Editorial: Emigrants acknowledged

Once upon a time, unofficial Irish government policy toward its emigrants consisted of politician Brian Lenihan’s cruel put down, “We can’t all live on a small island,” or, in the 1980s and ’90s, pressure on the U.S. government to increase green card quotas for the undocumented.

By and large, however, those generations who over the years left Ireland for betterment in other countries were all but forgotten by the government of the day, notwithstanding some modest contributions to immigration centers in the larger U.S. cities.

Now, however, for the first time, a report, commissioned by the current government, has acknowledged the vast debt of gratitude Ireland owes to its emigrants and their descendants across the world. The Report of the Task Force on Policy Regarding Emigrants was issued today by the minister for foreign affairs, Brian Cowen.

From its opening words it is a radical document with regard to how Ireland treats its emigrant family.

Emigration was often involuntary, the report states. The dislocation from home and family, even after years spent in an adopted country such as the U.S. or the UK, has produced a generation of hard-working emigrants, many now elderly, some alone and vulnerable. For those emigrants who want to return home, the report states, the government must make arrangements for them to spend the rest of their days in comfort in the homeland.

Despite the privations suffered by many emigrants — especially the 1950s generation that went to the UK — the report highlights, and acknowledges, for the first time, the remarkable contributions sent back to Ireland by these hardworking souls. Indeed, in addressing the future funding of emigrant services around the globe, the report states: “Funding . . . should be viewed in the context of the substantial sums of money sent back by emigrants over the years in remittances to their families in Ireland and the significant savings to the Exchequer arising from the net outflow of people from this country.”

This acknowledgment recognizes the sacrifices made by generations of emigrants to the economic benefit of Ireland. And the report goes further still, by defining Irishness as an identity rooted in a shared culture, not in geographical location.

Therefore, the report argues, the children of emigrants, “second-generation Irish and members of subsequent generations,” also wish to retain their links with Irish affairs, and ways must be found to accommodate their contribution.

So often when the Irish speak of their history in the U.S., the well-known phrase “we built the place” is used. While they helped build their adopted countries, emigrants also were helping to build Ireland too. As the report states, “Those who have left this country remain part of what we are as a Nation. It is not enough to remember them; we must also value them, as they do us.”

Now that the report has been issued, it can only be hoped that its impact on policy will be significant.