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Immigration reform efforts to continue, says ILIR leader

Monday, July 2nd, 2007

Leading US immigration reform campainger and Irish Voice publisher Niall O’Dowd has urged those fighting for change to continue their efforts.

In a statement on the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform website, Mr O’Dowd says that the issue of comprehensive immigration reform is dead until after the November 2008 elections. He has indicated that the group may pursue another strategy: “We need to follow another path in order to achieve our aims. We were unable to do that while comprehensive reform, involving 12 million undocumented, was under consideration”.

Mr O’Dowd adds that it took three years to win passage of the Morrison visas in the late 1980s. He says he appreciates the response of the Irish government and says the group will now be calling on powerful friends in Congress.

Read the full statement at the Irish Lobby’s website.

Government gives $1.3 million to US groups

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

Grants of nearly $1.3 million for US Irish organisations were announced yesterday by Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern. The money will go to 13 groups that are engaged in the provision of support, information and advisory services.

The Minister said:

“I am delighted to allocate increased funding, again this year, to the Irish immigration centres in the US. These grants reflect the Government’s continuing commitment to Irish communities abroad, particularly to supporting the vulnerable members of our community in the US. �

The Government has given a total of $1.431 million to Irish immigrant groups in the US; in April, Mr Ahern announced grants of $50,000 for the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform and $100,000 for the Coalition of Irish Immigration Centres in the US.

The funded organisations include:

• Aisling Irish Centre
• Emerald Isle Immigration Centre
• New York Irish Centre
• Project Irish Outreach
• Irish Immigration and Pastoral Centre, Philadelphia
• Irish Apostolate
• Irish Immigration Centre, Boston
• Irish Pastoral Centre, Boston 
• Irish Immigration Pastoral Centre, San Francisco
• Seattle Irish Immigration Support Group
• Irish Outreach San Diego
• Irish Connect Initiative
• Chicago Irish Immigrant Support

For more information, read the press release.

Justice for Immigrants urges action following cloture vote

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

The immigration reform bill which was reintroduced in the US Senate has passed the first of many hurdles; yesterday the first cloture vote to proceed passed by a vote of 64-35.  The Justice for Immigrants campaign has issued an alert urging all Americans to call their senators.  Here is the text of the alert:

TAKE 5 AND CALL YOUR SENATORS TODAY!
Call 202-224-3121 and ask for your Senator’s office now.Ask them to:
Support family-reunification amendments

• Amendment # 1199 (Dodd): This would increase the number of visas that are available for parents of U.S. citizens, and would extend the number of days each year that non-immigrant parents could visit families in the United States.      
• Amendment # 1317 (Menendez): This would modify the point system to give greater weight to family ties for green-card applicants.  Family members could receive up to fifteen points in their application, rather than the ten points that would currently be given to family members in the base bill.

Support a workable legalization program

• Amendment # 1236 (Baucus-Tester): This amendment would strike provisions that make the bill’s legalization program dependent upon the systematic implementation of REAL ID documents.  Several states have already passed laws rejecting to implement REAL ID; additionally, best estimates are that this program would take many years and billions of dollars to execute.  This amendment would set more realistic goals and expectations for when the legalization program could take effect.

Oppose provisions endangering vulnerable immigrants

• Amendment # 1473 (Coleman):  This is a slightly modified version of an amendment that was narrowly defeated in this year’s Senate immigration debate.  In spite of these changes, the amendment would still prevent local law enforcement officials from choosing to afford certain protections to vulnerable immigrants who are preyed upon by criminals. 

Visit the Justice for Immigrants campaign.

NY agency reports “exceptionally difficult” summer for J1ers

Monday, June 25th, 2007

This summer is a tough one for Irish students in the US East Coast. Housing and jobs are tight, reports the Emerald Isle Immigration Center. The centre, which is based in Queens, is appealing for help with housing and jobs for students.

Padraig Nolan, the centre’s J1 Summer Coordinator, writes:

The summer of 2007 is so far proving to be an exceptionally difficult one in the shoes of an Irish college student on the J1 work Visa. The main problems faced by the J1 students are that of finding accommodation and employment. The lucky few that do find accommodation are faced with massive expenses when they are not working, this can make it very difficult to make it through the first few weeks, as they must eat into their savings in order to afford the rent. One J1 student in particular who called into the EIIC office in Queens informed us of the difficulties that were slowly turning his dream summer into a nightmare. He told us how hard he was finding it to find accommodation not to mention a job. The typical J1 student pays anything from $1500 to $2000 to secure their work visa and flights to America and it is extremely difficult to secure accommodation or employment before arriving due to the pressures of exam time back home in Ireland.

When a J1 student arrives he/she must not only begin job hunting as well as house hunting but he/she must also sort out social security which can delay employment considerably by up to four weeks. Legally an employer is permitted to employ a J1 student even before he/she has applied for social security but many employers do not seem to realize this. They believe that until the social security card is in the hand of the student he/she is unemployable. This as you can imagine adds to the difficulties faced by the J1’s.

Statistically it appears the majority of J1 students have chosen the west coast as their summer destination. You might think this means more job opportunities in the east especially New York however, this is not proving to be the case. Employers looking for summer relief workers need to get on the phone to us and let us know they are seeking relief workers. Irish college students are known to be hard working, dependable and polite workers. The idea of the J1 work visa for many Irish students is to work hard for the summer in order to make some money for the following college semester and allow two or three weeks at the end of the summer to travel and experience American culture first hand. It is terrible to see any J1 student returning home early after spending all their savings on three or four weeks accommodation in a hostel, but this does and will happen. We only hope the number of students returning home early can be minimized.

We are appealing to all potential employers and or people with housing available for the duration of the summer period to contact us at the Emerald Isle Immigration Center and help make the summer easier for these hard working college students.

Please contact :

Padraig Nolan, J1 Summer Coordinator*
Emerald Isle Immigration Center
59-26 Woodside Ave
Woodside, NY 11377
Phone: 718/478-5502 ext 207

 *Please note that the position of  J1 Summer Coordinator is funded by entirely by the Irish Government Department Of Foreign Affairs’ grant to the Emerald Isle Immigration Center each year

Éan member has suggestion for broadcasting to EU-based Irish

Thursday, June 21st, 2007

Broadcasting radio into the heart of Europe would provide a useful information source for Irish people in Europe, says Éan member Enda O’Kane in an article that has appeared in Business Travel magazine.

He notes:

DRM is now used worldwide by 32 broadcasters and more than 40 hours of English language programmes are broadcast across Europe.

An Irish radio service into the heart of Europe would help fuel our tourism industry and would serve to call back Irish emigrants, as well as inciting visits from those foreign to our country… It would provide a badly needed travel information service to our business community that is otherwise unavailable. The Internet cannot provide a listening experience to people on the move. Neither is the RTE Astra service recievable by motorists, or accessible in hotels and apartments across the EU.

Enda notes that RTE already owns the broadcast infrastructure, and says that for €4 million, the former Athlone medium wave site could be adapted to digital short wave to meet the needs of Irish citizens across the EU.

Read the whole article.

For more infomation on DRM, including sound recordings, broadcast schedules and information on receivers, visit drm.org.

Tipp man to become Tube’s most familiar face

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

A man who emigrated from Tipperary in 1962 will have his portrait on the cover of the London Tube map.

John Hough left his home near Borrisokane at the age of 19, in response to an ad from London Transport. He took up work with the company and has been there ever since; he worked for five years as a bus conductor before becoming a booking clerk for the Underground. He now works a station supervisor for Wembley Park.  

 The Irish Times reports,

“There wasn’t much going on in Ireland. I was only living on a small farm at the time; there was no way that was going to sustain me for the rest of my life. There wasn’t much on the horizon.”

Mr Hough will retire next week and was honoured yesterday by London mayor Ken Livingstone. His 45 years of service makes him the longest-serving transport worker.

His portrait will be printed on five million copies of the London Underground pocket Tube map; the work is part of the “Platform for Art” Project

The Guardian quotes Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, who created the drawing with Paul Ryan:

“Just as the tube map is a piece of portraiture of London, this works in the same way, but of a person. I was inspired by the Hockney Portraits Show at the National Portrait Gallery last year. It also has an element of social history – John came over from Ireland in the late 50s as there was no work, so it represents the movement of labour and immigration.”

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