Senator unrelenting in campaign for Irish in America... and all the diaspora

Chicago publican working on ‘difficult’ deal for illegals in US, writes John Downing

IT BEGAN with an after-lunch discussion in his pub some 20 years ago. Galway-born publican Billy Lawless was talking with about 15 Irish building workers at his Irish Oak Bar, close to famed Wrigley Fields, which is home to the Chicago Cubs baseball team.

Their immediate problem as illegal immigrants was getting a driving licence and motor insurance. Soon Mr Lawless got stuck into the ‘Chicago Celts for Immigration Reform’ group leading to a plethora of other campaigns to improve the migrants’ lot.

To this day he finds it extraordinary how poisonous the atmosphere is around the question of immigration in the US – a country which after all is built on immigration. The Irish immigrants, or those of recent Irish extraction, are no exception to this deep irony, he reflects.

“Some immigrants forget they would not be in the US if the current rules applied when they or their parents first came to the States,” he muses when we meet at Leinster House.

Mr Lawless’s own migrant journey, over and back across the Atlantic, does not reflect the usual pattern of Irish emigration to America. Life began on a dairy farm in the suburbs of Galway city which supplied unpasteurised milk to historic city.

Two things happened with that family enterprise. The city continued to expand and that farm at Newcastle is now either part of the NUIG that university campus or given over to the many new housing estates. At the same time the public health rules made pasteurisation of milk mandatory.

For a time the young Billy Lawless contemplated working another family dairy farm at Belclare, near Tuam. But he was heavily involved in rowing in Galway city and he decided instead to move into the pub business, first in the city and later in other parts of Galway.

He and his wife Anne had four children. When his youngest daughter, Amy, got a rowing scholarship to Boston he took it as a sign that he could after all realise his life-long dream of seeing whether he could succeed in the US.

Like many Galway people

he was set to emigrate to Boston in 1998, at the unusually late age of 47. But a series of accidents brought him on to Chicago, the great US city he soon made home.

That first pub had been a Mexican restaurant but he shipped out the entire fittings of a traditional pub in Belfast to transform it into an Irish bar. It was a success and over the following two decades he expanded the business, while also moving into the centre of Chicago.

Two decades later the family pub and catering business now runs to six premises which employ 500 people. It is a business success story.

The migrant advocacy continued apace while all this was happening. He was involved in the state-wide Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Chicago has a huge mix of ethnic migrants with large Irish, Polish, Ukrainian and Lithuanian communities.

The driving licence campaign ultimately paid dividends and led to licences and car insurance for thousands of undocumented immigrants. But the campaign for residence status for illegal immigrants has proved a much more difficult proposition.

Mr Lawless maintains that there must be some effort to make a special case for the Irish. “I make no apology for that – but it may be more difficult than you’d think.”

His work for migrants inevitably brought him close to the Chicago Democratic Party activists and eventually to president Barack Obama. He was disappointed this link did not lead to immigration reform – but says frankly that Mr Obama was focused on affordable healthcare and could not afford another big political battle.

He believes Donald Trump’s championing of immigration clampdowns was something of an accident. Mr Trump just found a politically beneficial raw mood among the public.

Mr Lawless was always a Fine Gael supporter and reasonably friendly with former Taoiseach Enda Kenny (pictured inset).

That said he was astonished when Mr Kenny called him in May 2016 and offered him a Seanad nomination as a representative of the Irish diaspora. “I was all the more surprised because Fine Gael lost so many TDs. But now the principle is established I hope it will continue, whether it is me or anyone else coming after me,” he comments.

There was a brief flurry about the cost of his appointment in travel expenses from Chicago. But no such thing was ever likely to happen.

When the Seanad is sitting, Mr Lawless comes to a family home in Galway and travels for several days each week to Leinster House. “I pay my own flights and am paid expenses on the basis of travel from Galway,” he explains.

The work for a remedy for Irish illegals will continue whatever happens. He is also keen to get some voting rights for Irish citizens but that campaign will be discussed on another day.

He is very optimistic about Ireland’s growing relationship with the US that dates back two centuries.

He says, despite President Trump’s company tax warnings, US pharmaceutical and IT companies retain a strong Irish presence and Irish companies in the US now employ some 150,000 people.

Some immigrants forget they would not be in the US if the current rules applied when they or their parents came to the States