Reform on agenda as immigrant centers gather

The meeting of the 13-member Coalition of Irish Immigration Centers is set for Friday through Sunday at the Southgate Towers Hotel in midtown Manhattan.
According to Siobhan Dennehy of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center in Queens, the conference will be the third full gathering of the coalition since 2002 when an initial conference was held in San Diego.
A second gathering took place in New York the following year during which the coalition was given formal approval for its work from the Irish government. “We’re planning on having a national conference every year from now on,” Dennehy said.
Irish government minister Seamus Brennan is among the list of attendees for this weekend’s event, which will focus on a range of issues affecting Irish immigrants in the U.S., both legal and undocumented.
Brennan, who is the minister for family and social affairs, is to deliver the opening address at the conference and also present a grant check from his department to the coalition. The money will be separate from the main annual Irish government funding for the centers administered by the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The conference is taking place in the opening days of a year, which immigration reform advocates consider vital for the prospects of any relief for undocumented immigrants in the U.S., thousands of Irish among them.
The prospects for reform will be both a point of general discussion over the three days and will also be specifically addressed in a conference session entitled “The Changing Legislative Context for Immigration Issues.”
President Bush has been the most outspoken GOP advocate for reform over the last couple of years. But even the president’s relatively modest idea of allowing the undocumented to apply for immigrant work visas that would be valid for up to six years has been provoking opposition within his own party, particularly from GOP members of the House of Representatives.
This opposition has been fueled partly as a result of the White House also indicating — though not as yet in any clear detail — that undocumented immigrants who qualify for the temporary worker visas night also be allowed join the long line for permanent legal residence and, ultimately, U.S. citizenship.
“Bush’s plan to liberalize the nation’s immigration laws to allow millions of undocumented workers the opportunity for legal status appears to be on a collision course with newly aroused sentiment among House Republicans pushing for a crackdown on illegal immigration,” the Washington Post reported last week.
Should he press on with his desire to see some measure of relief for the undocumented, President Bush will find sympathetic ears among the Democrats in Congress, who, during the 108th session, rallied around the Safe, Orderly Legal Visas and Enforcement Act or “SOLVE Act.”
The act, which allows for a process of so-called “earned legalization,” was introduced by Democrats in Congress last May and is expected to surface for debate in the newly minted 109th Congress.