By Niall O’Dowd

There's a lot of doom and gloom around the Irish American community at the moment. The mood was crystallized in an article in The New York Times last week which painted a picture of thousands of Irish moving back to Ireland because of sweeping crackdowns on illegal immigration here and the greatly improved economic situation in Ireland.

The situation was painted fairly, if a little too starkly, in the Times article. But let’s not despair. As long as I have been writing for Irish American newspapers, coming up on 25 years now, there have been significant ups and downs on the immigration issue.

Back in the 1980s things looked just as bleak, but then came the Morrison and Donnelly visa programs which gave tens of thousands of Irish the right to remain in the U.S. legally. In the wake of the recent election there is no question that the Bush administration is thinking about revisiting the issue of immigration. (See Editorial on this page.)

If you’re looking for a story about optimism, faith and determination in the Irish community in New York you had to look no further than Page 10 of this newspaper last week when the proposals for the new Failte Irish Center in Queens were first made public.

It is a tremendous undertaking, and amazingly the group behind the project have already overcome the biggest hurdle, the actual purchase of a center, in their case of a three story building in an up and coming Queens neighborhood.

In other words, the foundation is already in place. Now it just needs the wholehearted commitment and hard work of the community to bring the center to fruition.

The building was purchased by anonymous Irish businessmen who turned it over to the new Irish Center committee. They now have the task of transforming what is a raw and uninviting space into a center we can all be proud of.

New Yorkers only have to look to the example of the Irish centers in Boston, Chicago and San Francisco to see what an extraordinary community effort can help bring about. All three locations are at the very heart of the Irish American communities in those cities.

They are men and women of vision who are prepared to do it — all voluntarily. As Georgina Brennan wrote last week, “It looks a mess at the present time, but where some see a mess the founders of the project see a gleaming new Irish center which will be the envy of every other ethnic group.”

One of the driving forces is Father Colm Campbell, a man who has spent over a decade ministering to the Irish in need in New York, Philadelphia and Boston. At a time when Father Campbell could easily have entered into honorable retirement, he is instead a leading light and vision behind the new center.

Last week he told the Irish Voice that the “Irish community needed a resource which served as the cultural and social hub of the New York Irish American community.”

If I had $10 for every time I heard those kind of words over the last two decades in New York I would be a rich man. All previous efforts ended in failure, but I truly believe this time it is going to be different.

That is because the people who are building the center are men and women of very high caliber like Campbell. Already we have seen the generosity of the donors who have given the building gratis to the committee. 

President of the new Failte Center is businessman Mattie Forde, while vice presidents are Jack Ahern and Michael Sullivan, all men known in the community as both successful and prepared to give something back in the best way possible.

“The possibilities are endless,” Forde told this newspaper, exactly the kind of can-do spirit and initiative we need to hear of the center is to become a success.

Somehow this time I have no doubt that it will. If you want to share the visions and make a real difference in the community, the committee of the Failte Center are holding an open weekend which will take place on Saturday and Sunday, December 4 and 5, from noon to 8p.m.

The center is located at 10-40 Jackson Avenue in Long Island City, close to the Vernon-Jackson stop on the Number 7 train and just over the 59th Street bridge from Manhattan. See you there.