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« Previous Entries Next Entries »Irish interest in Australian visas rising
Thursday, August 28th, 2008Australia’s Department of Immigration has reported a continuing increase in the number of young Irish people obtaining Working Holiday Visa. The visas, which are available to those between 18 and 30, have been growing in popularity every year for the last five years. Between July 2007 and March 2008, there were 12,700 visas issued, according to a report in Australia’s Irish Echo; 13,500 had been issued for the entire previous year.
The newspaper also revealed that dozens of Irish nationals are being detained annually by immigration officials. In the 2006/2007 financial year, 26 Irish people were detained, while in the 2007/2008 financial year, 24 were detained. Those detained were working without visas, or had expired visas. The Department of Immigration said they were either deported or detained, according to their situation.
RTE to launch Freesat service for British-based listeners
Thursday, August 28th, 2008RTÉ radio listeners in Britain, who were recently disadvantaged when they lost their medium wave service, will be able to listen to Radio 1 on Freesat starting next month.
Freesat is a digital satellite television service. The service is free after the purchase of a receiver that attaches to a television, and a satellite dish; receivers cost around 50 pounds and up.
RTÉ is also launching RTÉ International, which will also be available through Freesat, in the coming months. RTÉ International is a television channel aimed at the Irish living in Britain.
It was previously announced that RTÉ’s other stations, Lyric FM, Radio na Gaeltachta and 2FM, would also be available on Freesat.
See more about the service on the Irish Post.
Ireland Fund of GB accepting Forgotten Irish grant apps
Thursday, August 28th, 2008The Forgotten Irish campaign of the Irish Fund of Great Britain is currently accepting applications from charity groups working with the vulnerable and elderly Irish in the UK.
The funding is meant to benefit those among the Irish community who emigrated in the decades following World War II, who worked hard and are now “living out what remains of their lives in isolation, poverty and deprivation in cities like Birmingham, Coventry, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and London. In spite of the enormous contribution they made to Ireland in her dark days, many of these elderly & vulnerable Irish people now run the risk of becoming The Forgotten Irish.”
The funding is open for the following:
- Vulnerable and / or older Irish Men and Women who do not / can not / or are reluctant to access existing services.
- Projects that will tackle loneliness & isolation, such as lunch clubs.
- Outreach projects, such as Befriender services.
- Social, cultural or educational activities for vulnerable and or elderly Irish men and women.
- In exceptional circumstances, The IFGB will consider funding salary costs for the purposes of outreach.
The IFGB will not prioritise funding for capital projects. For capital project application guidelines, please contact Laura on 0207 378 8373 or lquinn@irlfunds.org.
The closing date for applications is 26 September 2008.
For more information see The Forgotten Irish website of the Ireland Funds of Great Britain.
Obama statement calls for path to citizenship
Thursday, August 28th, 2008Senator Barack Obama’s comments on the possibility that he would consult with the Taoiseach, the British Prime Minister and Northern Irish leaders to determine whether a US envoy to Northern Ireland is still necessary have attracted much controversy. But his recent comments on Irish issues were not confined to the North.
The comments were published on the website of the US-Ireland Alliance, which says that it is politically neutral and welcomes a similar statement from Republican Senator John McCain.
As well as his comments on the North, Obama commented on his own Irish ancestry, Irish immigrants’ contribution to America, supporting Irish-Americans through economic policy, comprehensive immigration reform, and supporting “a changing relationship with a changed Ireland”.
On immigration reform, Obama makes clear that he supports a path to citizenship, as well as measures to secure the borders and improve the bureaucracy. The statement says:
Barack Obama will pursue comprehensive immigration reform that keeps open the doors of opportunity in our country. His father’s experience has informed his own views on the issue, and he has seen the enormous contributions that Irish immigrants have made to this country. In 2006, Obama marched in Chicago, IL, on behalf of immigration reform, walking shoulder to shoulder with many Irish Americans who shared their own personal stories of hope and opportunity. Barack Obama has played a leading role in crafting comprehensive immigration reform and believes that our broken immigration system can only be fixed by putting politics aside and offering a solution that strengthens our security while reaffirming our heritage as a nation of immigrants. His plan will strengthen border security, fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy, and secure a responsible path to earned citizenship for undocumented workers and their families.
See the full statement on the US-Ireland Alliance website.
A number of articles have appeared on Irish aspect of Obama campaign and Obama’s pick of Senator Joe Biden as his Vice-Presidential candidate. Here’s a roundup:
- Irish Echo: Biden is long familiar with Irish issues
- Irish Echo: Envoy Fear
- Irish Times: Irish and Kenyan public figures at Obama lunch
- Irish Times: Obama criticised over special envoy review
- Limerick Post: Local support for Obama stance
NY Irish Center would be “temple on the hill”
Thursday, August 28th, 2008The proposed New York Irish Center would contribute to an indigenous Irish-American culture while providing a space for Irish business and social life in the city, says the visionary behind the project, actor Gabriel Byrne.
Bryne says that the idea for a such a centre came to him as he considered the fact that there was no place in New York “that is actually contributing to the growth of an indigenous Irish American culture”. With the nature of emigration changing, he found himself asking what that meant for the culture.
“So the question I asked myself was, who are we, and what are we headed towards as a culture? What is representative of us in terms of art, what is our real connection to the island of Ireland where people are getting on with their business? They are not really thinking about what Irish Americans are up to, not really. And Irish Americans are saying, as long as we keep having Conor McPherson, or Martin McDonagh, as long as we keep being represented on Broadway, we’re still culturally in the game.”
“We started to talk about building a new center that would encourage not just the importation of current Irish culture, and diverse current Irish culture, but would encourage the development of a unique Irish American cultural voice, this while we would have the place to do it which is also a business center, where people from Ireland could come in and do business, where Irish people could get together socially.
Byrne’s vision has been developed through a consultation process, initiated four years ago after he was asked by then-taoiseach Bertie Ahern to chair an exploratory committee. He has presented the Irish government with an action plan with a limited timeframe.
“Of course it’s a sensitive time economically to be asking for money,” he said. “But this is the best time to invest, not just in this notion of an Irish identity and culture, but in the brand of Ireland.
“It just needs a commitment from the Irish government to support this. The government are behind it, in theory. It just needs that final push to make it happen. You really have to envision it as a temple on the hill. We would have to make a place of welcome, not just for Irish Americans. It would reach out to all cultures, a place of light and welcome.”
See the entire article at the Irish Echo website.
Columnist tackles emigration stats
Thursday, August 28th, 2008An article in the Irish Independent aims at unpacking some of the information contained in the emigration statistics that have been published in recent days. The CSO’s recently published figures, which say that 45,000 people emigrated in the year ending April 2008, do not go into detail on the nationality of the emigrants. Indo columnist Brendan Keenan offers an interesting analysis, suggesting that emigration never went away, so it is inaccurate to call higher emigration numbers a ‘return’ to emigration.
Here’s part of his take on the matter:
The best clues as to what is happening so far come from the destinations of recent emigrants. Of the 45,000 who left, 9,000 went to the EU-12 of newer member states. It is a reasonable assumption that most of these were natives of those states. Over 14,000 went to the rest of the EU — half of them to the UK. It is difficult to know what the breakdown there would have been.
Only 2,000 went to the USA. It is a firmer guess that most of the 20,000 who went to the “rest of the world” were Irish. This is because over half of them went to Australia/New Zealand — a favourite destination for Irish students on temporary visas.
Go back to the boom year of 2005 and emigration was just 29,000. Again almost half of those went to the “rest of the world,” although, naturally, the total was much less than last year’s number. There were hardly any “emigrants” to the EU-12 in 2005 — the first year they were counted — but 34,000 arrived.
While there has been little change in the number of emigrants aged 15-24 (mostly Irish?), the outflow of those in the key 25-44 group rose from 9,000 five years ago to 20,000 in 2008. There must be significant forced emigration already in there.
See the entire article on the Irish Independent’s website.
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