"The Mid-Atlantic Dual Citizen" is a phrase coined by Ray O'Hanlon in his book, The New Irish Americans.

This new genre of emigrant is constantly in transit between both countries, flying over and back to meetings, signing deals and communicating from their laptop computer. Green cards and official documentation are not a worry for the Mid-Atlantic Dual Citizen.

Although nowadays more people are immigrating to Ireland than emigrating from here, according to the Central Statistic office around 30,000 people still emigrate yearly, half of them in the 15 to 24 age bracket.

Many people went to North America from Ulster, especially, from the 18th century, but the first really big wave of emigration happened around the time of the Famine in the 19th century, and the last big wave happened in the 1980s when thousands of young Irish emigrated to America, Australia, Britain and elsewhere in search of jobs and a better lifestyle. Many of these emigrants were graduates, so this emigration was sometimes referred to as a "brain drain". The 1980s were grim times, with the world economy in recession and very few jobs in Ireland.

Irish emigration reached its 20th-century peak in the 1950s when well over 400,000 left, mostly for Britain. Young women often left to become domestic servants, nurses or factory workers in Britain.