As the room fills up with the members of the Business 100 I feel the pride that I always feel at our annual lunch at the ’21’ Club. I look around the room and consider the brain-power that has taken this collected group to their positions as corporate leaders in America, and I am glad that they have enough pride in their Irishness to travel to New York from all over the country to be here for this event.
Ah, but really, as proud as I am to be in a roomful of Irish Americans who have made it to the very top of the ladder, and without taking anything away from their success, the immigrant in me identifies with their immigrant ancestors – those took those first brave steps into the unknown and struggled to reach the lowest rung of the ladder.
How proud those Famine Irish, and Depression-era Irish, and the “No Irish Need Apply” immigrants would be of this group — this living proof that the naysayers were wrong about us Irish.
The Nativist or Know Nothing Party who hated immigrants, and especially despised Irish Catholics and moved to revoke their citizenship because they were supposedly polluting the country with their foreign culture and hooliganism — what would they say about this group of affluent Irish corporate leaders?
Or, indeed, about the six thousand Irish Americans — children, parents, teachers and friends who took part in the Oireachtas this year — performing their Irish dances in a grand hotel in Westchester. Who is going to say that they don’t belong, or that their culture, dance and music is “too foreign”?
And Mother Jones, that angel of the mining camps, who marched a trail of children from Pennsylvania to New York to highlight the plight of the miners, what would she say about the brilliant students featured in our Irish American Whiz Kids story?
Being a feisty Cork woman she would probably say that the Irish no longer needed her help and be out in California knocking on Governor Wilson’s door, reminding him that his mother’s name was Margaret Callahan and her father came from Kerry. Yes, his grandfather was a “legal” immigrant. But there were few restrictions then — a cursory check from the physician at Ellis Island, or any port of entry, and he was free to go out in search of his American dream.
For my generation of Irish, those of us who arrived in the 1970s and 80s, there was little chance of legal entry — America had closed her doors, saying that we didn’t belong. For us the “No Irish Need Apply” signs had been replaced by those that said: “Only Irish with Green Cards.”
We would learn first-hand the experiences of many of those earlier immigrants, and pick up the shovel and the waitress tray, and find work wherever we could.
Just as in earlier generations, we didn’t go home — not because the journey was long and arduous; the traveling part was easy, just seven hours by plane – but we were afraid that if we left we would not get back in.
Sisters and brothers grew up in our absence, we missed weddings and christenings and some of us missed our father’s or mother’s final moments. But for all our misery we were protected to a certain extent by being white Europeans, and, ironically, by being Irish.
Some 60,000 Irish were legalized through Donnelly and Morrison visas in the late 80s and early 90s. So the Irish of today, for the most part, don’t have to worry about Proposition 187 — they can hop on and off planes like buses, and send their children to school. They’ll walk into jobs at Arthur Andersen, as perhaps we might have done, and they will never have to experience “the fear,” or check out the rear exit of every new place of work.
Will they understand why I identify with the office cleaner, trying so hard to speak my language, and why I cannot say that her young son (her hope) pushing the vacuum cleaner, should be denied an education? Probably not.
As Bruce Morrison, who as a congressman contributed so much in the fight to legalize the Irish, said to me at that ’21’ Club lunch, “people forget so quickly.”
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the January/February 1995 issue of Irish America. ⬥
Proposition 187 was a California ballot initiative passed in 1994 that aimed to deny undocumented immigrants access to public services like healthcare, education, and social services. The measure, also known as the “Save Our State” initiative, was supported by organizations advocating for tighter immigration control. While it passed with significant voter support, it was later struck down by a federal court.
The 1965 Immigration Act significantly reduced the number of visas available to Irish citizens. The number of visas available to Irish citizens was no longer solely based on the percentage of Irish-Americans in the U.S. population.
The U.S. Diversity Visa Program (Green Card Lottery). In 2022 a total of 24 visas were awarded to citizens of Ireland, and three to Northern Ireland citizens. In 2023, from over 9.5 million qualified entries, only 17 individuals (13 from the Republic of Ireland and 4 from Northern Ireland) were selected according to ivisatravel.com.
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