Tweet
Back Home in Ireland, Greener Pastures
By NINA BERNSTEIN
They arrived as the New Irish in the 1980's and 90's, thousands drawn to a New York that still glittered in family lore as a place where hard work could bring prosperity.
But the glitter began to dim along with the economy and the government's attitude toward illegal immigrants. Now they are streaming back to Ireland at such a clip that in the neighborhoods they regreened in Queens, Yonkers and the Bronx, once-packed pubs stand half-empty and apartment vacancies go begging.
Some immigrants, longtime illegal residents losing hope for legal status, say they are being driven out by new security crackdowns that make it harder for those without a valid Social Security number to drive, work or plan a future in the United States.
Others, already naturalized citizens, say the price in toil for health care and education was too high, and hope for a less-exhausting life in a prosperous Ireland.
"It's the complete reversal of the American dream," said Adrian Flannelly, chairman of the Irish Radio Network in New York, who has served on an Irish government task force on returnees. The exodus from the city, he said, signals a historic shift in a relationship that is part of the city's backbone, inscribed in the subways and bridges built by Irish immigrant labor in past centuries.
Michael and Catroina Condon, both naturalized American citizens who spent 19 and 11 years in New York, respectively, say Ireland's style of prosperity promises a better life for their children. After the birth of their first baby, they said, they rebelled against the toll of seven-day workweeks to pay rising costs in a sluggish American economy.
"It's longer hours, less money, and a lot of the time you see people working for their wage just to pay their rent, to pay their health insurance," said Ms. Condon, 31, who was a corporate secretary in Manhattan before returning in September to Mullingar, in County Westmeath. Her husband, a carpenter, is starting his own business, and she envisions a wedding-planning enterprise.
The exodus is hard to quantify, but unmistakable, according to observers in the travel agencies, real estate offices, moving companies and pubs that cater to Irish New Yorkers in the Bronx and Queens. Christina McElwaine, a spokeswoman for the Irish Consulate in New York, said the reversal seemed unprecedented in scale.
Some Irish immigrants have always gone back home, of course, and in 2002, after several years of strong economic growth and declining emigration, Ireland's census recorded 26,000 more Irish who returned than left.
It was one of the largest inflows ever in a country that had hemorrhaged its population for most of three centuries, and lost 23,000 as recently as 1990.
But the Irish departures reached critical mass in New York last summer, and were echoed in the last two years in Boston and Philadelphia. "If this trend continues, it will be a very rare commodity to hear an Irish accent in this country," said Tom Conaghan, director of Philadelphia's Irish Immigration and Pastoral Center.
The surge surprised even Danny Moloney, director of Liffey Van Lines, which had to keep its container loading dock in upper Manhattan open 24 hours a day to meet the demand from families shipping their household goods back to Ireland before school began.
"Our business has tripled in the past year," he said. "It's all people that are going home to Ireland." Áine Cullen, a waitress at Eileen's Country Kitchen on McLean Avenue in Yonkers, followed six of her brothers when she migrated to New York seven years ago at 21. Now, most of her family has moved back.
"Everybody's leaving and nobody's coming over anymore," Ms. Cullen said, ticking off colleagues, friends and relatives who packed up and moved back to Ireland over the summer or have bought one-way tickets home before Christmas. "This will be the fourth brother to go."
Some leave reluctantly. "I don't really have much of a choice," said Johnny C., 44, a construction worker who made a good living in New York for 14 years, only to see his jobs dwindle since a Department of Motor Vehicles crackdown this year left him unable to renew his driver's license. He sent his wife and 13-year-old United States-born daughter back to Waterford, Ireland, in June, he said, speaking on condition that his last name not be published, and he will join them this week.
Counselors in immigrant advice bureaus on both sides of the Atlantic say that many returnees will have a rude awakening in Ireland - especially those who were stuck in the underground economy in the United States, unable to travel abroad for fear of not getting back in. The Irish government now puts out brochures warning that they will find not the Ireland of memory, but rather a fast-paced multiracial society where their dollars are weak against the euro and affordable housing scarce.
"The old tradition that you come to America and you work like hell and you save, and you go back and the almighty dollar will give you a kick start - that's all over," Mr. Flannelly said.
But for those who linger illegally in New York, there is another twist in the Irish-American relationship. Now it is they who marvel at visiting Irish friends and relatives who are able to fly to New York for the weekend, just to shop for cheap designer-label goods, or to consider investing in a $300,000 apartment.
"For generations, we Irish have fled oppression and poverty to New York in the hope of a better way of life; now it seems we just want to buy the place," Tim O'Brien wrote in The Irish Times in a Sept. 23 article about "the latest big thing" - "how affordable property is for the Irish investor."
Johnny C., the construction worker, remembers that kind of attitude in the Irish-American visitors of his childhood. "The shoe is really on the other foot now," he said.
In the Woodlawn section of the Bronx, where homes typically change hands through word of mouth, the ripple effects are inescapable. An Irish-American landlord said that half a dozen of his apartments had been vacant since August and that his wife had to close down her home day care business as families moved away.
Siobhan Dennehy, director of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center, in Queens, said others had only been holding out for a fresh approach to immigration after the election. One example was a 40-year-old mother in Woodside, Queens, who began packing last Wednesday after seven years. "The election definitely tipped things for me," she said as she prepared to take her New York-born daughter back to Sligo. "I may as well go home and be part of a society that I can belong to and contribute to. Under Bush, it's never going to happen."
But Anthony Finn, a counselor with the Emigrant Advice Centre in Dublin, said the returnees might find disillusionment, too, in today's Ireland. The most successful, he said, are those who got legal status in the United States; the illegal are caught short in both economies.
On one side is Barry Fox, a carpenter who went from illegal day laborer to American citizen earning a union wage over a dozen years in New York. "I think I'm actually better off," Mr. Fox, a father of three, said in a telephone call from County Tyrone, where he built a home on his father's farmland after returning three years ago.
Weighing the higher cost of parochial school education, health insurance and his mortgage in Yonkers, he said even his $70-an-hour union carpenter's wage in New York fell short of what he earned now.
At the other end is a couple that left Boston for County Cork two years ago, and told Kieran O'Sullivan, a counselor at Boston's Irish Immigration Center, that they now regretted it.
While they were in the United States, prices soared in Ireland, spurred by the high-tech boom known as the Celtic Tiger. But they do not qualify for high-paying work, they said, and service jobs in hotels and restaurants go to the recent wave of immigrants from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe willing to work harder for lower wages.
"We were only gone for four and a half years, but everything had changed," the wife said in a call from Ireland, asking to remain anonymous in hopes of avoiding a 10-year ban on re-entering the United States, imposed on anyone found to have overstayed a tourist visa by more than 180 days.
Mr. Finn, the emigrant advice officer in Dublin, agreed. "They are not returning," he said of the Irish from America. "They're remigrating to a different country."
By NINA BERNSTEIN
They arrived as the New Irish in the 1980's and 90's, thousands drawn to a New York that still glittered in family lore as a place where hard work could bring prosperity.
But the glitter began to dim along with the economy and the government's attitude toward illegal immigrants. Now they are streaming back to Ireland at such a clip that in the neighborhoods they regreened in Queens, Yonkers and the Bronx, once-packed pubs stand half-empty and apartment vacancies go begging.
Some immigrants, longtime illegal residents losing hope for legal status, say they are being driven out by new security crackdowns that make it harder for those without a valid Social Security number to drive, work or plan a future in the United States.
Others, already naturalized citizens, say the price in toil for health care and education was too high, and hope for a less-exhausting life in a prosperous Ireland.
"It's the complete reversal of the American dream," said Adrian Flannelly, chairman of the Irish Radio Network in New York, who has served on an Irish government task force on returnees. The exodus from the city, he said, signals a historic shift in a relationship that is part of the city's backbone, inscribed in the subways and bridges built by Irish immigrant labor in past centuries.
Michael and Catroina Condon, both naturalized American citizens who spent 19 and 11 years in New York, respectively, say Ireland's style of prosperity promises a better life for their children. After the birth of their first baby, they said, they rebelled against the toll of seven-day workweeks to pay rising costs in a sluggish American economy.
"It's longer hours, less money, and a lot of the time you see people working for their wage just to pay their rent, to pay their health insurance," said Ms. Condon, 31, who was a corporate secretary in Manhattan before returning in September to Mullingar, in County Westmeath. Her husband, a carpenter, is starting his own business, and she envisions a wedding-planning enterprise.
The exodus is hard to quantify, but unmistakable, according to observers in the travel agencies, real estate offices, moving companies and pubs that cater to Irish New Yorkers in the Bronx and Queens. Christina McElwaine, a spokeswoman for the Irish Consulate in New York, said the reversal seemed unprecedented in scale.
Some Irish immigrants have always gone back home, of course, and in 2002, after several years of strong economic growth and declining emigration, Ireland's census recorded 26,000 more Irish who returned than left.
It was one of the largest inflows ever in a country that had hemorrhaged its population for most of three centuries, and lost 23,000 as recently as 1990.
But the Irish departures reached critical mass in New York last summer, and were echoed in the last two years in Boston and Philadelphia. "If this trend continues, it will be a very rare commodity to hear an Irish accent in this country," said Tom Conaghan, director of Philadelphia's Irish Immigration and Pastoral Center.
The surge surprised even Danny Moloney, director of Liffey Van Lines, which had to keep its container loading dock in upper Manhattan open 24 hours a day to meet the demand from families shipping their household goods back to Ireland before school began.
"Our business has tripled in the past year," he said. "It's all people that are going home to Ireland." Áine Cullen, a waitress at Eileen's Country Kitchen on McLean Avenue in Yonkers, followed six of her brothers when she migrated to New York seven years ago at 21. Now, most of her family has moved back.
"Everybody's leaving and nobody's coming over anymore," Ms. Cullen said, ticking off colleagues, friends and relatives who packed up and moved back to Ireland over the summer or have bought one-way tickets home before Christmas. "This will be the fourth brother to go."
Some leave reluctantly. "I don't really have much of a choice," said Johnny C., 44, a construction worker who made a good living in New York for 14 years, only to see his jobs dwindle since a Department of Motor Vehicles crackdown this year left him unable to renew his driver's license. He sent his wife and 13-year-old United States-born daughter back to Waterford, Ireland, in June, he said, speaking on condition that his last name not be published, and he will join them this week.
Counselors in immigrant advice bureaus on both sides of the Atlantic say that many returnees will have a rude awakening in Ireland - especially those who were stuck in the underground economy in the United States, unable to travel abroad for fear of not getting back in. The Irish government now puts out brochures warning that they will find not the Ireland of memory, but rather a fast-paced multiracial society where their dollars are weak against the euro and affordable housing scarce.
"The old tradition that you come to America and you work like hell and you save, and you go back and the almighty dollar will give you a kick start - that's all over," Mr. Flannelly said.
But for those who linger illegally in New York, there is another twist in the Irish-American relationship. Now it is they who marvel at visiting Irish friends and relatives who are able to fly to New York for the weekend, just to shop for cheap designer-label goods, or to consider investing in a $300,000 apartment.
"For generations, we Irish have fled oppression and poverty to New York in the hope of a better way of life; now it seems we just want to buy the place," Tim O'Brien wrote in The Irish Times in a Sept. 23 article about "the latest big thing" - "how affordable property is for the Irish investor."
Johnny C., the construction worker, remembers that kind of attitude in the Irish-American visitors of his childhood. "The shoe is really on the other foot now," he said.
In the Woodlawn section of the Bronx, where homes typically change hands through word of mouth, the ripple effects are inescapable. An Irish-American landlord said that half a dozen of his apartments had been vacant since August and that his wife had to close down her home day care business as families moved away.
Siobhan Dennehy, director of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center, in Queens, said others had only been holding out for a fresh approach to immigration after the election. One example was a 40-year-old mother in Woodside, Queens, who began packing last Wednesday after seven years. "The election definitely tipped things for me," she said as she prepared to take her New York-born daughter back to Sligo. "I may as well go home and be part of a society that I can belong to and contribute to. Under Bush, it's never going to happen."
But Anthony Finn, a counselor with the Emigrant Advice Centre in Dublin, said the returnees might find disillusionment, too, in today's Ireland. The most successful, he said, are those who got legal status in the United States; the illegal are caught short in both economies.
On one side is Barry Fox, a carpenter who went from illegal day laborer to American citizen earning a union wage over a dozen years in New York. "I think I'm actually better off," Mr. Fox, a father of three, said in a telephone call from County Tyrone, where he built a home on his father's farmland after returning three years ago.
Weighing the higher cost of parochial school education, health insurance and his mortgage in Yonkers, he said even his $70-an-hour union carpenter's wage in New York fell short of what he earned now.
At the other end is a couple that left Boston for County Cork two years ago, and told Kieran O'Sullivan, a counselor at Boston's Irish Immigration Center, that they now regretted it.
While they were in the United States, prices soared in Ireland, spurred by the high-tech boom known as the Celtic Tiger. But they do not qualify for high-paying work, they said, and service jobs in hotels and restaurants go to the recent wave of immigrants from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe willing to work harder for lower wages.
"We were only gone for four and a half years, but everything had changed," the wife said in a call from Ireland, asking to remain anonymous in hopes of avoiding a 10-year ban on re-entering the United States, imposed on anyone found to have overstayed a tourist visa by more than 180 days.
Mr. Finn, the emigrant advice officer in Dublin, agreed. "They are not returning," he said of the Irish from America. "They're remigrating to a different country."
Comment