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President Higgins backs E3 Visa program during Boston visit

New leader urges Irish America to remember Famine victims

PATRICK COUNIHAN,

IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Published Monday, June 4, 2012, 12:24 PM

Updated Monday, June 4, 2012, 12:24 PM

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Michael D Higgins

Photo by Google Images

President Michael D Higgins has leant his support to Senator Scott Brown’s E3 visa program – and urged Irish Americans not to forget the famine. The recently elected Irish leader chose his first official visit to Boston to highlight his concerns for the illegal emigrants.

Acknowledging that the president doesn’t get involved in political decisions, Higgins did outline his thoughts on the proposed bill that would allow thousands of Irish to live and work in the US in two-year increments.

He stated: “I don’t get involved in the day-to-day legislation, but obviously I am interested and concerned for all Irish.

“I see myself as a president for all of the Irish at home and abroad, so, yes, of course, I am supportive of anything that helps their situation.

“There are difficulties facing the Irish emigrating to America today. They have Skype now, so the break with home isn’t as severe as it was.

“But if somebody dies at home, or there’s a wedding, they still have real difficulties both exiting and re-entering.”

Returning to Boston – he honeymooned there in the mid-70s – Higgins described the city as the "capital of Irish America."

“Boston is maybe the most Irish of all the cities," Higgins said.

“And I was mayor of Galway twice, and Galway is a huge component of Boston’s Irish population.”

Extending an invitation to Irish America to return home for The Gathering festival in 2013, Higgins also urged them to remember the Famine and its victims as he laid a wreath at the Boston Irish Famine Memorial.

He added: “My message to them about it is, never to forget, but to use our memories in a way that empowers us and that enables us to make an amnesty of the bad part of it.

“The Famine was Ireland’s greatest social calamity. Even today the world struggles to stamp out hunger.

“To international relations, governments, and the institutions which generations place their trust in, it remains one of the great unresolved ethical challenges of our time - the daily needless loss of life to hunger and preventable diseases.”

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CarrieMCork | May 07, 2013, 04:34 AM EDT

As for the €86 billion, that's not my debt. I've never had a loan and I didn't want the country to take on the bank's debt. Should I stay here and work for free to pay off that debt? It has nothing to do with most of us Irish. Forget the rest of the world, we are the 99% -that debt belongs literally to 1% of Irish people. We can list them off on two hands. So no, without any jobs, and not owning any of the debt, we do not have to stay here as workers. True, it's better to emigrate legally, it's the only route I would take and we have more options for that now, but for those who went in the 80s, or even 10 years ago - it's not as easy to criminalise them when they employ twenty Americans and pay huge taxes, own homes and have children in school.

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CarrieMCork | May 07, 2013, 04:34 AM EDT

And ByTheBay, I'm assuming you don't live in Ireland and haven't done so in recent years. We don't need all the workers because we don't have any jobs. People are not emigrating on a whim. Most people have spent years looking for work before deciding to uproot their families, leave their parents and move to a whole new continent. My degree is a practical one in Multimedia, but I'm waiting tables for up to €150 a week, usually less. As for the immigrants, actually most immigrants who last in the US buy social security numbers and because they are afraid to sort out their credits and refunds end up paying more in taxes than most. And in fact, most of them that these new immigration laws apply to those who have been there since the 80s - it will take another 13 years for green cards to be filed for illegal Irish immigrants in the US. Think of the sacrifice they made, things were desperate enough here in the 80s to push people to leave and not come home to their families for 30 years. It is not on a whim that people have done this, most pay exorbitant taxes and instead of taking US jobs, the Irish immigrants have a history of building their own businesses and bringing people over to fill those jobs that Americans can't fill - engineers and mathmaticians in scientific roles.

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CarrieMCork | May 07, 2013, 04:33 AM EDT

Brenn69, how much do you know about famine? You don't think there was food being grown in Ethiopia in 1998? Of course there was but they were at war, so the few crops they had went to the soldiers. A famine can be caused politically just as much as ecologically - it is a time when severe shortages (no matter what the cause) affect the highest majority of people.

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IrelandNorth | May 08, 2012, 08:57 AM EDT

I agree. E-Trí visa for any Irish immigrant workers who want them, in exchange for Irish citizenship for any and all Irish-Americans who want to come over here. In fact, such an exchange might be a good way around a revisionist history and press censorship which has left a generation of Irish-Irish culturally unconscious and politically apostate. Érin Gó Brágh (EGO).

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STEVENSTAR | May 08, 2012, 08:25 AM EDT

ITS ONLY TILL I READ THIS NEWSPAPER I DIDNT EVEN KNOW THE LITTLE PARASITE WAS OVER THERE ON HOLIDAY LAPPING UPTO AMERICANS WITH IDENTITY ISSUES WHO TRY TO BE IRISH... DIDNT GET MUCH MEDIA ATTENTION HERE, COME HOME HIGGINS YOU WASTE OF SPACE AND GIVE THE JOB TO A YOUNGER PERSON ...

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Bythebay | May 06, 2012, 03:38 PM EDT

Higgins should not be supporting illegal Irish in the US. Emigrants from Ireland who went to the US illegally completely ignored and violated US immigration law. They don't pay US taxes at all and are taking jobs away from those in the US legally, both US citizens and legal immigrants. They flagrantly and knowingly violated US law and efforts should not be made to reward them for doing so and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

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Bythebay | May 06, 2012, 02:04 PM EDT

Higgins should not support the E-3 visa bill which only removes required workers from Ireland. Higgins should be supporting jobs creation in Ireland and should be working with the Irish Government to bring that about ASAP. All workers are needed in Ireland to pay off the €86 billion owed to Europe and the IMF, International Monetary Fund, in Washington, DC.

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Springfield9 | May 06, 2012, 01:21 PM EDT

Michael Higgins is a "Good Man" ....something rare thee days

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Bythebay | May 06, 2012, 12:18 PM EDT

Bren69, anyone wanting to learn in-depth about the Great Hunger should read the book of the same name by Cecil Woodham-Smith which was first published in 1962. That will explain the pentiful food in Ireland which was shipped abroad. There was no observation of the Great Hunger in Ireland for the 50th or 100th anniversaries. Woodham-Smith's book is very critical of Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan's economic policies in Ireland. She did meticulous research The book is an excellent account of what happened all over Ireland during the Great Hunger. Her book was one of the first about the Great Hunger. Least anyone in the US do the surname judgment and refuse to read the book because of her surname, be aware she was a Fitzgerald, descendant of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a hero of the 1798 Rebellion.

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Brenn69 | May 06, 2012, 10:59 AM EDT

Like I said yesterday to ye, it's disturbing that the Irish Prez is doing nothing to dispel the myth that there was ever a "famine" in Ireland. There was plenty of food besides spuds on the island in the 1840s (such as grain, meat, vegetables...everything but spuds). The food was kept from the starving, diseased, evicted & homeless & desperate Irish. Is it not time the Irish stopped using the word "famine" to describe An Gorta Mór?

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LoyalCitizen | May 06, 2012, 09:12 AM EDT

There is nothing like an Irish Politician to embrace anything that will get the Irish to leave Ireland and keep the resources for the pretentious.

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