Sir, – The E3 Visa is not, as Karlin Lillington contends, an effort to address the Irish undocumented in the United States (“Apparently, in a world full of terrible conflicts, Irish people are especially deserving of work opportunities in US”, Opinion, Business, September 14th). The E3 is a non-immigrant work visa that, if passed, would afford skilled Irish citizens the opportunity to work in the United States comparable to the opportunities already enjoyed by other nationals. The US-Ireland retirement scheme is not designed to assist well-off Americans. It seeks to encourage ordinary US citizens with skills (who have private health insurance) to live and work in Ireland. The scheme is expected to benefit the western seaboard counties in particular and help with rural regeneration, something that may be lost on a Dublin-centric viewpoint.
The status of what Karlin Lillington describes as “US handout initiatives” on Irish immigration are as follows. A total of 13 Irish citizens were selected out of 55,000 available US green cards under the 2023 US Diversity Visa programme.
Statistically, an Irish applicant now has a worse than one in six chance of attaining an H1-B visa. Irish companies can no longer provide any assurances to Irish graduates that company sponsorship will result in a US work visa, denying them the valuable experience of working internationally and putting their companies at a competitive disadvantage.
The Morrison and Donnelly visa quotas ended in 1996 and did not “continue into high-employment Celtic Tiger Ireland”.
The argument put forward by Karlin Lillington is that the Ireland of today is sufficiently wealthy and unneeding of American handouts, a relationship she characterises as a “transatlantic begging bowl”. It was probably bad timing to publish the piece on the same day the Shannon Airport Authority launched a €1 million tourism campaign to attract US visitors. And at the same time, the Irish media continues to salute the Irish-American lobby on Capitol Hill and Irish-Americans in successive Administrations for their critical support on issues surrounding Brexit, the Northern Ireland protocol, and legacy justice legislation.
The core strength of our two countries’ relationship is people. The more movement of citizens between both countries, the stronger that bond gets. Increasing the number of US work visas and easing the restrictions for US retirees strengthen the relationship.
It’s the characterisation of the US/Irish relationship as a “begging bowl” that is anachronistic. I’m reminded of 2006 when things were booming in Ireland and people started telling their European counterparts how wealthy they were and how things should be done. Now America is being told to keep its handouts, work visas and philanthropy.
There are echoes of the language of the Celtic Tiger. – Yours, etc,
DANIEL J O’CONNELL,
National President,
The Ancient Order
of Hibernians in America.
Girard,
Ohio, US.