The reality of Irish emigration to the USA

NUMBERS AND GREEN CARDS
The Economic and Social Research Institute in its April 2010 report, Recovery Scenarios for Ireland, warned that 200,000 people may be forced to emigrate between now and 2015 if unemployment is not addressed. Assuming no speedy recovery in growth, this might even be an underestimation.
According to the 2009 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, published by the Department of Homeland Security, in the 1840s, there were 656,145 Irish nationals granted legal permanent resident (green card) status. In the 1990s, largely due to the success of the Morrison visas, there were 65,384.
In the last decade, from 2000 to 2009, Green Cards distributed to Irish nationals totalled 29,282.
Last year, for example, only 1,708 Irish immigrants could wave brand new Green Cards. This compares to the combined total for Norway and Sweden (not high-migration countries, you would have thought) who polled 1,726 Green Cards between them.
When you also compare that to the estimated tens of thousands of Irish living in the shadows – undocumented, with no health insurance, no access to welfare assistance, no drivers’ licences, no credit facilities, no real identities and no way home (or if they come home, no way back) – you can understand the scale of the problem. Worse, you can see how those numbers can easily multiply.
What we need to ensure is that the undocumented problem does not become a critical mass and lead to a crisis.
We need to make sure, insofar as we can, that when our young people make the decision to try their luck abroad, they do not rush headlong into the immigration trap that has ensnared so many of their older brothers, sisters and cousins.

WHAT CAN BE DONE
There are a number of initiatives we would call on people to support.

(1)     Broaden the reach and scope of the IWT J-1 visa;

(2)     Keep up the financial support for the immigration centres, who provide sterling professional advice to thousands of Irish immigrants, and who have been in the trenches for many years, through good times and bad;

(3)     Support the DREAM act;

(4)     Continue to lobby your friends in Congress for comprehensive immigration reform.

Realise, by doing these things, you are not butting into another country’s internal affairs – you are simply asking for our young to experience and benefit from the open traditions of a country that Irish nationals helped build from revolutionary times to the present.