Net Results: I see the Government is out of the closet again on immigration policy - that is, US immigration policy, where it would like to see the Americans deal with their illegal Irish immigrants in a distinctly different way than it deals with immigrants here.
For a long time - since, oh, around the late 1990s boomtime economy in Ireland - the Government has not openly pushed the US to absorb the tens of thousands of Irish working illegally in the US.
As Ireland cranked up an "export the problem" approach to the economic migrants and asylum seekers arriving here, it could hardly be seen to poke the US to take in Ireland's own "economic immigrants" scattered across the US.
And remember, there was already one major amnesty that enabled many of the existing crop over there to become US citizens. Not to mention the disproportionate number of US green cards that went to the Irish under a whole slew of special visa programmes (Morrison, Donnelly, et al).
These were hardly the tired, the poor, or the huddled masses that benefited. They were well-educated, well-heeled offspring of D4s and D6s who thought it would be a lark to get a long-term holiday visa with no restrictions and didn't stay.
I knew lots of those who took this approach during my Irish university years, and remember one bewildered Irish-surnamed American who had lobbied hard for the Morrison visas wondering why the young Irish coming over on the visas were not staying to gain citizenship, but returning to Ireland.
Then there were those who did stay - to Ireland's own loss as the economy boomed. What irony that, on the tail of the last round of special visa allocations for the Irish - whom Americans still seemed to imagine came fresh from their windswept , impoverished cottages - the Government was busy launching its own programmes to try and lure those same green card beneficiaries back.
I spoke in the late 1990s with one Irish diplomat who acknowledged that the Government here really didn't want to be seen to be asking the US to take in Irish illegals when it wanted the skilled and educated back home - and was busy deporting people back to eastern Europe and Africa.
This was a major shift in gear from the Government's poor-mouth strategy towards the US. This had worked exceptionally well with the, influential phalanx of Irish-surnamed congressional representatives and senators willing to push those visa programmes through.
Well, now that old song and dance is back. I listened to a couple of the immigration centre workers in the US and an Irish minister discuss the sad, sad situation of the Irish illegals in the US who can never come home for Christmas because they risk deportation.
Er, just like the Romanians and Serbs here who also must stay below the State's radar if they want to remain here with their young families, working in an often exploitative black economy in Ireland.
We apparently want the Americans to push through a bill that would grant another amnesty and bring all those illegal Irish into the US citizenship fold - the ones working in an often exploitative black economy in the US.
Meanwhile, our idea of a pseudo-"green card" programme here remains limited to working visas to those earning from €50,000 to €60,000 a year in a very limited range of sectors. The technology industry is included, but only the very top end of the sector earns that sort of money.
We also need post-doctoral graduates and researchers in science and technology, but few academic institutions, or multinationals, pay those kinds of salaries either.
Maybe the Government here should be following its own advice to the Americans, and opening its closed doors?
klillington@irish-times.ie
weblog: http://weblog. techno-culture.com
