A father’s Christmas reflection -- Ireland’s immigration and loss takes its toll on the holidays

Ancavker - I work with lots of people from Spain and we live in an area chock full of Greek immigrants who seem to run just about every business around here. You must be joking....

Wounded: I have a love hate relationship with my people. When they are at their best,no one can beat them. And no one is better. But when they are at their worst, they are a miserable bunch.

ancavker: You remind me of something I realized years ago. This is that despite the sometimes nauseating nostalgia and parochialism that the Irish manifest when drunk and overseas, the fact is that the Irish really have extraordinarily shallow roots in their homeland. No other nationality emigrates at a whim. The Irish are like tumbleweed--they'll let themselves be blown anywhere.

There are lots of Americans who are riding out the bad economy here in the U.S., and working in menial jobs below their educational and intellectual levels. The Irish who are running away could do the same. And as bas as things are in Ireland, look at Greece and Spain, h where are their young people running away to?

WKnee - my point is that if the current Irish, the best educated and youngest population in Europe, wish to stay at home they can occupy menial tasks. If they have ambition and high expectations for themselves, staying at home truly is not a viable option. Been there and done that.

Smyrnian: What year did you leave Ireland? Were there streams of Lithuanians, Poles, Chinese, Indians etc etc flowing in thru Arrivals just while you were departing? Because if there were then indeed you had a choice, and the fact that large numbers of foreign migrants could find work was proof that there was work in Ireland and that there was no need to emigrate. Those Irish who have left Ireland in the past few years did so of their own volition. There's lots of work in Ireland, countless jobs can't be filled, and foreign migrants are imported to fill them. Or are you going to tell us that foreign migrants are arriving even tho there is no work for them?

Wounded Knee - I emigrated from Ireland and I certainly had no choice unless I settled for a bleak future. That is the part you neglect to mention. If you are in a burning building you have a choice Jo or burn. Saying that person has a "choice" may be technically true but an intellectually dishonest statement.

"The scourge of emigration"? Have some sense, McGinn, emigration is a free choice. There are lots of jobs in ireland, anyone who wants work can find it. Even people coming from Latvia, Laos or Luanda are able to find work, regardless of deficient English language. The Irish whining about emigration needs to stop.

Silling: Stay where you are. Ireland doesn't need another bankrupt alcoholic.

Frosty. I may be an Irishman but I do not appreciate being called a racist pejorative name. Knock it off.

good for you. You must be a true "MICK" I was not born there but second generation Boston irish and I would move there or snowbird then instead of Florida. which I have called home for 12 years

Unfortunately this is an old story; it's just a new experience for the current generation. There were 11 of us in my family and 7 of us had to emigrate. This is just more of the same. Ireland could never take care of its own for very long. Sad to see massive emigration happening again.

That's the spirit!

Joyce and Beckett, to name but two others, would agree with you. In either country, you'll want to stop or at least watch the drink, you know. Can't imagine why you'd leave France, myself francophone and francophile and been there many times, but all the very best wishes in the "old country", Silling.

As an expatriated Irishman for some 30 years now, I can't say that I ever missed an Irish Christmas until this morning when I watched the O2 concert with Shane Macgowen singing the Fairytale of New York. Suddenly I felt as though I am in the wrong place and I am not just speaking about today in Provence, no, I am putting my house on the market and returning to Ireland despite the state of the economy, bad weather and my alcoholism. There is something about Ireland that has never permitted me to abandon it.