An Irish Face on the Cause of Citizenship

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An Irish Face on the Cause of Citizenship

Newspaper article

By: Nina Bernstein and Matthew Sweeney

Date: March 16, 2006

Source: Bernstein, Nina, and Matthew Sweeney. "An Irish Face on the Cause of Citizenship." New York Times (March 16, 2006).

About the Author: Nina Bernstein and Matthew Sweeney are reporters for the New York Times, a daily newspaper with a circulation of over one million readers worldwide.

INTRODUCTION

Irish nationals account for only a very small proportion of the total number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States. A 2004 estimate of the total number of undocumented migrants in the United States put the figure at 10.4 million, of which more than half were from Mexico, and a further quarter were from other Latin American countries. There is no official estimate of the number of undocumented Irish immigrants in the United States, but one research study in the early 1990s roughly gauged the total to be only around fifty thousand nationwide.

Although the United States has a substantial existing Irish-American community, most of the Irish undocumented immigrants as of 2006 are recent migrants who entered the United States during the 1980s to escape poor economic conditions and high levels of unemployment in Ireland at that time. Most entered legally as tourists and overstayed their visas, taking work mainly in low-skilled jobs in the construction and catering industries, or as au pairs. Being white, English-speaking immigrants, they have been able to integrate easily into U.S. society, and have received relatively little attention from the immigration authorities.

When the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 introduced sanctions for employers who hired undocumented workers, this made it increasingly difficult for the Irish, along with other unauthorized immigrants, to secure work. As a result, the Irish undocumented migrant community mobilized themselves politically to fight for immigration reform, through organizations such as the Irish Immigration Reform Movement, Project Irish Outreach, and the ethnic newspaper the Irish Voice. They have done so very successfully, capitalizing on their Irish ethnicity and drawing support from the established Irish-American community, including many prominent politicians and business leaders. Their main success to date is often regarded as the establishment of a special visa program in 1986, which aimed to redress the balance of the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 in favor of the Irish and other European immigrants.

The Hart-Celler Act had sought to equalize the number of immigrants to the United States from the Western and Eastern hemispheres, severely restricting legal immigration from Europe. Lobbying by the Irish was a main factor in the implementation of the NP5 Visa Program in 1986, which aimed to increase emigration from some of the countries who had traditionally been main sources of immigration to the United States but had been adversely affected by the Hart-Celler Act. Although the Irish political lobby campaigned on behalf of many countries affected by the Act, in the end around sixteen thousand of all the visas allocated, forty-one percent of the total, were obtained by Irish applicants. Around a third of these applicants were reportedly already living illegally in the United States.

The political successes of the Irish undocumented immigrant community have roused mixed views from other immigrant groups, some of whom resent the preferential treatment that the Irish are perceived to have received in immigration law, and others who welcome the Irish efforts to champion the cause of undocumented migrants.

The Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform is a group that was newly established to lobby on behalf of Irish undocumented immigrants in the debate on immigration reform taking place in the mid 2000s. Along with other undocumented immigrant groups, the Irish were concerned about the impact of the border security bill passed by the House of Representatives in December 2005. The bill proposed making it a felony to enter or live in the United States without documentation, or to assist anyone else to do so. Members of the community are being urged to support an alternative bill passed by the Senate in May 2006, which included provision for a guest worker program that existing undocumented immigrants would be eligible to apply for.

PRIMARY SOURCE

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.

This week, as the Senate Judiciary Committee wrestles with a comprehensive immigration bill, towns across the country are preparing to celebrate their Irish roots. On Friday, St. Patrick's Day, President Bush is to meet with Ireland's prime minister, Bertie Ahern, who has vowed to put the legalization of the Irish at the top of his agenda. And Irish Lobby volunteers are ready to leverage the attention, with "Legalize the Irish" T-shirts and pressure on senators like Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, who is in a tight race against Bob Casey Jr., a Democrat of Irish ancestry.

The new Irish dynamic is all the more striking because the Republican Party is fiercely split over immigration, and many Democrats have hung back from the fray, judging the issue too hot to handle in an election year.

"They're still good at the game," said Linda Dowling Almeida, who teaches the history of Irish immigration at New York University. She and other historians noted that in the mid-19th century, Irish immigrants used the clout of urban political machines and leadership by the Roman Catholic Church to beat back a nativist movement that saw them as a threat to national security and American culture.

More recently, Mr. O'Dowd, the publisher of The Irish Voice, was himself part of a lobby that leaned on legislators with Irish heritage to engineer more than 48,000 visas for the Irish, legalizing many who had re-greened old Celtic neighborhoods in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

But much has changed. After 9/11, a groundswell of anger over illegal immigration converged with national security concerns, propelling a populist revolt across party lines. Immigration is now seen as a no-win issue in electoral politics. And both opponents and supporters of legalization take a more jaundiced view of the Irish role in the debate.

"They're essentially saying, 'Look, we're good European illegal immigrants,'" said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports the House and Senate measures that would turn "unlawful presence," now a civil violation, into a crime. "The reason they've been more successful is the same reason it appeals to editors—immigration nostalgia from 150 years ago."

He added: "Can they be bought off by a special program for a handful of remaining illegals? I'm not saying it's a good idea, but you just start talking about the old sod and singing 'danny Boy,' and of course it's possible."

A special measure for the Irish would be hard to pass today, countered Muzaffar Chishti, the director of the New York office of Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization that has generally supported immigrant amnesties. In earlier campaigns, he recalled, an Irish lobby worked with other immigrant groups, and all won pieces of their agenda.

"It was extremely important for the optics on Capitol Hill," Mr. Chishti said. "The Irish were also very savvy about it at that time. They knew that they would get some special Irish treatment, but they also wanted to make it look like they were part of the immigrant coalition."

Today, the lobby's most crucial role, he said, may be changing the political calculus of Democrats who have shunned the immigration issue as a no-win choice between responding to Latinos and looking tough on immigration. Many Irish-Americans are swing voters, he said, and "it becomes sort of a tipping point for the Democratic Party."

For now, Mr. O'Dowd said, the Irish Lobby's focus is entirely on supporting the McCain-Kennedy bill, which would allow illegal immigrants who qualify to pay a $2,000 fine and work toward citizenship. But if no such measure emerges from Congress, he added, the Irish Lobby will push for any special arrangement it can get—"as will every other ethnic group in the country."

Special visas for the Irish "would be brilliant," said Valery O'Donnell, a house cleaner and single mother of 7-year-old twins who was at the Rory Dolan's meeting, and said she had lived in New York illegally for 13 years. "There's no harm in us. We're all out here to work hard."

But several immigrant advocates in New York said that even the hint of special treatment for the Irish would inflame the hurt feelings that began in February when Senator Schumer first spoke out on immigration at an Irish Lobby event in Woodside, Queens, after declining invitations by veteran immigrant organizations more representative of an estimated 700,000 illegal immigrants in the state. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 78 percent of the nation's nearly 12 million illegal immigrants are from Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America.

Spokesmen for the two senators said that their appearances had been determined only by what fit their schedules, and that their support for immigrants was not meant for a specific group.

Some immigrant leaders were not convinced. Juan Carlos Ruiz, the coordinator of the predominantly Hispanic rally of 40,000 held March 7 on Capitol Hill, said that only one senator had shown up there, without speaking: Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. The next day, Mr. Ruiz said, when he and his 14-year-old son stopped by the Irish gathering of about 2,400 and realized that the speakers included Senators Edward M. Kennedy, John McCain, as well as Senators Clinton and Schumer, his son asked, "Why didn't the senators come to our rally?"

"I was heartbroken," Mr. Ruiz said. "I needed to explain to him: 'the immigrants of color, for these senators we are not important enough for them to make a space in their calendar.'"

He added: "The Irish are not at fault. They are suffering the same troubles that we are. But it is discrimination."

Monami Maulik, a leader in another coalition, Immigrant Communities in Action, echoed his sentiment. "For a lot of us, this is a current civil rights struggle," she said.

But when the phrase was repeated to Mr. O'Dowd, he countered: "It's not about that at all. It's about how you change the law." For years, he added, he has lobbied to win nearly lost causes, including helping to broker a ceasefire in Northern Ireland. "It's not about being fair, it's about being good," he said. "It's about getting it done."

SIGNIFICANCE

Proposals to reform immigration law in the mid-2000s have been focused primarily on addressing the problem of unauthorized migration from Mexico and other parts of Latin America. However, this news article highlights the fact that undocumented migrants from Ireland and a range of other countries would also be affected by any new legislation. This has implications for the viability of proposed enforcement measures such as the prosecution of employers under federal law, since white European migrants are less visible than other ethnic groups, and it is arguably more difficult to identify them as unauthorized immigrants if they hold convincing fake documents.

The article also serves as a reminder that many undocumented migrants were originally legal immigrants who have overstayed their visas, and that immigration enforcement policies therefore need to address this problem in addition to strengthening control of the land borders.

The Irish have traditionally been able to influence U.S. immigration reform, due to their ability to capitalize on their ethnic links with the established Irish-American community, and it is possible that their interests and political lobbying will affect the outcomes of the 2006 immigration reform debate in their favor. However, this is likely to be difficult to achieve in the current climate, when public concern about levels of undocumented migration is at an all time high, and enforcement of the immigration laws is also being presented as a weapon in the war against terrorism.