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Focus: I don't want you “What’s at stake here is not just our security but our humanity,” Kennedy told the Senate. “We can’t set that aside.” He cited the case of an Irish woman, Sheilah, an undocumented immigrant living on Cape Cod for the past 10 years. “Now her whole life is in the United States,” said Kennedy. “Her citizen brother is fighting in Iraq, but upon petitioning for her, he found he had a 15- to 20-year wait. Sheilah listened to her grandfather’s funeral mass through a cellphone because she wasn’t able to travel to Ireland.” The impassioned speech was followed by one of the biggest public demonstrations America had ever seen, larger than those for Vietnam and the civil rights movement. The issue of undocumented immigrants has become as important to American voters now as Iraq, according to polls last week. Kennedy, a Democrat, and John McCain, a likely presidential candidate for the Republicans, had put forward jointly a bill that would allow illegals such as Sheilah to carry on with their lives in America. But it never got to a vote and thousands of illegal Irish immigrants continue to be pawns in a debate started by the events of September 11 and the “war on terror”. They are stranded in political limbo, facing ever-increasing attempts by the authorities to expose them. According to Niall O’Dowd, the chairman of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform (ILIR), Sheilah’s story is far from unique. “One of the saddest moments in the debate was Kennedy speaking about this Irish woman,” said O’Dowd. “It was like so many stories I’ve heard, of people who’ve been here a long time and created their lives here, and you have to feel for them. The human dimension of this is something that politicians often miss.” The undocumented Irish make up a mere 0.001% of America’s illegal population, but they have nevertheless persuaded the country’s most senior politicians to support them publicly. But will they win, and anyway what right do they have to demand American citizenship, having chosen to live on the wrong side of the law for so long?
“I’ll keep going until I’m caught,” he said. “I’ve heard that the first offence is a $45 (€37) fine. The second is a lot more serious and the third could well be jail. I’ll stop on the first offence and see what to do from there.” He has registered the family car and his work truck in the name of his Carlow-born wife, Eileen, who is also illegal, but who does not face her licence renewal for another two years. Byrne is so worried about immigration crackdowns that he frets about picking people up at airports because he might be asked for identification. His four employees – two Guatemalans, a Mexican and a Trinidadian, are all undocumented and without drivers licences. He has not returned to Ireland in 10 years, having missed a funeral and the Irish weddings of his two sisters and brother, siblings he has not seen since he left. He was among millions whose hopes were raised by the McCain-Kennedy bill last month only to be dashed again. An estimated 7.9m people have migrated to America in the past five years, half of them illegal, more than in any other five-year period in American history. After years of the US turning a blind eye, illegal immigrants such as Byrne now face the wrath of the new Department of Homeland Security. Of particular concern is last year’s Real ID Act, which will prohibit undocumented people from getting driving licences nationwide from 2008. Many states, including California, already operate this rule. Other threats include “workplace enforcement” — rules and technology making it impossible for employers to hire illegal immigrants. New rules brought in over the last year by individual states, including California, have made legal immigration status necessary to renew driving licencesahead of the 2008 federal deadline. The final straw, which became the focus of the outrage that led to countrywide demonstrations this month, was a bill that included provisions to criminalise and deport all illegal immigrants and to build a 750-mile (1,200km) wall across the Mexican border. The bill would also make it a criminal offence to help illegal immigrants. The debate now revolves around whether to create a system of “guest workers” without citizenship or voting rights, or to accept those who have been in America for many years and grant them amnesty. While the illegal Irish are far outnumbered by undocumented Hispanics, the Irish are punching well above their weight in the campaign. Contrary to estimates of 40,000 illegal Irish in America, recent research indicates the number is much smaller. Piaras MacEinri, a migration expert at University College Cork, said: “The best information I have is that the figure is 10,000 at most. The vast majority of Irish people who went to the States in the late 1980s either came back or were regularised.” Mary Brennan, 38, from Listowel, Co Kerry, an illegal immigrant in New York for 15 years, was one of more than 2,000 Irish campaigners who lobbied in Washington on March 8. “One of the Senate staffers said he thought all the illegals were Mexican,” she said. “It’s important to show the world that we’re there too.” She was last in Ireland four years ago when her brother died. “I managed to slip back in. I just had to go home for the funeral, but I never knew until the last moment if I’d get back in again,” she said. Brennan is hoping an agreement can be worked out before next September, in time for her to be a bridesmaid at a wedding. “I belong in the States, but if the debate drags on for another three years I think we’ll pack up and leave. A lot of people will,” she said. Political commentators reckon the row will drag on longer than she hopes, with Senate elections in November and presidential election campaigns beginning next year. Last month Hillary Clinton, whose unofficial presidential campaign has already kicked into gear, chose an Irish pro-immigration rally as a means of criticising Republicans for advocating a “police state”. Where many politicians have been wary of appearing too supportive of Hispanic immigrants, the Irish — white, English-speaking and with about 40m Irish-American voters behind them — have become a safe way into the debate. Meanwhile the Irish government’s efforts, including direct funding of lobby groups such as the ILIR, have even been noticed by the president. But while many economic migrants from Mexico and Latin America have desperate reasons to stay in America and find a better life, critics say Irish demands are often less valid. MacEinri, who supports attempts to legalise the undocumented Irish, says the issue is shrouded in hypocrisy. “It’s interesting that the reaction back here in Ireland is so unsympathetic, and sometimes quite savagely so,” he said. “Perhaps because we have a problem with migrants here, suddenly we have no sympathy with our own people abroad. We seem to think we have special rights to America, because we built the place or something, but we don’t.” MacEinri says, contrary to popular opinion, America has a very progressive immigration policy. “But they don’t owe the Irish any favours. When you start saying they do, as some Irish in America do, it borders on special pleading on grounds of whiteness.” WITH eight days of recess before the Senate sits again, life for Caroline Doherty McKenna from Killybegs, Co Donegal, has returned to normal after the heady days of million-man demonstrations. But there are constant reminders of an American security apparatus circling ever closer. “Even flying within the country is risky because sometimes they ask for more ID than just the driver’s licence,” she said. When her husband Brian’s licence expired recently, much of her freedom went with it. “It’s difficult because I have to drive all the time. I’m the driver at weekends and I have to rush back to meet him during the weekdays. My own licence will be gone in two years anyway,” she said. McKenna has not been back to Ireland for almost seven years and has missed the funerals of her grandmother, grandfather and uncle. “It was upsetting,” she said. “We had to make a decision on each funeral and my parents told me not to chance it because I had a good life in America and I shouldn’t take the risk of losing it.” James Carafano, an analyst at the Heritage Institute, a right-wing Washington think tank, advocates the expulsion of the likes of McKenna, and says that the options for the American government are few. “There are voices on two sides, pro-immigration and border zealots, and the bulk of Americans are both,” he said. “We have a growing economy and falling demographics; we need these workers. It’s not a question of kicking 15m people out of the country — we need them. But right now there is no penalty for being here unlawfully. People are choosing to be here illegally because it’s easier.” Carafano says three deterrents are gaining support among Republican conservatives. “One is no amnesty. The second is to go to zero ‘catch and release’, so when we catch someone violating immigration law we just deport them,” he said. “The third is workplace enforcement, that if you’re not entitled legally to have a job you can’t keep it. Over a period of years, that population of 10m or 15m people here illegally would just dwindle away.” But with the issue now at the top of the political agenda, the immigrant vote is too important to alienate. The next two weeks will decide whether their tenuous existence in the
shadow of the law will be decided quickly after an urgent debate, or,
as seems more likely, whether they will remain a political football
for the next two years.
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