Sir, I was interested in Robert Walsh's plea for easier Irish emigration to Canada (Irish Times, December 20th), having once been offered a post (with resident status) at a Canadian university. Although chuffed by the offer, I had no illusions that the Irish, as Irish, should have some permanent right to preferential entry to Canada, or to the US.
The current "Irish" proportion of the North American population derives largely from the massive post-Famine emigration. The world has experienced many and worse calamities since then, and we cannot continue into the 21st century claiming special consideration on the basis of a mid 19th century event.
Coming up to St. Patrick's Day during the late 1980s, Irish American lobbies used to demand of the Taoiseach that he plead with the US President for easier Irish entry to America. Fortunately the Taoisigh of the day had sufficient self respect not to make such pleas (at least in public). To do so would have been to admit to the world that a stable. democratic EC member state was an economic failure.
Since the second World War, Canada and the US have moved away from the ethnic head count immigration formula towards a more worldwide, skills and education based intake. This is a fairer system, but it is also self interested in the context of GATT stimulated freer world trade and the development of non traditional markets. Increased immigration from Asian countries has been particularly noticeable (and indeed beneficial, judging by the disproportionately high number of their descendants in the graduate schools of the top universities).
Maybe it's time to realise that we no longer have any particular case for preferential entry to North America, and to admit that we've had our innings. - Yours, etc.,
Park Lane, Sandymount, Dublin 4.