Undocumented Irish Immigrants

You know, I was trying to find a nice and funny graphic that related to the Irish for today since today is St. Patrick’s Day. But, I keep circling back to that piece I posted last year. Because, unfortunately, these are not terribly uplifting times.

We make a great big deal about how we need to enforce deportation orders and build walls to keep out Mexicans and others from Latin America. But, the Irish are a far smaller, but still significant ethnic group that tends to arrive here and stay here in an undocumented fashion.

And somehow—though on this I would love to be wrong—I think the United States would generally make a bigger deal about Peter O’Toole being deported to Donegal than Pedro Toledo to Durango.

The point is that these are all people. And the Statue of Liberty does not say: “Give us your, wealthy, high-points earned on a merit system, looks like you and me, believes like you and me, and ready to contribute to society.”. No, it says, “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Surely that lamp wasn’t meant to flicker only a greenish glow.

That's a lot of people
That’s a lot of people

Irish Immigration

Illegal immigration is one of the big topics in the American presidential election. Some of us want to build a wall to keep out illegal Mexican immigrants. Today’s graphic is a number. Illegal immigrants are not limited to Latin America, but they come even from places like Ireland looking for a better life. The number is the estimated number of undocumented Irish living and working in the United States.

That's a lot of people
That’s a lot of people

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

I am unabashedly Irish-American. So, Happy St. Patrick’s Day. But, I am not the only Irish-American in America. In 2013, Trulia put together a post about the Irish in America using US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey data. The post also links to an interactive map looking at US counties by their self-reporting Irish-ness. Not surprisingly, the Northeast is the most Irish, Philadelphia is the 8th largest metro area at 14.2%.

Chester County
Chester County

Credit for the piece goes to Trulia.