds of illegal Irish immigrants on that rainy Friday night in January when the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform called its first meeting. Niall O'Dowd, the chairman, soon had them cheering.
"You're not just some guy or some woman in the Bronx, you're part of a movement," Mr. O'Dowd told the crowd of construction workers, students and nannies. He was urging them to support a piece of Senate legislation that would let them work legally toward citizenship, rather than punishing them with prison time, as competing bills would.

For months, coalitions of Latino, Asian and African immigrants from 50 countries have been championing the same measure with scant attention, even from New York's Democratic senators. But the Irish struck out on their own six weeks ago, and as so often before in the history of American immigration policy, they have landed center stage.

Last week, when Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer declared their support for a new path to citizenship, and denounced criminal penalties recently passed by the House of Representatives, they did so not at the large, predominantly Hispanic immigrant march on Washington, but at the much smaller Irish rally held there the following day.

Some in the immigrant coalitions resent being passed over, and worry that the Irish are angling for a separate deal. Others welcome the clout and razzmatazz the Irish bring to a beleaguered cause. And both groups can point to an extraordinary Irish track record of lobbying triumphs, like the creation of thousands of special visas in the 1980's and 90's that one historian of immigration, Roger Daniels, calls "affirmative action for white Europeans."
Mainly, though, they marvel at the bipartisan muscle and positive spin the illegal Irish can still muster, even as their numbers dwindle to perhaps 25,000 to 50,000 across the country — those left behind by a tide of return migration to a now-prosperous Ireland.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/nyregion/16irish.html?hp&ex=1142571600&en=7ebbac950bbd3b6f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[bottomofthehill]

1. Three cheers for the Donnelly Visa

[lostexpectation]

2. Good luck to them, Meanwhile back of good ol' ROI

The minister if justice is ramping up the anti-immigrant furore to new levels.


impressed by the 100,00 immigrant worker march in Chicargo the other day.

[lostexpectation]

3. No special deal for 50,000 illegal Irish, US tells Ahern

By Shaun Connolly
TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern was last night told there could be no special deal for the 50,000 Irish illegals in the US as he used the annual St Patrick’s Day visit to Washington DC to battle to save them from deportation.

Republican Senator John McCain insisted the workers could only be included in an overall agreement dealing with the 12 million such foreigners believed to be in America.

He said he was hopeful the legislation he and Senator Ted Kennedy are championing will prevail over more draconian attempts to tighten immigration laws.

The Arizona senator said illegal Irish and foreign workers needed to be encouraged to join mainstream society to end their "exploitation" on its margins.

"Are there Irish citizens here being exploited? There are I've talked to some of them," he said after meeting the Taoiseach.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/pport/web/ireland/Full_Story/did-sgSIzvlbcqDE6sgTbBP-2fa91M.asp