By Ray O’Hanlon and Susan Falvella-Garraty
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The fingers have been pointing furiously in Washington following the revelation that the temporary visas for Northern Ireland — and six border area counties of the Republic — approved by Congress last year as a boost for the peace process have apparently fallen through the floor, for this year, at least, due to lack of funding.
It’s only a few months since Rep. Jim Walsh, the chairman of the Friends of Ireland in Congress, pulled a rabbit out of an immigration hat that has been increasingly empty in Irish terms during the last few years.
In a matter of weeks late last year, he and other House members put together a bill intended as a boost for the Good Friday accord with an immigration twist. It emerged in the form of 12,000 special visas, each of three years’ duration, for applicants under 35 living in the most economically disadvantaged areas of the North as well as the six border area counties of Louth, Monaghan, Cavan, Leitrim, Sligo and Donegal.
The visas were particularly designed to help train some of the long-term unemployed, allowing participants sign up with special training programs in the U.S.
Despite last-minute glitches, a program to offer such employment training, along with the necessary three-year temporary visa, was voted into law by the House and Senate. All that was needed then was $800,000 to fund the initiative. But somebody forgot to write the check and now it appears that this year’s initial allocation of 4,000 visas, which were expected to come on offer in July, will not be distributed.
Sign up to The Irish Echo Newsletter
At this juncture, neither the White House nor members of Congress seem to be going out of their way to secure funding for 1999. But they are busy accusing each other of dropping the ball.
Walsh has said that he is disappointed that the Clinton administration did not seek extra budget funds to get the scheme up and running this year.
Walsh’s office has pointed out that the Clinton administration has asked Congress for supplementary funding for other humanitarian aid projects in various world trouble spots, including $687 million for Central America and Columbia, $6.5 million for East Timor, and more than $1 billion for the Middle East peace plan.
On the surface at least, it seems that Ireland, Northern Ireland in particular and its peace process, fell through the cracks in the context of the visa scheme, an occurrence, it must be pointed out, that is at odds with the consistent record of both the White House and Congress with regard to Ireland in recent years.
Problems apparent in ’98
However, the potential for problems ahead should have been apparent to both last October. The House and Senate approved the Irish Peace Process Cultural and Training Program Act of 1998 on Oct. 21. By that time, however, the budget for 1999, the first year of the proposed visa scheme, had been wrapped up in the Appropriations Bill for the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Justice and State, the three agencies which would be involved in running the visa scheme.
President Clinton signed the act into law on the last day possible, Oct. 30, just before the 105th Congress passed into history.
It is not unusual for new laws to come into force after a budget has been finalized. In those circumstances, the president, or any member of Congress, can then approach a relevant congressional committee chairman or the Office of Management and Budget for additional money to fund a latecomer legislative item. This, it now seems, did not happen with the Cultural and Training Act.
Walsh’s office has been circling the wagons around the upstate New York Republican this past week. His people have been accusing the Clinton administration of being too slow to support the visa proposal when it was first presented to the White House in June of last year. That said, approval of such a plan in a matter of just four months is quite speedy by Washington standards. A plan like this was always going to raise concerns, particularly in the Justice Department, which includes the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The INS would inevitably be wary of temporary visas, no matter the country being allocated them. And given the Irish immigrant story of the past 20 years, it would be no surprise that a cautious INS might conclude that a number of the temporary visas would effectively become one-way tickets to America. The bill, in essence, was a political one, linked to a foreign policy priority — Northern Ireland. It really had nothing to do with the tangled evolution of U.S. immigration law.
After the initial media coverage of the temporary visa bill’s last minute birth, things went quiet for a while. Northern Ireland was making headlines for other reasons. But on April 12 of this year, Walsh did write Clinton a letter as a follow up to a St. Patrick’s day chat between the two.
"Given the current stalemate and recent murders in Northern Ireland, now more than ever a confidence-building measure from the United States is needed to ensure full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement," Walsh wrote Clinton.
Walsh referred in the letter to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill — the legislative device with all the extra money for the world trouble spots previously mentioned — as an opportunity to both fund the program "and send a strong message of our support for a new Northern Ireland."
Walsh concluded by lavishing praise on Clinton for his work on Ireland to that date. "Your leadership on this issue has brought about remarkable progress that none would have thought possible before your presidency."
Balkans distraction
By April, however, the Clinton administration was heavily focused on the rocketing murder rate in another part of the world, Kosovo. It is just possible that a few thousand visas for Ireland simply got swallowed up by the imperatives posed by mass slaughter in the Balkans. Then again, perhaps it was something else. There were, for example, concerns being voice by organized labor that visa winners might end up taking jobs from U.S. workers.
Either way, the White House is not prepared to carry all the blame.
One official said that while President Clinton and officials from the State, Justice and Commerce departments were actually working on the design and implementation of the visa scheme, Congress pulled the rug by slashing the State Department’s budget by 20 percent.
Said the official: "This at a time when we have more commitment around the world and a budget surplus. Where were these congressmen when the State Department budget was fried?
"This is a nice visa, it will work, but it’s not up to the administration alone to find the funding for it."
The administration also pointed out that any special request at this stage would have to be offset in another part of the budget. "We end up robbing Peter to pay Paul, and with the State Department budget so tight, there’s no wiggle room," he said.
The view in Congress was different. "We don’t understand why the administration can say they care so much about Ireland and then not come forward and support this," a House staff member said.
Back in Walsh’s office, there seems to be an acceptance at this point that the visas won’t fly this year. A spokesman said that Walsh "can and will" deliver the funding for the visa scheme to get under way in 2000.
A century away for those Irish already ready and eager to give their lives a new kick-start in America.