Undocumented Irish in US live in fear of Trump’s resolve

John, like many of the thousands of "undocumented" Irish living in the US, is waiting anxiously to see whether president-elect Donald Trump follows through on his campaign promises on immigration.

“Everybody is kind of numb at the minute,” he says. “Even talking with friends, nobody knows what to expect. It is all going to come down to what Trump is allowed do. Nobody has an answer for that.”

The Republican businessman, elected on a staunchly anti-immigrant platform, pledged to build a wall on the Mexican border to keep illegal Hispanic immigrants and to deport “illegals”, who overstayed temporary visas. The majority of Trump’s focus was on Hispanic immigration, but visa overstays is the route by which most undocumented Irish came to live in the US so plans are not limited to any one nationality.

A construction worker in the San Francisco Bay Area, John, who prefers not to be identified by his real name, has lived in the US since 2000. His lack of legal status has meant that he has been unable to travel home to Ireland since 2003.

“There is fear about Trump,” he says, “but a lot of us talk about how Obama spent eight years trying to pass an immigration Bill so how is this man going to turn around in four years and kick everyone out?”

The Irish man has two American-born children and one Irish-born son who is in his first year in college, who has benefited from President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme.

An executive action that bypassed congressional authorisation, the measure allows certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children to be protected from deportation. It permits the children of illegal immigrants to live normal lives with the legal status to remain in the US.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to overturn all of Obama’s executive actions and orders, including deferred action. In his first post-election press conference, Obama urged Trump “to think long and hard before they are endangering the status of what for all practical purposes are American kids.”

“That would probably be life-changing,” says John, if his son lost that presidential protection. “That would probably lead to us uprooting the kids and bringing the whole family back to Ireland.”

Shifting positions

Illegal Irish immigrants and the advocates who help them across the US have since Trump’s election struggled to explain how his administration will deal with the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, particularly given the candidate’s shifting positions in the later stages of his campaign.

After pledging for months to create a deportation force to remove all illegal migrants, Trump appeared to soften his stance in the final weeks by saying that he would focus on those with criminal backgrounds, while promising to crack down on immigrants who had overstayed their visas and introduce an electronic verification system to prevent illegal immigrants obtaining welfare and other government benefits.

"The immigration issue is, of course, so live," Irish Ambassador to the US Anne Anderson said during a panel discussion in Washington on Wednesday. "We know about the large numbers of undocumented Irish that have been living in the shadows. Many of them now are living in fear and that is a huge issue."

Trump clarified his plans in his first major post-election interview telling the CBS programme 60 Minutes last weekend that he planned to deport between two and three million undocumented immigrants "that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers". His supporters have noted that the plan is not a departure from Obama who prioritised criminal aliens as the focus of immigration agents and deported more people than any other president.

The involvement of immigration hardliners on the Trump presidential transition team has concerned immigration advocates. They have reacted with disquiet to Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon, the executive behind the anti-immigrant Breitbart News Network who helped run his campaign, as White House chief strategist, and the input of Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, who has proposed a registry of immigrants and visitors from countries designated as havens for extremist activity.

Trump’s appointment of Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, an anti-immigrant congressional hardliner, yesterday will alarm immigrant advocates of all nationalities. The Republican was a vociferous opponent of the 2013 “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill that passed the then Democrat-led Senate with cross-party support but stalled in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

"I am concerned when Trump talks about deporting two or three million immigrants with a criminal record," says Ireland's "emigrant Senator" Billy Lawless, an immigrant activist in Chicago.

“What is the definition of criminal? There is a fine line between a ‘DUI’ [a drink-driving offence] and a robbery. DUIs would be the main issue for the Irish. You are talking about minor offences; that would be the only thing. We don’t have major issues of criminality but they are scared.”

Shock and fear

Lawless described the shock over Trump’s election and the fears among Chicago’s immigrant community when his

Illinois

Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights met the day after the election.

“I’d say half the room was crying. It was one of the saddest days of my life at that meeting,” he says.

Ronnie Millar, executive director of the Irish International Immigrant Centre in Boston, says that there has been a surge in calls from some of the 500 students on the one-year J-1 student work programme. Trump pledged to end the programme during his campaign and Irish J-1 students wonder whether he will abandon the programme, how quickly that might happen and whether they could have to pack up and return home half-way through their placement.

“The phone hasn’t stopped ringing,” says Millar. “We have Irish and non-Irish calling. There definitely has been concern about what’s going to happen.”

The Republicans' control of Congress puts Trump and the party in the driving seat to force through even some of the president-elect's most radical proposals. This has led Irish Government officials to not only concentrate their US lobbying efforts at a national level but at a local level too.

Case for protections

To this end, Minister of State for the Diaspora Joe McHugh met Boston mayor

Marty Walsh

, the son of Irish immigrants, and Republican governor of Massachusetts

Charlie Baker

during a two-day US trip to press the case for the protections for the undocumented to continue at a state level.

“The undocumented in America have had so many false dawns we have to be very measured in how we map this out and have to be very strategic to use all arms of government,” McHugh says.

In the wake of Trump’s election, Walsh and his fellow mayors in New York, Chicago and San Francisco reiterated their pledge to maintain their status as “sanctuary cities” which operate policies that limit assistance given to the national immigration authorities such as in local policing.

These city policies have offered some of the most effective reliefs to the undocumented, for example allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driving licences, a measure that undocumented Irish say has transformed their lives. Trump in his campaign promised to end federal funding to sanctuary cities on his first day office.

The unintended consequences of Trump’s plan on the law-abiding undocumented who work, pay taxes and contribute to their communities is for the Irish as much as a concern as his immigration plans.

“Living in San Francisco, being undocumented, I won’t say that it is easy but it is comforting to know that if you get pulled over by a cop, if you run stop sign, you are not going to have an immigration officer at your door three days later,” says John.

“If he takes away the sanctuary city status, what would you do then?”