Word: irishness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...scores of U.S. cities this week, Americans of Irish descent will celebrate St. Patrick's Day by donning green hats, marching through the streets shouting "Erin go bragh!" and proudly proclaiming their Irishness to anyone who will listen. Yet as many as 100,000 natives of Ireland, newly arrived in the U.S., will hesitate to join the parades. They live in the fearful shadow world of the illegal alien...
Like their more numerous Hispanic and Asian counterparts, the undocumented "new Irish" switch jobs often, worry about the costs of sickness without Medicaid, and can do little but gnash their teeth when family crises occur in their homeland, because to leave the U.S. might mean never to return. "You often find them trying to put on New York accents while they serve you in a restaurant, just so they can meld into the background and not be found out," says Ray O'Hanlon, the national editor of the New York City-based Irish Echo newspaper. "This is rather...
...unlike the flood of Third World immigrants, the Irish come with advantages: white skin, good education, a knowledge of the language and a talent for politics that would make Boston's legendary Mayor James Michael Curley beam with pride. On the East Coast, they have revitalized neighborhoods deserted by their American cousins. Local shops sell everything from soda bread to Irish candies and bacon. The bleachers are filled for Irish football at Gaelic Park in the Bronx and Dilboy Field near Boston. In New York's Irish neighborhoods, pubs are packed on weekends. "At home in County Offaly, the bars...
...surge of new arrivals began in 1982, propelled by a debt-plagued Irish economy in which unemployment soared to almost 19% last year, sometimes reaching twice that for young people under 25. Even Ireland's Prime Minister Charles Haughey seemed to encourage the exodus...
Most of the Irish arriving in the U.S. have simply stayed on once their six- month tourist or work visas expired. They insist they are in America by stealth because there was no way for them to gain legal entry. The newcomers argue that the U.S. immigration act of 1965 discriminated against the Irish and other Europeans by giving preference to applicants who had family members legally in the U.S. Since Europeans had not been moving in large numbers to America for many years, they were all but locked out. The non-Europeans, mostly Asians and Latin Americans, used...