Here is some good news from America for Northern Ireland and the Border counties.
Two years ago a group of Irish politicians arrived in Washington to talk to their American counterparts on Capitol Hill about Irish-American relations but especially how to help the peace process. The TDs, who had just come from New York, were excited about an idea the Emerald Isle Immigration Centre there had bounced off them.
There were thousands of unemployed young people in Northern Ireland and in the Border counties of the Republic. Why not let them come to the US for three years to be trained in the latest technologies and then go back to revitalise those depressed areas?
A bonus would be that the cross-Border aspect of the scheme and the exposure of the emigrants to a "multicultural" US could contribute to easing sectarian tensions when they went home.
Congressman Jim Walsh from New York liked what he heard. He had been a Kennedy Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal in the early 1970s and wanted to encourage youthful idealism and at the same time give a helping hand to the peace process.
By the following October, Walsh, who is a Republican, had pushed a Bill through Congress with the help of the Democrats to put the idea into practice. New visa legislation is notoriously difficult to get through a Congress which has become increasingly anti-immigrant. Why should the Irish get favourable treatment when even more deserving cases from Central America are repulsed?
But an "Act to establish a cultural training programme for disadvantaged individuals to assist the Irish peace process" was duly signed by President Clinton a mere six months after the TDs and senators gave Walsh the idea.
This week, the first beneficiaries of the "Walsh visas" sat in an auditorium of the State Department in Washington and heard a delighted Walsh tell them they were "pioneers" who would go back to Ireland energised to help their regions and break down sectarian barriers.
There were 77 young people between 18 and 35 listening to him - 45 from Northern Ireland and 32 from the six Border counties. Over three years the numbers are expected to grow to 12,000. After three years of working in the US, their visas will expire and they must leave.
For the past six weeks, the first contingent has been prepared for its US adventure by FAS and the Northern Ireland Training and Employment Agency, which had the responsibility of recruiting and training the applicants.
Now they are ready to start work next Wednesday in five large companies in and around Washington. The emphasis is on the hotel business through Marriott International and the Omni Shoreham hotel chain. But others will work for Streamline, an online shopping service; Metrocall, a paging and wireless messaging company; and NRI-Staffing, which services the Information Technology (IT) sector as well as more traditional areas.
In the US, the scheme is being co-ordinated by Logicon, a company specialising in IT, which works with the Department of Defence and the space programme, among others, and might seem a strange choice for keeping track of Irish immigrants. Logicon won the contract from the State Department, which has oversight over the visa programme.
The Emerald Isle Immigration Centre in New York, which first thought of the idea, is not too happy with the choice of Logicon, which, it feels, has left the centre out in the cold and ignored its experience over 10 years with Irish immigrants. In a letter to Congressman Walsh last month, the centre said it was "concerned that support services and Irish-American involvement would be marginalised". The centre suspects that the scheme could "simply turn into a hotel-management training programme".
Logicon points out that defence work is only one part of its activities, although it does account for 65 per cent of its sales.
The second group of visa holders will work at the Broadmoor luxury resort in Colorado, the Doyle Hotels group in Washington and RNC Corporation, a large telecommunications and Internet service provider.
A third group will go to the Dallas and Austin areas of Texas, where Dell Computers has expressed interest in employing them. Other areas being explored are New York, Boston and Chicago. These would be areas of traditional Irish emigration and have the kind of support services which the Emerald Isle centres offer.
But government officials point out that the Walsh visa emigrants are not your traditional kind. They have jobs set up in advance, have government subsidies to help in the early phase and have back-up services through Logicon. If they get lonely out in Colorado Springs or Dallas, they are still not as vulnerable as an illegal barman in the Bronx.
Two of the first group are young women from Donegal, Grainne Ferry and Sharon Boyle. They found it hard to get jobs in Donegal: "The Celtic Tiger is OK in Dublin but we don't see much of it." Now they hope to get IT skills through working with Marriott.
Joe O'Neill, from Draperstown, Co Derry, had his own steel business. "Now I want to learn about America and maybe take a university course over here. I can bring the skills back home."
Eamon Faulkner, from Derry City, is "amazed at this opportunity". At home he would have needed A-levels or a degree to get into the IT sector. "Here I will get an opportunity to train from the bottom and get promoted."
At times you wonder at how much Americans are willing to do for Ireland and how we can take it for granted.