Film to focus on 1970s-era emigrants in Britain
Tuesday, September 26th, 2006Colm Meaney will be one of the featured actors in “Kings�, a film focusing on a group of Irish emigrants living in London. Based on Jimmy Murphy’s play “The Kings of the Kilburn High Road�, the film focuses on several friends who emigrated to England in the 1970s; they are reunited at the funeral of one of the gang, who has been killed by a train. The Irish-produced film will be shot around Belfast, Dublin and London. It will be bilingual in Irish and English. The ensemble cast also includes Donal O’Kelly, Brendan Conroy, Donncha Crowley, Barry Barnes and Seán Ó Tarpaigh.
http://www.filmboard.ie/stop_press.php?press=461
17,000 left Ireland last year
Tuesday, September 12th, 2006The latest set of CSO stats on emigration and immigration for the year up to April 06 has been released. There were an estimated 17,000 emigrants – interestingly reversing (though not by much) the downward trend of the last several years; the figure hit bottom last year at 16,600.
There were 87,000 immigrants – the highest recorded since the CSO began keeping track in 1987. About 20,000 of those were Irish nationals – Poles outnumbered returning emigrants however, with 22,900 immigrants.
- 4,400 emigrants went to Britain
- 2,800 went to the EU15
- 1,400 went to the US
- 1,100 went to the new EU states of the EU10 –some of these were likely returning emigrants from those countries.
- 7,300 went to the rest of the world.
See the full report on the CSO website.
Cork monument uses sound to commemorate
Sunday, September 10th, 2006
An innovative monument to Irish emigrants was unveiled on Cork’s Penrose Quay on September 9th. “Listening Posts”, designed by sculptor Daphne Wright and writer Johnny Hanrahan, consists of four sleek metal posts positioned at the traditional point of departure for emigrant ships. The City Council’s press release explains,
While striking in themselves, these ‘posts’ function primarily as vessels for four multi-faceted sound scores. Using interviews with emigrants, their descendants, those they left behind, those who worked on the ship, those wishing to return and those who are glad they got away combined with marine, industrial, musical and abstract sound elements, Wright, Hanrahan and leading sound designer Dan Jones have built up rich, layered soundscapes each of which has its own internal logic and also contributes to the overall experience afforded by listening to all four posts.
The scores blend fragmented narratives embedded in emotionally intense soundworlds, musical clichés, Irish jokes and a range of instrumental and archival vocal gestures which have been manipulated to create a constantly fluctuating range of emotional tones.
The piece is firmly rooted in the history of emigration from Cork, but uses the specifics of that collective experience to explore broad themes of migration, displacement and self-re-invention. In this way it does justice to its commemorative function while also acting as an urgent, poetic commentary on the global issue of long-term migration.
See the press release on Cork City Council’s website.
Returning emigrants featured in The Dubliner
Thursday, September 7th, 2006Returning emigrants are the subject of an article in the oft-controversial The Dubliner magazine. In an article entitled “Lame Geese”, reporter Angela Long details the experiences of several returning emigrants. She highlights particular difficulties in getting job searching, along with some culture shock as emigrants who left in pre-boom times come back to confront the rising materialism and pro-business culture. The reporter notes that all of the returnees she spoke with, however, had “resigned themselves to living in Ireland, warts and all”.
The full article is at The Dubliner’s website.
"Real" Annie Moore discovered
Friday, September 1st, 2006The story of the real Annie Moore has been unveiled. Annie Moore was the 15-year-old Cork girl who was the first immigrant to pass through New York’s Ellis Island in January 1892. While it had been long believed that Moore had moved west, instead, it genealogist Megan Smolenyak has discovered that Moore had actually made it no farther than the lower east side of Manhattan, where she bore eleven children, of whom only five survived; she died in 1924 at the age of 47. Although two statues of Annie Moore memorialise her story – one in New York harbour and the other in Cobh, Co Cork, her grave is unmarked. Her descendents are raising money for a headstone for the grave in Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-09-15T223324Z_01_N15390578_RTRUKOC_0_UK-LIFE-IMMIGRANT.xml
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/nyregion/16annie.html?ex=1158552000&en=90f781f38cc27b3a&ei=5087%0A
NY mayor calls for "common sense" in immigration laws
Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, speaking at Sligo’s City Hall, pledged to fight for legislation that would help undocumented Irish immigrants in the US. “I know that many Irish-born New Yorkers are caught in the trap of our federal immigration policies,” he said. “If we are going to attract the best and the brightest — and Ireland has more than its fair share — we need to inject some common sense into our immigration laws, and I’m doing my best to make that case in Washington.”
The mayor was speaking as part of his trip, postponed from earlier in the month, to dedicate a memorial to the Fighting 69th, the “Irish brigade� of the US Civil War. The memorial includes metal from the World Trade Center.
http://www.nysun.com/article/38427
Fine Gael TD John Perry made a speech at the monument’s unveiling, in which he said: “This monument represents the unbreakable link between all those who emigrated from Ireland to the United States over the past 200 years. It is a link of dedication. It is a link of service to others. It is a link of sacrifice for others. It is a link of friendship between our two nations. And it is a link of hope for a future that is free and possible.�
The entire text of the speech is available at http://www.irishdev.com/NewsArticle.aspx?id=3608
Topics: US Immigration reform, history
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