US:The Government is seeking a new, reciprocal immigration deal with the United States that could link an amnesty for undocumented Irish immigrants now in the US to the consolidation of the political settlement in the North.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern proposed the new deal in Washington yesterday at a meeting with secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.
"I indicated to her that the Irish Government regarded this as an ongoing sore and that what we wanted to do, once and for all, was to try and solve that and cure that sore," he said.
"And I said what we wanted to do going forward was to work with her administration to see if we could do something on a reciprocal basis into the future and, if possible, cure some of the issues of the ongoing undocumented."
Mr Ahern was due to meet key figures on Capitol Hill yesterday, including senators Edward Kennedy and Patrick Leahy and congressional Friends of Ireland chairman, Richard Neal.
The Minister acknowledged that immigration was a difficult issue in Congress following the failure earlier this year of comprehensive reform legislation.
He told Ms Rice, however, that he believed that Irish illegal immigrants should be viewed as a special case because so many of them were in the US as a direct result of the political situation in the North.
"In the context of the development of the all-island economy, I instanced the fact that a lot of people from Ireland, because of unemployment in yesteryear, unemployment created by the conflict, people specifically because of the conflict would have left Ireland and Northern Ireland and the Border areas. I indicated strongly to her that I felt that in the context of the evolving assistance that the UK government are giving, the American government are giving and ourselves, that this is an issue that is on the agenda and it should be looked at in that context. And obviously we're going to investigate those possibilities," he said.
Some Irish-American congressmen are privately optimistic about a special immigration deal for the Irish, which would be linked to economic co-operation between the US and Ireland as well as to the legacy of the Troubles in the North.
Others are more cautious, fearing that any amnesty for Irish illegal immigrants could anger both anti-immigration conservatives and the Hispanic community, which accounts for most immigration to the US.
Mr Ahern said that any new agreement must take account of the heightened awareness of security in the US following the attacks of September 11th, 2001, while making it easier for Irish people to move to the US and for Americans to live in Ireland.
"I said to Condoleezza Rice that this is an issue which the Irish Government placed great store in, in that we accept now that, on the one hand, there are illegal people, Irish people here.
"We have to accept that as a reality. What we want to do now is to try and look forward in that, if any Irish person wants to come to the US that they do it in a legitimate way and that it's well tied-down so that they're happy from a security point of view and equally so, if there are people from the US who, substantial numbers of people from the US in some cases, have difficulty in getting a visa into Ireland.
"So obviously there's a possibility of reciprocation there. And in doing that, if we can in some way deal with the existing problem, that is going to be a recurring problem, whether we like it or not," he said.