February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
At the same time, the pressure on America’s borders, and the challenges to orderly control of those same frontiers has, equally, never been more in evidence.
Caught in the squeeze play between the need to restore order and accommodate the demands of an economy that seemingly requires every immigrant worker it can get, regardless of status, many thousands of Irish are facing the prospect of seeing out another year of living in a shadow world, one in which all that has been worked for, in some cases for many years, can slip through the fingers in an instant.
It may be the arm of the law, or the guile of an immigration scam artist that signals the termination of an individual’s American dream.
In the case of those attempting to secure legal entry to the U.S. by means of the diversity visa lottery, it could be competition from applicants from other eligible countries with vastly larger populations.
Beyond the statistical hurdles faced by Irish visa lottery applicants it may well be that the days of the diversity visa scheme, under attack in more than one congressional bill, are themselves numbered.
Forty years after the passing of reformed immigration laws that ended the system of national quotas, Ireland, though no longer forced to surrender huge numbers of its inhabitants to forced emigration, still harbors many who want to strike out for a new life in the United States and the yet unique opportunities that this country had to offer the industrious immigrant.
The prospects such hopefuls face are daunting and are outlined, in part, in a series of reports and columns in this week’s issue of the Echo.