LETTERS

Letters from Irish Voice readers

LETTERS

June 14, 2007

I’m Illegal and Happy

I HAVE watched the immigration goings on in the nation’s capital not with a sense of hope, but rather of the same old, same old.

My letter is unsigned. I am one of the nasty “illegals” they keep talking about on right wing radio and TV shows, and also in Congress. And I’ve got a big statement for you all to digest – I’m not going anywhere, no matter what you do (or don’t do, as it looks like).

I came here seven years ago to escape an Ireland that held no future for me. And I haven’t looked back. I have two jobs here, one of which involves home care for a young disabled person, and my employers are eternally grateful for my presence, as I am for them.

You hear all this talk about all these Americans out there who want the jobs that we “illegals” take. Guess what? My employer with the disabled child had three so-called willing Americans who walked off the job after a combined total of two weeks. Before I came along this couple were at their wit’s end.

But, of course, my presence here is “bad” for the U.S. Isn’t that right?

Some readers will find it hard to believe that I pay taxes, and I don’t go around breaking the law or plotting terror attacks against my adopted home. I know several undocumented people like myself in the same boat who are leading productive lives in the U.S. and performing valuable service.

We should wait on line like everyone else, I hear you say? What line would that be, exactly? The one that everyone is currently railing against in Washington as being unpractical and inefficient? Do you know how long it would take for my employers to sponsor me for legal status? Years and years and years.

Oh, I forgot – there are rules and regulations we must follow, and Americans are available to take these jobs. Yeah, right. Join the real world, folks.

No matter what goes on in Congress, I’m not going anywhere. I left Ireland for a reason, and that hasn’t changed. My family comes to the U.S. to visit so I’m not lonely, and even when I lived in Ireland the green green grass of home never felt right to me. I’m glad I’m out of there.

It’s a joke, really, to hear all these long-winded politicians from both parties talk for years about fixing the immigration problem, yet they can’t even pass a bill in the supposedly more friendly Senate. I think they’re all a disgrace, but at the end of the day it won’t impact my life one way or other, really.

It would be nice to be legal, but life goes on. That’s the way we think. It’s especially funny to hear these big mouths talk about penalizing employers for hiring illegals, this way the jobs will all dry up and we’ll be forced to go home.

Sure, the lady from a slum in Guatemala who paid a smuggler thousands of dollars to take her over the border is just going to return there. Return to what? The fact is, in America there will always be a lawn that needs to be cut, or food deliveries that need to be made, or houses that need to be cleaned.

Oops, I forgot again. Americans want those jobs, so all will be well.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to live my life in the real world as an “illegal,” with or without the help of all the politicians.

Name Withheld

Support for Nurses

I SAY kudos to the Irish nurses on their fight for better pay and a 35-hour work week. Many non-professional jobs pay more.

With the influx of immigrants in Ireland, the government was very short sighted in gauging the need for more hospitals, nurses and translators. Now the situation is desperate.

Ireland imported nurses so as not to raise pay, so don’t make the nurses a scapegoat now.

M.C. Pierce

Flushing, New York

Strong Sinn Fein

I WOULD like to reply to John Spain’s rant in last week’s issue on why Sinn Fein had a disappointing result in the recent election in the 26 counties.

Now he claims he only wrote this piece before it was published, but I think he wrote this a while back and only produced it because of the vitriolic attacks against Sinn Fein in the Dublin media which of course he is part of.

Now John, this is Sunday, June 10, and your most likely outcome for the Irish government as you predicted has broken down. The Greens are holding out for better deal not just to make up the numbers.

They are very uncomfortable with the likes of Mary Harney, the right winger who has made the health system a shambles. Only recently we witnessed it with that terrible rape in Donegal were the victim had to travel 70 miles for medical treatment.

I think the Greens should form a alliance with Sinn Fein and the two independents

(Tony Gregory and Finian McGrath) which would give the alliance 12 seats and better leverage to get some of their agenda that they are hoping for.

Fianna Fail have long given up being a Republican party, as Spain claims that Gerry Adams has no business campaigning for Sinn Fein in Dublin. He is the party’s leader.

Why was Brian Cowen, one of Fianna Fail’s leading figures, campaigning in Derry for the SDLP in the last Assembly elections? Did anybody tell him to go home?

What Bertie Ahern and company need is to understand is isn’t all about the Celtic Tiger and the stress and anxiety that comes with it, which is even acknowledged from time to time by Spain.

To say that Sinn Fein is irrelevant in the south is nonsense despite the losses in Dublin. Their vote went up and stood in almost all of the constituencies.

Ahern stood with Ian Paisley on the slopes on the Boyne under the invisible banner “Smash Sinn Fein.”

Brendan Soraghan

Danbury, Connecticut

Looking for Flannerys

MY book The Four Flannerys was published by the Connaught Telegraph newspaper in late January, and has already sold out and gone to reprint.

It tells the story of a walk across Ireland from Dublin to Newport in Mayo, and also relates the story of the four Flannery brothers who left Co. Sligo in 1862 to walk to Dublin en route to New Zealand. Their arrival in New Zealand coincided with the gold rush in Central Otago, and they staked a claim to the last available piece of the gold fields – a claim that had been ignored by everybody because there was no water available to work it.

Undaunted, they set out to dig a canal for 26 miles through the mountains in order to divert a creek to the claim and extract the gold. As Ruth Delany says in her introduction to the book, this was “an extraordinary story of grit and determination.”

I know that there are some relatives of the four Flannerys in the New York area, and that they made an attempt to trace these roots about five years ago. I had their contact details from a roots website, but due to a failure of a hard drive I lost the contact.

It would be great to hear from these people, and help re-establish this contact for them. I can be reached at jmu2@eircom.net, or address Ballymagillan, Maynooth, Co. Meath, Ireland.

John Mulligan

Co. Meath, Ireland

Orange Crush

I FOUND the story in last week’s issue about the AOH protesting the Orange presence at an Irish exhibit in Washington, D.C. to be disturbing.

Haven’t we all moved on from such rash judgments now that peace has come to the North, or at least, aren’t we supposed to be trying to reach out to one another?

Why shouldn’t the Orange-men take part in the event? Don’t they have a history that needs to be told?

The AOH would be better off promoting tolerance for all instead of spewing hate without even seeing the exhibit.

Tim McGrath

Providence, Rhode Island

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