February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
A limited time in the U.S. working for a limited wage followed by a departure from the country are the three most visible characteristics of the Irish Peace Process Cultural and Training Program, better known as the Walsh Visa program.
But while the Walsh visas have an altruistic political foundation, and participants enter the U.S. knowing in advance the limitations of the program, the undocumented already living here, tens of thousands of Irish among them, were hoping that any move by Washington toward immigration reform would carry with it a clear path to permanent legal residence followed, down the line at some point, by full American citizenship.
This was not what President Bush placed before the American people and their undocumented neighbors last week. It was, however, a possible basis for a broader reform initiative, though that would now seem to be mostly in the hands of Congress.
Before the president’s White House speech, newspaper reports had suggested that the president’s proposals would amount to the most significant move toward immigration reform since the Reagan administration. They had further suggested that the initiative could map out a clear path to a bucketful of green cards for the undocumented, whose total number in the country is calculated at being as many as 12 million people, most of them from Latin America.
This was not what happened. Though the president is being criticized anyway by more conservative elements in his party for offering an amnesty to lawbreakers, the Bush package does not come anywhere close to the kind of amnesty that the Reagan administration drew up in 1986.
The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act tightened up immigration controls at America’s borders and placed heavy sanctions on employers for hiring illegals. At the same time, it provided a clear-cut amnesty to the majority of the nation’s undocumented and illegals at that time.
Though the terms are often interchanged, there is a fine distinction between being illegal and being undocumented. Illegals are those who entered the U.S. across a border without going through a formal immigration check. People who are processed into the U.S. by immigration officials, but who overstay their allotted time in the country, are deemed undocumented, or out of status.
The vast majority of Irish fall into the latter category.
The problem that the undocumented Irish had with the 1986 amnesty was that it had a specific cut-off date. It applied only to undocumented persons who had been living in the country before Jan. 1, 1982.
The vast majority of the undocumented Irish of the 1980s began arriving in the middle of the decade and so did not qualify for the amnesty.
It was this failure to secure amnesty that prompted the campaign, largely spearheaded by the Irish Immigration Reform Movement, to reform immigration law a second time so as to take specific Irish needs into account.
Reform in the true sense was not achieved, but roughly 70,000 Irish nationals did secure green cards as a result of the IIRM campaign, mostly through the Donnelly and Morrison visa programs.
Now, close to two decades since the 1986 act, a reform initiative from the White House — one that is again politically and economically geared for the most part to Latin American nationalities — appears, at least at first glance, as if it will leave the Irish sidelined yet again.
It’s unlikely that many undocumented Irish will reveal themselves to the immigration authorities in order to take low-paid jobs that American citizens supposedly prefer to avoid.
Even the ability to travel freely back to Ireland to see loved ones is not likely to sway many Irish minds should the White House proposals become the core of eventual changes in the law.
While it would still be possible to pursue a green card through existing regulations while participating in the White House program, those very channels — primarily family reunification rules and the annual Schumer diversity visa lottery — have proved to be of only limited benefit to the Irish over the years.
What is more likely is that those undocumented Irish who have committed themselves to life in America will wait in the hope of witnessing the emergence of a broader reform initiative, one that will allow the individual to progress, by means of a job and the paying of taxes, to eventual full legal status and citizenship.
President Bush’s words are only the first in what will be a lengthy and heated debate involving the administration, Congress and various groups both for and against larger-scale legal immigration.
That debate will in part revolve around how the U.S. should meld economic needs, political reality and the desires of so many for an above-board American life, into the kind of comprehensive immigration reform that will, among other things, entice a new generation of undocumented Irish to step out of the shadows.