Green lobby: why love is in the air

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, arrives in New York tomorrow to meet Irish immigrant groups and to lobby US politicians on behalf of undocumented Irish immigrants - numbering 25,000, the Government believes.

The Government wants US lawmakers to adopt a Bill sponsored by senators Edward Kennedy and John McCain that would create a system of temporary worker visas. Under the plan, undocumented immigrants could become eligible for visas if they pay all taxes they owe and a fine of $2,000 (€1,657). After six years on a temporary visa, immigrants who learn English and stay out of trouble would have a chance to become US citizens.

The Irish represent a tiny proportion of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the US, most of whom cross the border from Mexico.

President Bush has promised to tighten border security and expel illegal immigrants but has also embraced immigration reform.

Republicans said last week, however, that they want to bring forward legislation enforcing border security and cracking down on illegal immigrants before they consider introducing a temporary worker scheme.

"I would have thought a few weeks ago that our chances of getting a Bill through Congress that would be comparable to Kennedy-McCain or something close was pretty good. With what is undoubtedly a very weakened presidency, I just don't know any more," says Brian O'Dwyer, an Irish-American lawyer who has campaigned on behalf of Irish immigrants for two decades.

Measures introduced in Congress by Brian Donnelly and Bruce Morrison helped tens of thousands of illegal Irish immigrants to get green cards. But thousands failed to win the visa lottery, not least because so many people in Ireland who applied for green cards had no immediate plans to use them.

Without immigration reform, the only way an undocumented immigrant can become legal is to marry an American, "and, you know, it seems like love is kind of in the air a lot more", says Emerald Isle Immigration Center's Siobhan Dennehy.

The Government has been more active than any of its predecessors in championing the cause of Irish immigrants in the US, funding advice centres and lobbying Washington for immigration reform.

For Ray O'Hanlon, a journalist on the Irish Echo (an Irish American newspaper based in New York), the biggest problem immigrants face is a disparity between the US's image of itself and the reality.

"The United States still sees itself as a land of immigrants - the imagery of the Statue of Liberty and the old sepia-toned pictures of the huddled masses," he says.

"It has not faced the fact or stated the fact bluntly that those days are gone. We are no longer a nation of immigrants."