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| Title: | Celt Notefile |
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| Moderator: | TALLIS::DARCY |
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| Created: | Wed Feb 19 1986 |
| Last Modified: | Tue Jun 03 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 1632 |
| Total number of notes: | 20523 |
150.0. "...to the shores of Botany Bay" by TALLIS::DARCY (George @Littleton Mass USA) Tue Mar 10 1987 13:17
Associated Press Mon 9-MAR-1987 14:24 Irish Emigration
pirX 9-MAR-8714
Few Jobs and High Taxes Fuel Wave of Irish Emigration
Eds: Also moved for PMs
An AP Extra
By MARCUS ELIASON
Associated Press Writer
DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - High taxes, shrinking job prospects and a
new-found cosmopolitan spirit are fueling the biggest wave of
emigration this island republic has experienced since the 1920s.
In January, when the U.S. government offered an extra 10,000
immigration visas worldwide on a first-come, first-serve basis, the
Irish swamped Washington with 100,000 applications. They won 3,112
visas, the most of any country.
The outflow of people is nothing new in Ireland, with its high
birth rates and meager natural resources. In the Great Famine of
1845-49, nearly 1 million fled to North America and even after
independence from Britain 65 years ago it averaged 22,000 a year
until 1930.
But after the booming 1960s, emigration is back to an estimated
Associated Press Mon 9-MAR-1987 14:24 Irish Emigration (cont'd)
25,000to 30,000 a year out of a population of 3.5 million as
unemployment approaches 20 percent.
``People are hungry, jobless, living below a level at which
pride is possible (and) well-educated young people are shoaling out
of the country,'' commented the Irish Press, a Dublin newspaper.
Some are reminded of the Belfast-born poet Louis MacNeice, who
wrote bitterly of an Ireland that ``gives her children neither
sense nor money, who slouch around the world with a gesture and a
brogue ...''
But the stereotype of the Irish emigrant as unskilled farm
laborer has given way to the young Irish scientist working at the
frontiers of Dutch or German technology, and this disheartens the
planners who were counting on these college graduates to lead
Ireland's own high-tech revolution.
Brendan Walsh, a political science professor at University
College Dublin, says that of 829 engineering graduates nationwide
in 1985, 311 are working or studying abroad. In 1986 ``the
situation probably became more dramatic,'' Walsh said in an
interview.
A recent television documentary tracked down young Irish
Associated Press Mon 9-MAR-1987 14:24 Irish Emigration (cont'd)
scientists in Europe, all of whom cited high taxes, limited job
opportunities and the provincial, church-dominated lifestyle of
Ireland as reasons for leaving.
Today, with 800,000 taxpayers subsidizing 1 million school and
college kids, Ireland is caught in a vicious circle: the generous
state education system is financed by heavy borrowing, which leads
to high taxation, which stifles business, shrinks the job market
and sends the best-educated abroad. Income tax is 58 percent on the
average white-collar salary.
A government poster showing smiling college graduates under a
slogan ``We are the Young Europeans'' became a national joke with
the discovery that nine of the 20 graduates had emigrated and only
two had found jobs in Ireland.
The emigration problem was evident during Ireland's recent
election campaign, eclipsing traditional issues like the Northern
Ireland conflict or the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church over
family life.
As Charles Haughey campaigned against Prime Minister Garret
Fitzgerald, bystanders constantly badgered him to help lure their
children home.
Associated Press Mon 9-MAR-1987 14:24 Irish Emigration (cont'd)
Pat Hearey, a greengrocer in Ceilbridge, spoke wistfully of his
daughter gone to England. In Newbridge, Mary Stanley said her
husband had been in England for nine months, working as a telephone
repairman, and her daughter Elizabeth, 18, said she would soon go
``across the water'' - an Irishism for emigrating to England.
Haughey, who won the election, has promised to stem emigration,
but the only specific measure he has mentioned is a diplomatic
initiative to improve the status of illegal Irish immigrants in the
United States.
FitzGerald says he predicted the problem 20 years ago, arguing
that Ireland would need economic growth of 7 percent or 8 percent
in the 1980s and 1990s to prevent unemployment. But growth this
decade has been near zero and half the population is under 25 years
old.
Some see merits in emigration. Writing in the Irish Times,
education planner Jim McCabe of the World Bank said Ireland as a
member of the European Economic Community, could fill the manpower
gap developing on the Continent.
``We should see ourselves as a state of Western Europe in much
the same way as, say, Wisconsin is relative to the U.S.A.,'' he
Associated Press Mon 9-MAR-1987 14:24 Irish Emigration (cont'd)
wrote.
| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
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| 150.1 | More than an Irish problem? | AYOV15::ASCOTT | Alan Scott, FMIC, Ayr, Scotland | Wed Mar 11 1987 05:44 | 18 |
| Things aren't quite so bad hereabouts, but bad enough (high
unemployment, particularly young people, and high emigration of young
people). Some of it has to do (I think) with the politics of the
current world economy (Thatcher and Reagan monetarism and
non-intervention), which translates into national/regional problems for
countries/regions economically close to southern England and remote
from other EEC countries.
Question is, how do we get out of this mess? Or do people on the
fringes of Europe have to accept the Jim McCabe/World Bank scenario of
being a "state of W. Europe"? Nationalists could read "province",
socialist internationalists could read "colony", instead of "state".
And are things as bad in Wisconsin, (or Alaska)? We hear that the US
federal system is better at keeping some local economic decision-making
and resources, than seems to be going on in Ireland (or Scotland or
Wales or northern England), relative to southern England or other more
prosperous parts of the EEC.
|
| 150.2 | Botany Bay or ????? | FNYFS::AUNGIER | Rene El Irlandais que no tiene tiempo para los Ingles | Fri Mar 20 1987 07:11 | 26 |
| It is a bit sad that people have to leave the country to find work
or leave to avoid the heavy burden of the tax system. The first
case being the worst.
The youth of a nation should be in a decade or 2 the fathers of
a nation but the way thing are going Ireland will be like "A land
of the living dead". To grow up, study etc and in the end find nothing
is a crime.
When I left school jobs were available easily, you could change
jobs without any hassle as ther were plenty of them. Now it is a
fact that you are lucky to have a job no matter what your
qualifications are.
It might not be Botany Bay but its a boat or plane to somewhere,
anywhere. If you are single it is a little easier but for married
people it must be disasterous.
The song should be re-written for the 1980's as some how the words
don't quite fit the 80's.
Nil me mairbh, agus ta me thar saille agus ta me ag obair.
Rene
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| 150.3 | | SEILER::SEILER | Larry Seiler | Fri Mar 20 1987 11:25 | 10 |
| I heard a news item last week (National Public Radio) that there are an
estimated 15,000 Irish illegal aliens in the Boston area alone, many of
whom live in great fear that they will be discovered and deported. But
according to the story, there were only 50 Irish deportations last year,
out of about 1,000 total in Boston, mostly of people who had gotten in
trouble with the law in some way.
By the way, if you should happen to know someone who has been in the US
illegally for 5 or more years (and can prove it), there is now an amnesty
provision that can get them legal status.
|
| 150.4 | ag obair i mBoston | TALLIS::DARCY | George @Littleton Mass USA | Fri Mar 20 1987 12:36 | 44 |
| The real figure in the greater Boston area is at about 60,000.
The quoted figures are usually lower. The deportations are in most
cases for those who get in trouble with the law or their employers.
Construction jobs are the best because you can be paid under the
table and figures can be fudged. Other non-trackable jobs include
nannies (babysitting), working at Irish bars in Boston, landscaping,
carpentry, painting, waitressing, etc.
It does get tricky at times though. If you're trying to reenter
the country after overstaying your visa, then you have to be alert.
Don't pack a lot of clothes and letters from relatives wishing you
good luck. Maybe make believe you're on a business trip and wear
a 3-piece suit. Another alternative is to come from another country
i.e. fly to London and then come to the US; customs officials
are then less inclined to hassle you.
Once you're here you can try sending your passport back with someone
else to be stamped and then have it mailed back to you. This way
you can legally reenter the US at a later time. The only problem
is that when you go home you have to find someone else to play this
game with.
Nannies get about $125 - $200 US per week as well as free room and
board. It's not a bad deal but there are drawbacks. If you aren't
near Boston or on a busline or don't have your international liscence
then transportation can be a hassle. The people sometimes expect
you to work nights and/or weekends. Work it out before you start.
In addition, the families are usually very rich and not your
traditional white-collar middle-class American.
Construction, painting, carpentry can be worthwhile too. Good if
you're working for someone and better if you're working for yourself.
The range here is anywhere from $8 per hour to $20 per hour depending
on the work and how skilled you are.
Working in bars, restaurants, etc is also hard work. You meet people
and get out of the house though. Expect anywhere from $6 to $10
per hour. Waitresses and bartenders can make bigger bucks, but
only on good nights, and that usually means seniority.
-George
T� me t�im a caife anois. T� ocras agam.
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