Undocumented Irish ‘can’t wait years for legislation’

President Barack Obama can take executive actions, without the support of the new Republican-led Congress, to help the long-term illegal Irish living in the US, Minister for the Diaspora Jimmy Deenihan has said.

The Minister accepted that executive actions might scupper the prospects of wider immigration reform with the ascendant Republican leadership in the Senate, which they won in this week’s midterm elections, but he said the “undocumented” needed urgent help.

"The problem here is that people can't wait for more expansive legislation that could take some years," he told The Irish Times.

Mr Deenihan said executive actions could give a large number of the estimated 50,000 illegal Irish “preferential treatment”.

“It will still leave some with difficulties but it will certainly solve the problem for some people,” he said.

Immigration reform has become the battleground issue between the White House and Republican leaders now in control of Congress as the president met congressional leaders at a lunch in the White House today in an attempt to find common ground on a range of issues.

Mr Obama renewed plans on Wednesday to take executive actions to help the estimated 11 million undocumented, saying they “should be a spur” for Republicans to pass broader immigration reform.

Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner warned him not to take executive actions on immigration, telling him yesterday he was “going to burn himself” and “poison the well” if he did.

Mr Deenihan said the Irish Government would continue to lobby Republicans on the issue.

“If they do want to tap into that Hispanic vote that was so important in the last presidential election, they will have to be very serious,” he said. “I don’t think they will get away with the obfuscation that they may have had in recent times.”

On extending votes in Irish elections to the diaspora, the Minister said he was confident the public would vote to allow Irish passport holders overseas to vote in presidential elections if, as he expects, the Government puts the issue to the people in a referendum next year.

Hs said that he was in consultation with France’s former minister for French nationals abroad Hélène Conway-Mouret about extending the diaspora vote to Senate or possibly Dáil Elections in the future.

There could be three new senators representing the Irish in the UK and Europe, North and South America and Asia and Australia, he said.