New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg's take on all things Irish

I think peace in Northern Ireland is the best thing that happened. They can’t let themselves go back on that. They just have to at all costs … I don’t care what any one crazy person does, the elected officials and the non-elected officials, leaders, opinion makers, have to just work together and say, ‘Calm down, I know one of us just got killed by the other side. But we’re not going to start this war again. Peace is what we all need.’ 

In fact my company opened an office in Belfast, a tiny office, but down the road Belfast will be a center. Belfast is not going to be a business center if there’s no peace. You can’t take people there, nobody’s going to want to work there. But if there is peace, it’s a great place.

Do you see the global economy coming back soon?  

Yeah, but the U.S first. And we all say, there’s conventional wisdom that this mortgage problem was the beginning of the end, and it was an American problem, there was overexpansion everyplace.

Look at the Middle East. They’re building 3,000 tall buildings in places where there’s no reason to go. There’s no water, it’s so hot you can’t go outside, why would anybody want to go there? 

We are as guilty as anybody. Alan Greenspan talks about irrational exuberance. He didn’t do anything about it because the politics were ... if you’re doing good business and he walks in and says, ‘Stop doing business because you’re going to over-expand.’ I don’t think so.  

Immigration is an issue in the Irish community. The downturn in Ireland has led to a lot of new people coming over here. You’ve spoken out as you said already about illegal immigration, and opening the borders. What practical ways can you think of to do this?

Well in New York City, I have an executive order that we will not ask your documentation status for any government service, unless the federal government requires it, or you get arrested.

What nobody quite understands about the undocumented, and I think it’s true no matter where they come from, all the conventional wisdoms of Lou Dobbs -- who has done an enormous amount of damage to this country – the undocumented have very low (rates of) crime. Why? Because they don’t want to go near the government.

Undocumented pay taxes.  Why? Because their company deducts and there’s no place to send the refund. Undocumented don’t use our schools very much. They tend to be young people coming here who don’t go and have families. They tend to send money back home.

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Nster.com