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Walsh Visas showing signs of life

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Susan Falvella-Garraty

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Funding for Irish transitional visas looks more promising this week. Signed into law last October, the visa would offer temporary U.S. employment training to those in Northern Ireland and the six border counties wishing to come over for three years.

Designed in part as a thank you for last year’s Good Friday peace accord, the program received accolades from the White House and its own congressional framers, but no one put forward the necessary paperwork to funnel the $800,000 operating funds into place. Congress said the president should make the funding request; the White House said this was a congressional idea whose funding should emanate from Capitol Hill.

This week, congressional staff said it looks promising that House Appropriations subcommittee chairmen Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, or Sonny Callaghan, a Republican from Alabama, will be able to tack on visa funding on legislation coming out of one of their subcommittee appropriation bills.

"We expect the funding will be in place in time to announce the visas when a group of congressmen travel to Northern Ireland in July," said the staff member asking for anonymity. "Everything is back on track."

White House officials said they will certainly not oppose any of the funding bills and anticipate meeting with House members next week to help craft the funding proposal.

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It was by most analyses a near miracle that the visa scheme was approved so quickly at the end of the 105th Congress. It will offer 12,000 visas for unemployed under-35-year-olds who live in economically disadvantaged areas in the North and border counties.

Members of the U.S./Ireland interparliamentary group including Congressmen Jim Walsh, Ben Gilman, and Richard Neal will be making their trip to Dublin and Northern Ireland in July. It was their hope to be able to hold forth a tangible reward in the form of the visas when they made the visit. They will be able to do so if the game plan for funding of the visas doesn’t hit any snags over the next few weeks.

Also in Washington last week, members of a South Armagh unionist organization made the rounds to Capitol Hill, the State Department, and with members of the media. Families Acting for Innocent Relatives, or FAIR, sent a small group to let Washington know that Protestants are hurting in Northern Ireland, too. The literature they circulated about themselves used stark and divisive terms, but in person members seemed more like plain folks in a great deal of pain.

They wanted to get out a message that they feel is not heard as much as here as the republican message. "We are people with families whose lives have been torn apart," said FAIR’s Secretary Brian McConnell. They cited 378 murders, 1,255 bombings, 1,158 gun attacks supposedly perpetrated only by the IRA and their offshoots.

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