This summer, more students than ever have gone to America, and more of them to California than any other of the United States. The number of Irish people meeting other Irish people on every street is phenomenal. California's great trick is convincing Irish students that after working like dogs to get their exams, the best way to unwind is join the rest over there, starting by stuffing envelopes and serving chowder in tourist hotspots like Fisherman's wharf.
There's no wake or teary goodbyes for this new wave of emigrants. These days, none of them know they're emigrating. US immigration organises the most subtle recruitment drive in the world right under our noses. They know that if it was easy to go, you'd come back after a while. In fact, if you could just go, then many people wouldn't.
Economically in the past three years it has made at least as much sense to stay at home. But when you queue, pay and lie your way through the whole administrative bun-fight to get a green card, staying there seems to be the best course of action. Obligation? Relief? As the immigration official said to the pleading student, whatever.
Accidental emigrants arrive, and start buying the dream from day one, noticing for starters that all the cliches are true. In a country that size, nobody does care what you do or who you are, etc. So you lose yourself in commercialism, surrounding yourself with worthless ephemera, things "you just can't get at home". You buy quickly and say that freedom doesn't come as cheap at home. One might use "party" as a verb. Another studies feng-shui. Others might pepper a few sentences with "dude". But the last person in forgets to shut the door, and before you know it, the next batch of summer students is swept in - legions of younger brothers and sisters.
Each summer the one- and two-year veterans are wary of these arrivistes, spoiling the expensive view they have of themselves as bold explorers hanging out on the edge of a new continent.
Neither group wants to know the other. A younger brother brings King crisps and rashers to dole out. He has been urged by his family to get in touch with their neighbours' daughter, who might have a line on getting work over there. They think so because she has held a job there for five years. What they don't know is that as a physiotherapist, she has few connections in the fast food business. But true to form, she's been called by her folks and put on guard. Expect a call from so and so from down the road.
She promises that if he calls, she'll have a chat with him. For his part, the brother's not going to hang out with anyone that old and Irish for the summer. He's in America now. Nobody else knows anything. Time to party. He dimly remembers his parents plea, "now, she was good enough to give you the address, have the courtesy to call". But she's hoping he won't call.
That's what happens. He and his mates eat the King crisps before disappearing in a blizzard of alcohol and new-found exotica, crashing out on friends' couches until there's nothing left to do. Then, just as she starts putting the phone back on the hook, it rings and it's him.
All she can do is buy him food. He's in a bad way, but she has a chat with him, and points him towards a friend of hers who runs a restaurant down on Fisherman's Wharf, and says to say she sent him. Away he goes, humbled by hunger and a familiar face. He gets a job in the restaurant and the circle is completed.
At this point in every California summer, there are hundreds of young Irish people living in America who are turning the ringers on their phones off in case he calls. Don't bother. He'll get in touch. Whether through good breeding or hunger, he'll get in touch.