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ILIR leader takes aim at critic

By Noreen Bowden | November 20, 2007

The Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform has taken a strong stance against views expressed last week in an Irish Times article by US-Ireland Alliance director Trina Vargo that campaigners should not seek a bilateral agreement to regularise the status of the Irish in the US.

In today’s Irish Times, Irish-American publisher Niall O’Dowd, who heads up the group, called last week’s article “deeply offensive”. He noted the strength of the ILIR membership, which numbers 17,000.

He also noted that several countries, including Nicaragua, Chile and Singapore, along with Australia, have made special agreements involving visas, saying, “Far from preventing others immigrate, a bilateral deal may well show how, in this current toxic atmosphere, the issue of undocumented can be dealt with in a creative way by different countries”.

See the full text of the article on the Irish Times website (subscription required).

Additionally, ILIR director Kelly Fincham wrote an article in yesterday’s Irish Independent reporting on the way the recent US-Ireland forum covered the issue of the undocumented.

See the full text of that article on the Irish Independent website.

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