Anyone’s guess

Various assessments of the prospects for the Irish economy have surfaced in recent weeks, from the government, the Economic and Social Research Institute think tank, and this week, the European Commission.
None of them make for comforting reading.
The Republic, now fully denuded of its tiger stripes, appears to be heading for a prolonged period of economic malaise with unemployment rising to possibly record breaking levels.
You have to wonder how everyone seemingly forgot that old pearl of wisdom about saving for the rainy day.
Either way, it would appear to be a bit late for that. The rainy day has morphed into a soggy night, an economic monsoon that is gathering force with each passing week.
Ireland, and in this context both the Republic and Northern Ireland, are not strangers to unemployment. But this time the circumstances are rather different, most especially in the South where the fall from prosperity to stagnation is clearly an especially steep one.
In the past, the escape valve was a combination of employment benefits, job re-training and, of course, emigration. Even all three of these seem not to be up to the task this time, and, in the case of emigration there arises the simple question as to where Irish people desperate for work will actually head for.
Some will undoubtedly look to these shores but, as we well know by now, the U.S. is facing its own jobs crisis and the likelihood of the country being able to offer jobs in significant numbers to people fleeing recession in Ireland and elsewhere is very remote indeed.
That said, if the U.S. manages to stage a recovery in a relatively short time – and no matter how long it takes it would appear likely to achieve this before Ireland does – then there is a chance that America’s shores will, not for the first time in history, offer relief and a chance to rekindle lost Irish dreams.
But such a scenario is dependent on the degree of legal access to America that the Irish will be afforded in the coming years.
Above and beyond what might ultimately emerge from the revived effort to secure immigration reform in Washington, there will be a need to take a comprehensive look at the way in which the Irish have been largely shut out of America over recent decades.
There will be no more one-off visa schemes for the Irish and nobody wants to see an indefinite continuation of the situation in which thousands of Irish men and women have to live in the shadows of illegality.
So what’s the alternative? A return of an immigration quota for the Irish that was eliminated under the 1965 reform act? Well, maybe not exactly. The ‘q’ word has certain negative connotations.
But in any future formula for immigration numbers derived in Washington, it would be fair to say that the Irish deserve a fair and proportional share.
That would not be a big number in the context of the U.S. economy.
But it could be a significant tally in an Irish context, one that would recognize the closeness of the U.S. and Ireland at every level of political, social and economic life.
And, of course, there would be a reciprocal element, one that would allow greater access to Ireland for U.S. citizens.