DEPORTED!
They went to to chase the American dream, now many Irish who made homes there face a very uncertain future...
lot of people are leading relatively normal lives,’ she reveals. ‘Some of them were running huge businesses and were still illegal. That’s a real bone of contention: you can pay thousands of dollars in tax, even if you are illegal.
‘In the end, a lot of people were quite sensitive to being out and about. There’s a real incentive to keeping one’s nose clean. It’s psychologically tough, not being able to go to places, even taking internal flights. The world soon becomes quite small.
‘We met one couple who had been business owners in Ireland, but their businesses went belly up in the crash,’ she adds. ‘They brought their teenage kids to the US about six or seven years ago, and she works as a bartender. They’re quite adamant that it’s the best move for them, and that they’re better off in the US than at home, even under these circumstances.’
Mags Nash wasn’t deported from the US, preferring instead to return to her native Limerick in 2009, after 15 years of living in the US as an undocumented immigrant.
‘I wasn’t happy being in Ireland in 1994, as there was a recession,’ she recalls. ‘I decided to try San Francisco so a friend put me up and I got work, the usual Irish thing. I went into a bar looking for accommodation. Once you go out there, the Irish are amazing at helping you get stuff. I had to move around a bit in work, though.’
Nash soon heard of a person selling counterfeit green cards on the street — ‘a guy selling sweets outside a bodega’ — and within hours, she had secured one. She found work in a catering company and soon moved quickly up the ranks.
‘I worked at that company for six years, and then they did a sweep of the whole company,’ she says. ‘The company had to cross-reference all social security numbers, and I got caught in the crosshairs.
‘I quit the job and went back to bouncing around from job to job. In the end, it became too much, the constant looking over your shoulder.’
Though she enjoyed living in the city, keeping under the radar soon became a preoccupation.
‘There is a hospital in San Francisco where if you register with them and you’re illegal, they would take care of you,’ she explains. ‘Luckily, I never got sick during my time there, but getting closer to the end, it did become a concern.
‘I was driving illegally as I couldn’t get a licence,’ she says. ‘I’d buy a scooter, then sell it on Craigslist. Not long before I came home I was pulled over on my scooter by a cop. I gave him my name in Irish and he then told me that I was lying to him. I stood in the middle of the road and cried.
‘In the end he took the bike off me and gave me a fine.’
WHILE many undocumented Irish prefer not to take the risk, Nash found a way to travel in and out of the US. ‘I’d “accidentally” lose my passport and they’d give me a temporary one, so there was no record of me leaving the country,’ she explains.
‘After 9/11 they got really strict, and I remember being pulled over in Shannon on my way back to the US. I was sweating bullets. In the end she said, “I’m not 100% sure, but go ahead”. I think that became a real turning point.’
Nash arrived home in 2009, to a bitterly cold Irish winter.
‘I sat on the radiator for the whole winter,’ she smiles. ‘Limerick had changed — Tod’s became Brown Thomas — but in many ways it hadn’t changed.
‘What really struck me was how, in the US, no-one ever put it on me about taking jobs or anything, but all you heard in Ireland was people talking about foreigners taking our jobs. Maybe, because I’d travelled, I had a different perspective but I couldn’t get over it.’ Nash set up Badass Burritos in Limerick, taking a small part of the Mission District’s famous fare home with her.
‘I’d love to be living there now, it was the best time of my life,’ she says. ‘But I wouldn’t live like that again.’
For now, Enda’s impassioned plea for the US government to ‘sort’ the immigration issue has seemingly fallen on deaf ears. Many are still actively hoping for visa waivers to come to fruition for the undocumented Irish living in America.
The Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform is urging the Government here to put pressure on US authorities to actively offer waivers to those who have overstayed their initial visas and have found themselves living in the country illegally. In effect, this waiver would allow undocumented people the chance to travel to and from their host country — a lifeline required by many Irish people.
Yet given recent events, it’s safe to say that the struggle for the undocumented Irish in the US is far from over.
Says Foley: ‘I’d like to see comprehensive immigration reform, where they look on a case-by-case basis, to see if the person is good for the US or bad for the US.
‘They may need to pay a penalty for overstaying, but it would be great if people could be given an avenue to relief.
‘For now, they’re stuck on hold.’