Emigrant nation wipes welcome from mat in times of prosperity

In the 1980s, I ran into an old friend in Washington, DC, who had become a key aide in the office of Mr Alan Simpson, the US senator from Wyoming. My friend knew I was living in the Republic and, with a grin, told me he'd had a few close encounters with the Irish lately.

At the time, Mr Simpson and representative Romano Mazzoli of Kentucky were in the process of drawing up what would become the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill - the most significant piece of immigration reform in the US in decades.

Except, of course, that politicians don't personally write up such bills; their aides do most of the pen-work. Thus my friend was making many of the general decisions on what would go into the powerful bill, following the policy positions of his boss.

The Irish, through the embassy in Washington, were unbelievably tireless lobbyists, he said.

The arguments came one after another in numerous meetings: the Irish were a special case; the Irish should be given special inclusion and more visa spaces; the Irish deserved a large place at the US immigrant table. The Irish would be valuable economic immigrants. They lived in one of the poorest European Union nations and many had little chance of a prosperous future at home. But let them into the US and they would contribute. And while you're at it, give amnesty to the thousands upon thousands of Irish already here, working illegally, they said.

Yes, there might be high unemployment in parts of the US and sure, the US economy wasn't performing at its best but the Irish would fit in - the Republic was basically a nation of emigrants anyway and the Irish were used to seeking their fortunes elsewhere. And anyway, didn't the United States have a fine tradition of welcoming immigrants seeking a better life? The days might be gone of persecution, national disaster and crippling poverty that forced millions of 19th century Irish refugees to flee to the US, but the Republic's new economic refugees deserved a decent chance too.

We're a special case, argued the Irish. Thus began a decade of hard lobbying that won the Irish a massively disproportionate share of new visas the US made available to immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Irish "economic refugees" won more visas (designed just for them - the Morrisons, the Donnellys) than the "truly needy refugees" - the war-battered inhabitants of Afghanistan, the starving people of Ethiopia, the terrified targets of various global ethnic-cleansing sessions.

The visas were distributed by lottery, not on the basis of "merit". Applicants included Irish people with university degrees and good jobs who just felt like trying out the US lifestyle, and Irish people who viewed the visas as permits for working holidays and who never intended to remain in the US. I was told by one US academic involved with the visa programmes that a real problem for them was the number of visas that weren't being taken up or were used only for working holidays. Irish-Americans had lobbied hard to persuade US politicians of the neediness of the Irish. Now that neediness often looked more like lazy opportunism, especially by the young.

I've been thinking about this in recent months as the debate here over "refugees" and "economic immigrants" and "the truly needy" has intensified in a distressingly mindless way. At the same time, I have heard the Tanaiste warn that we will need more than 200,000 immigrants to fill necessary jobs here, many of them in the technology sector.

I've been thinking about this because racism is now ugly and visible, and those with the greatest responsibility to do something about it, our politicians, have so far completely failed to rise to this new and permanent challenge - one that they could see coming.

In all my years in the United States and the Republic, I have never read such hatred-filled graffiti on city walls, heard such appalling comments in public and private, or witnessed such ignorant reactions to people of different colour or culture as I have seen here recently. I listen to people hide their prejudices behind false notions of "deserving" immigrants - from the nation that eagerly sought as many places as possible in the US, with not one single visa determined on the basis of need.

I think of the many wonderful fellow graduate students of varied ethnicity whom I knew while at Trinity and wonder what their experience would be now; if these bright and gifted students would have stayed, or fled this travesty of an "Ireland of a thousand welcomes". I think of my friends and relatives of varied ethnic backgrounds in the US and know I fear inviting them to visit the country that is my home.

As some put the Republic's standard of living ahead of most of Europe, as the money continues to pour into the State's coffers, and as a real need for employees from outside our borders emerges, I am stunned that the State has not acted vigorously and urgently to address race and difference, or even to introduce the one anti-racism programme it promised it would begin six months ago. This State is shaming itself in the face of the world.

How ironic that the world's greatest emigrant nation - the land that sent out so many, so far - should in its own prosperity turn out to be such a cold and miserly place. And how ironic that the Irish struggle for equality in the North in the 1970s was inspired by black American civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

And from a detached and cold economic viewpoint, how can we expect to fill 200,000 jobs from abroad in such a vile atmosphere, especially when much of the information technology talent now blossoms forth from locations such as India and the Far East?

After much foreign press coverage on the issue, which has truly shocked many Americans who viewed the Irish as having a compassionate understanding of the complexities and sorrows of immigration, the world's employers and prospective employees have taken note.

"We have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers," wrote Dr King many years ago. "Our abundance has brought us neither peace of mind nor serenity of spirit."

klillington@irish-times.ie