But the major arguments about
immigration restriction are more cultural than economic. Many Americans
and many members of Congress are dismayed that Europeans make up such a
small percentage of contemporary immigration. Relatively few Western
Europeans wish to emigrate: The prosperity of Western Europe has removed
the major push factor, and the image many Europeans have of the
contemporary United States as a nation awash with crime, drugs, pollution,
and economic problems has diminished its pull and caused many of them to
regard the United States as an interesting place to visit but not one they
want to live in. There is a conspicuous exception to this generalization:
Relatively large numbers of Irish not only want to come to America but in
fact have done so, albeit illegally.
There may be as many as 150,000 illegal Irish immigrants in the urban corridor that runs from Boston to Philadelphia, a region in which Irish American neighborhoods and potential support systems are plentiful. The problem for most Irish is that the consanguinal chains have become too weak to support further migration under American law. While many or perhaps even most of the new Irish immigrants have cousins in America, they do not have the parents or brothers and sisters that the law demands. They are thus barred from the family preference system that dominates current immigration, and, since they are economically motivated immigrants, like the Haitians, they cannot claim refugee status either.
Unlike the Haitians, the Irish tend to be well educated and have been able to blend into existing Irish American neighborhoods in the northeastern United States. Anyone who wishes to find them can do so, as Francis X. Clines pointed out in the New York Times, in a pub like the County Cork Benevolent and Protective Association on Greenpoint Avenue in Long Island City, or, in fine weather, at picnics in Gaelic Park in the Bronx, or at soccer games, particularly when Irish or Irish American teams play. An illegal immigrant I interviewed in a pub in Boston's South End recently (I promised not to mention its name) told me his story, which is not atypical of the contemporary Irish illegals. A university graduate in accounting, he told me he could find no job at all in Ireland and had heard from a friend that jobs were to be had for the asking in Boston. He flew over and entered the United States legally with a tourist visa in 1984 and has stayed on ever since. He works as a relief bartender in several Boston bars and does the books for two of them. He is paid in cash. He intended, he told me, to marry an American citizen, leave the country, and come in legally as her husband.
Hardships do, of course, stem from illegal status. My Boston informant told me that he could make twice as much money working as an accountant for an American corporation, but the money he was making was more than he could have earned in Ireland. The insecurity of illegal status prevents people from acting in a normal way. Here, according to the New York Times, is part of the story, from a twenty-six-year-old woman who identified herself as Rosie Kiernan:
"I had a death in the family but couldn't risk going back home." The expired tourist visa in her passport might have been noted by immigration officials and her name and passport number recorded by INS officials to prevent a return entry. "I don't know when I'll see [my family] again, and I know a lot of young Irish here in my situation."
