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New hope for undocumented Irish

By
CONN CORRIGAN,
IrishCentral.Com StaffWriter

Published Thursday, April 9, 2009, 12:34 PM
Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 6:05 PM

 

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ILIR activists in New York

Bart Murphy, the chairman of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, has welcomed the news that the Obama administration is planning a new initiative on the U.S. immigration system later this year.

On Wednesday, Cecilia Muñoz, deputy assistant to the president and director of intergovernmental affairs in the White House, said that the President would begin examining ways in which undocumented workers could gain a path to citizenship.

What the President wants, Muñoz said, is a “policy reform that controls immigration and makes it an orderly system.”

“The Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform (ILIR) welcomes the new Obama Administration initiative,” Murphy, who recently became chairman of the ILIR, told IrishCentral.  

“It’s the start of a new debate. And we at the ILIR will be standing shoulder to shoulder with the various other immigration organizations, pushing for reform, as we have been in the past.”

Sheila Glesson, the executive director of Coalition of Irish Immigration Centers, also welcomed the news. “I’ve been working in this area for a long time,” Gleeson said. “So I am cautiously optimistic. But we have to have hope.”

When a bipartisan immigration bill supported by Bush was defeated in 2007, the Irish undocumented were hugely disappointed. But this new effort at immigration reform is likely to bring some hope to the estimated 50,000 undocumented Irish currently in the U.S.  

During his election campaign, President Obama identified comprehensive immigration legislation as a priority during his first term in office.

According to a report in the New York Times, President Obama will speak publicly on the issue in May, and will then convene working groups, which will include lawmakers from both parties, as well as a range of immigration groups. Legislation could begin as early as this fall.

However, he acknowledged last month that this would be an extremely difficult problem to address."I know this is an emotional issue; I know it’s a controversial issue,” he told a town meeting in California. “I know that the people get real riled up politically about this."

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