Irish Immigration Center celebrates 20th anniversary
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009The Irish Immigration Center is celebrating its twentieth anniversary as a provider of services to the immigrant community in Boston – marking the occasion with a dinner attended by President Mary McAleese.
The organisation was started in 1989 by a group of Irish immigrants; at the time, there were thousands of undocumented in the city. The organisation today serves immigrants from 100 countries every year and offers not only help with immigration and citizenship queries, but also runs substance abuse and counselling programmes, preventive health care programmes, English as a Second Language classes, and exchange programmes between the United States and Ireland.
The Solas dinner will be held on 27 May at the Copley Hotel; the organisation will honour President Mary McAleese with the Solas Award at the event.
Related web pages:
- Irish Immigration Center
- Wickedlocal.com: Irish Immigration Center celebrates 20th, welcomes Irish president
“Prairies or pampas?”: article explains why emigrants no longer ask
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009Argentina was once a powerful draw for Irish emigrants, although it is difficult to imagine given the country’s economic troubles today. How did it go from being an economic powerhouse to its current status today? Alan Beattie in the Financial Times documents the decline in a comparison of the policies pursued throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States and Argentina.
As he points out,
“Before the Great Depression of the 1930s, Argentina was among the 10 richest countries in the world. The millions of emigrant Italians and Irish fleeing poverty at the end of the 19th century were torn between the two: Buenos Aires or New York? The pampas or the prairie?
A hundred years later there was no choice at all. One had gone on to be among the most successful economies ever. The other was a broken husk.”
Beattie points out that America chose openness, innovation, skilled immigration and industrialisation – while Argentina concentrated land and political power in the hands of an elite who shunned the risk-taking nature of industrialisation until it was too late.
The article is worth reading for anyone interested in the history of the home of the largest non-English-speaking Irish diaspora community.
FT.com: Argentina: The superpower that never was
“All it will take is a good job” – NZ journalist tells emigrant’s story
Monday, May 18th, 2009The New Zealand Herald carries an interesting article on the Irish economy that has some particularly moving words about emigration. Journalist Ruaridh Nicoll tells the story of Michael Dermody, a 25-year-old Kilkenny man bound for Perth, Australia.
Dermody tells the journalist, “A couple of years ago, I might have known two people in the whole of Australia. Now I know 30. I have about five or six friends in Perth alone, all within 15 km of my house.”
Nicoll notes,
As I travel round Ireland, I will be told that the boom has changed the country forever and, what with modern air travel, the exodus this time will be temporary. Yet technology, in the form of Facebook and Skype, is a powerful new agent in the emptying of villages. “Those who go are in contact with the lads back home,” Michael says. “They are telling us what a good time they are having, asking, ‘What’s keeping you?’.” The network that has always been so important in Ireland – ties of kinship and geography – now sucks the young away.
Nicoll tells of Dermody’s departure:
A little while before, Michael stood up from the farmhouse table, picked up a small rucksack and his hurling sticks, and said he’d best be going.
His mother sat straight-backed, the pain hard in her eyes, her jaw set, as her son had a last gulp of tea. He tells me later that his parents “hadn’t really spoken” about his departure, “but my mother is unhappy”. This renewed emigration, after 15 years of migrants returning, horrifies the older generations. They know all it will take is a good job, a mortgage or a marriage to keep Michael abroad. “They want to know when I’ll be back, but I don’t know,” he says, as we head outside. “If it doesn’t work out in Perth, I wouldn’t be averse to New Zealand.”
Read the whole article on the New Zealand Herald website: Wounded Tiger
For information on moving to Australia, visit the Crosscare Migrant Project website.
Can an Irish passport save the day?
Monday, May 11th, 2009Today’s Irishman’s Diary in the Irish Times offers a fresh take on the utility of an Irish passport, with Tom Clonan’s surprising story of what happens when an Irishman, a Saudi, an Iranian and an American go for a walk on a bustling day in Istanbul.
Read the story on the Irish Times website.
“I Only Came Over for a Couple of Years” records experience of London Irish
Monday, May 11th, 2009Yet another oral history project detailing the experience of elderly Irish emigrants has come to your correspondent’s attention. “I Only Came Over for a Couple of Years”, a documentary that was completed in 2005, is now available on DVD from the Irish Studies Centre of London Metropolitan University. The film is a collection of interviews of Irish elders who came over to London between the 1930s and 1960s.
The DVD is a production of the Irish Elders Now project, which is aimed at building a substantial video and oral record of a generation of Irish migrants to Britain whose stories and experiences have been underrepresented in other official records.
For more information and to order the DVD, visit the Irish Studies Centre website.
Ireland’s Hidden Diaspora examines abortion trail
Monday, May 11th, 2009“Ireland’s Hidden Diaspora: The ‘abortion trail’ and the making of a London-Irish Underground, 1980-2000” by Ann Rossiter tells the story of the London-Irish women who have supported many of the Irish women who have travelled to Britain for abortions.
The book, which was launched in Dublin on Wednesday by Senator Ivana Bacik, is an oral history record of the Irish Women’s Abortion Support Group and the Irish Abortion Solidarity Campaign. Author Anne Rossiter is a Limerick-born campaigner who has lived in London for 25 years.
Related web pages:
Irish Times: The kindness of strangers who helped Irish women abandoned by the State
Federation of Irish Societies: Book Launch: Ireland’s Hidden Diaspora
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