Ahern Talks Visas With Pols

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Ahern Talks Visas With Pols

October 10, 2007

By April Drew

MAKING good on his promise to help solve the problem of the undocumented Irish in the U.S., Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern held a series of successful meetings on Capitol Hill last week with senators and Bush administration members, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff.

Ahern, speaking to The Irish Times after his meetings, said that the government is working on a deal that could possibly see the regularization of the Irish undocumented community in the U.S., estimated at up to 50,000, as part of a new visa deal between Ireland and the U.S. to mark the successful conclusion of the Northern Ireland peace process.

“I indicated to (Rice) that the Irish government regarded this as an ongoing sore and that what we wanted to do, once and for all, was to try and solve that and cure that sore,” Ahern told the Times.

“And I said what we wanted to do going forward was to work with her administration to see if we could do something on a reciprocal basis into the future and, if possible, cure some of the issues of the ongoing undocumented.”

According to the paper, Ahern told Rice that many Irish undocumented were in the U.S. because of the Troubles in the North, and as such should receive special consideration.

“In the context of the development of the all-island economy, I instanced the fact that a lot of people from Ireland, because of unemployment in yesteryear, unemployment created by the conflict, people specifically because of the conflict would have left Ireland and Northern Ireland and the Border areas.

“I indicated strongly to her that I felt that in the context of the evolving assistance that the UK government are giving, the American government are giving and ourselves, that this is an issue that is on the agenda and it should be looked at in that context. And obviously we’re going to investigate those possibilities,” he said.

Ahern also met with Senators Edward Kennedy, Patrick Leahy and Charles Schumer, and Congressman Richie Neal, chairman of the Friends of Ireland group in Congress. The Irish Embassy in Washington, D.C. has since been following up on the meetings in conjunction with

the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform and its lobbyist, former Congressman Bruce Morrison.

“I said to Condoleezza Rice that this is an issue which the Irish government placed great store in, in that we accept now that, on the one hand, there are illegal people, Irish people here,” he said.

“We have to accept that as a reality. What we want to do now is to try and look forward in that, if any Irish person wants to come to the U.S. that they do it in a legitimate way and that it’s well tied-down so that they’re happy from a security point of view and equally so, if there are people from the US who, substantial numbers of people from the U.S. in some cases, have difficulty in getting a visa into Ireland.

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