FORMER CONGRESSMAN Bruce Morrison has spoken of a very real possibility for immigration reform in the US thanks to the Obama administration.
“When we organise, we change the nature of the debate,” Mr Morrison told about 275 people at an Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform (ILIR) meeting, held in Woodlawn, the Bronx, New York, on Wednesday night.
“We make it more likely that legislation will pass, and we can make America understand that it is not just about Latin Americans. It’s about a failed immigration system that doesn’t give people the chance to come here legally,” he said.
Vice-chairman of the ILIR Ciarán Staunton said that the economic crisis in Ireland underlined the importance of immigration reform in the US.
“When we met in 2006, the unemployment rate in Ireland was about 5 per cent.
“The ESRI report out recently said that it could be as high as 17 per cent. That’s almost as high as it was in the 1980s.
So most people that are here are staying here . . . And we are saying that we will not walk away from our community,” Mr Staunton said.
In recent weeks, President Barack Obama had indicated that immigration reform would become a serious policy area for his administration, leading to raised hopes among some of the estimated 50,000 undocumented Irish in the US.
Some of those at the meeting were not optimistic, however.
Una Thompson, from Newry, Co Down, who has lived undocumented in the US for 14 years, said: “People are not really all that hopeful because they have been let down before.”
Ms Thompson, a mother of two, said she had missed her mother’s funeral in Ireland last year.
“I never got to say goodbye to my own mother.”
Bruce Morrison, who is also an immigration lawyer and who gave his name to visas in the 1980s that thousands of Irish took up, told the meeting that there were two specific issues the ILIR is concentrating on.
“The number one thing we are working on is legalisation,” he said.
The other focus of the ILIR’s attention, Mr Morrison said, was a new E3 visa, which would allow Irish people to come over and work legally and eventually apply for a green card.
The E3 visa is open only to Australia and the ILIR is campaigning for 10,500 of these visas to be made available to Ireland.