Madam, - The actor Fionnuala Flanagan wants a special deal for Irish illegals in the US ( The Irish Times, January 17th). No doubt Government Ministers will be making the same embarrassing plea on their forthcoming St Patrick's Day visits there. They are wasting their time. In the current climate, US legislators (including presidential candidates) pleading for any illegals invite political suicide. For our part, we regularly deport planeloads of our own illegals.
The US has been sympathetic in the past to illegal immigrants fleeing the biblical scourges of war, pestilence and famine. But Ireland is a stable democracy and one of the richest in the EU. Americans are used to seeing on TV thousands of our citizens on their Christmas shopping sprees on Fifth Avenue.
Our Fianna Fáil-led Government has, however, a moral obligation to aid the re-integration of illegals returning to Ireland. After all, the massive emigration of the 1980s resulted from the reckless Fianna Fáil election manifesto of 1977. - Yours, etc,
CON O'ROURKE, Park Lane, Sandymount, Dublin 4.