Time to solve immigration mess

Ireland is bananas over President Barack Obama.

 

During inauguration week, the hope, pride and affection for our new president and a rekindled romance with the United States coursed through the country as it came to a standstill to follow every detail of the proceedings and ceremony. You could feel it in the air.

 

The pasts and futures of Ireland and America are intertwined, and on so many different levels.

 

So intertwined that it is interesting to ponder the irony that if today's restrictive anti-Irish immigration laws were in place in 1850, Falmouth Kearney, Obama's great, great great grandfather, would never have left Moneygall for Ohio, and the U.S. would not now have its first Irish-African-American president.

 

But how will the election of Offaly's new favorite son affect the centuries-long issue of Irish-U.S. migration, and the current plight of undocumented Irish in America? It is time once again to renew the effort to solve this puzzle, not just on a "once-off" basis as before, but to create a sustainable and long term solution. Several issues sit out on the horizon in this regard.

 

The first is comprehensive immigration reform. Some believe that with the Democrats controlling Congress the chances of passing comprehensive reform are far better now than they were under the Bush administration, thereby regularizing the immigration status of over 12 million undocumented living in the U.S., including upwards of 50,000 Irish.

 

Others are less sure and believe we ignore at our peril that significant opposition to the last effort, the Kennedy-McCain reform proposal, also came from within the Democratic Party, including powerful senators like Byron Dorgan and Barbara Boxer.

 

Then-Senator Obama supported many of the floor amendments that doomed its ultimate passage. Moreover, with increasing U.S. unemployment and an economy in tatters, there may be little political appetite to legalize an army of undocumented workers to compete with the already unemployed.

 

Another issue to consider is the new J visa program. The recently enacted J program annually allows up to 20,000 Irish college students and recent graduates to gain work experience in the U.S.

 

The visa is for a period of only one year and cannot be renewed. The J visa is widely viewed as too restrictive, unwieldy and of absolutely no use to the Irish undocumented. Although of some temporary benefit to a few, it is not a viable solution to the Irish-U.S. immigration issue, and it is intellectually dishonest to hold it out as such. Then there's the bilateral immigrant visa.

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Nster.com