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Irish Immigration Center of Philadelphia

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A New Shepherd for Irish Immigrants

When she fields the calls from Ireland, Siobhan Lyons makes it clear that she’s executive director of the Irish Immigration Center of  Greater Philadelphia,  not the Welcome Wagon.

“I’ve taken several calls from people who say, ‘I’m coming over, how do I find jobs?’ I say, ‘Please don’t come,’” says Lyons, who has been on the job at the 10-year-old center in Upper Darby for only about three months. “’You do not want to come here undocumented, because that’s getting harder and harder.’”

Although there aren’t any hard figures on new immigration trends, Lyons says that other Irish immigration experts are expecting to take more of those calls as economic conditions in Ireland—where unemployment, in the double digits, is at a 14-year high—continue to deteriorate.

New laws and programs in the US and Pennsylvania in particular have made it dicey for immigrants to overstay their visas. “For example, you need to prove that you are in the country legally in order to get or renew your driver’s license in Pennsylvania,” says Lyons, who was born in Dublin and came to this country (legally) five years ago. “That means that undocumented immigrants will either be forced not to drive or could be arrested for driving without a license. Local police officers are also being tasked with enforcing immigration laws.  So, under the ‘Secure Communities’ program, the fingerprints of people arrested for any reason, including minor traffic offenses, are checked against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement database, meaning that you could end up deported after running a red light.”

Laws like those are likely to drive the undocumented Irish underground even further, making them fearful of contacting the police if they’re victims of a crime or coming forward as a witness. “These policies are not the solution,” she says.   “We need comprehensive immigration reform to create an immigration system that works and that is flexible enough to respond to the changing needs of the American workforce.”

Getting here legally is no picnic either, as Lyons knows personally. She’s held several visas, including the H4 (as the spouse of an temporary foreign worker), the F2 (for spouses and children of a foreign student), and the TD (for immediate family of  a foreign worker), all of which prepares her well for dealing with the Byzantine legal regulations immigrants face and gives you a little insight into her own history.

The daughter of an Irish diplomat, Lyons spent her childhood and teen years in Dublin,  Nairobi, Washington, DC, London, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. While at university, she visited her father in the Arab capitol where she caught a glimpse of the older Saudi princesses with their black costumes and tribal tattoos “who were so different from all the young princesses I knew who spoke English, skied, and wore designer clothes.” She paid close attention when the wife of the then British ambassador, an Arabic speaker, approached and began to chat with them. “I thought I’d really like to know what these women have to say,” she recalls. So instead of getting the law or history degree she thought she wanted, she majored in Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Of course, like all best laid plans, this one has gone astray. She hasn’t really had to use her language skills, even though she served in the Irish diplomatic service. “My area was looking at Ireland’s role in the EU (European Union), specifically whether the money we gave to the EU was being spent the way it should have been,” she explains. Today, she says with a grin, “my taxi Arabic is good.”

She came to the US in 2005  with her then-husband, a Canadian who was finishing his PhD at Princeton and later launched a start-up company in Philadelphia—hence the plethora of spouse visas. But those visas had a major drawback—while Lyons was here legally as a spouse, she couldn’t work. So she began volunteering with nonprofits “just to fill up my days.”

While her marriage didn’t last, her love for the area did. But to stay, she needed a company that was willing to go through intense rigmarole to hire her. “If you’re looking for a job the first thing they ask is if you have a Green Card. If the answer is no, clunk!” She pantomimes a phone being slammed down. “To hire a foreigner, a company has to prove that the candidate is better than any other American who applied for the job and that they’re not undercutting standard wages.”

Companies who want to hire foreign workers face an uphill battle. Workers need to be offer employment by April 1 (leaving a small window for recruitment and interviewing ) and can’t start work until the following October. Only 65,000 work or H1B visas are issued each year and in the past there have been as many as 145,000 applications so even after a worker has passed the employment tests and been hired, the visas are only issued after a lottery. “You have about a one in three chance of getting one,” she says. For a company that has spent considerable time and money recruiting, interviewing and hiring a worker and filling out all the forms and paying the fees, that means it all could come down to the luck of the draw.  

“This is something Bill Gates of Microsoft is always complaining about,” says Lyons. “Of course, my bugbear is the visas for spouses. If America wants to attracts PhDs and MBAs and other skilled professionals, you have to understand that highly educated people tend to have highly educated spouses who don’t want to end up working as a volunteer.”

Lyons eventually was hired by the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia as its director of communications and foundation relations,  largely, she says, “because they’d never hired a foreigner before and didn’t know what they were getting into! But, of course, I will be eternally grateful that they didn’t back out once they realized.”

A chance meeting with a member of the Immigration Center board last St. Patrick’s Day while she was attending the annual breakfast sponsored by Judge Jimmy Lynn at The Plough and the Stars led to the offer of a job to be the executive director of the 10-year-old center, founded by Donegal-born Tom Conaghan, who is continuing a director of immigration services on a voluntary basis.

Lyons has her work cut out for her. Anticipating a favorable change in immigration laws—a campaign promise of the Obama administration—she’s working with her 10-member board on plans to prepare local undocumented Irish for eventual legalization.

“They’re going to need proof of residence, proof that they’ve paid taxes, and are of good moral character, and paying taxes is one way of showing that,” she explains. “The problem is, many undocumented workers may be using false names, not keep a proper address, have nothing in their name, using other people’s phones, just to stay under the radar. They’re going to need to be able to prove that they’ve been here a while and didn’t just arrive as a tourist. They’re going to need a tax EIN (a federal tax identification number) so they can pay taxes since they don’t have Social Security numbers.”

One goal: To have the immigration center certified by the US Board of Immigration Appeals “so that we can provide assistance to Irish workers in dealing with some of the legal issues for a nominal fee. If we’re recognized,” she says, “it will help stop unscrupulous people from taking advantage of undocumented residents. Those people are already out there and they see easy money to be made.”

Another target: Creating as many new American citizens as possible. As as many Irish citizens as she can. “We want to push citizenship on both sides so the Irish who live here can gain all the advantages of being American and Americans can gain the advantages of being Irish.”

In fact, Americans whose parents or grandparents were born in Ireland qualify for Irish citizenship and passports. The more Irish there are, she reasons, the more powerful they are as a constituency. The Irish diaspora—historically a source of pain and sorrow for many Irish—is also one of Ireland’s greatest strength, she says. “Having Americans with connections to Ireland has been a great thing for Ireland. In hard years, Irish Americans send money home. In good times, they travel to Ireland. It turned out to be to Ireland’s benefit and the opportunity for dual citizenship helps Irish Americans keep that connection to Ireland.”

There are also other benefits for Americans who gain their IRish citizenship—lower cost visas to other countries, no visas for Europe, breezing through customs, the latter no small thing to anyone who has ever had their packed unmentionables manhandled in front of an audience.

“So everyone needs to come in and we’ll help,” she promises with a laugh.

The Irish Immigration Center of Greater Philadelphia (formerly the Irish Immigration and Pastoral Center) provides confidential counseling services at its office at 7 S. Cedar Lane (at its intersection with Route 3) in Upper Darby. Phone: 610-789-6355. Website: www.philadelphiairishimmigrants.org

August 7, 2009 by
People

For 10 Years, the Hope of the Irish Immigrant Community in Philadelphia

The Wednesday lunch bunch at the Irish Immigration and Pastoral Center.

The Wednesday lunch bunch at the Irish Immigration and Pastoral Center.

When Tom Conaghan came to the United States from Doorin, County Donegal, in 1972, the path to the coveted Green Card—the legal document that permits immigrants lawful permanent residence in the U.S.—was amazingly short. “I arrived in July,” he says, “and I had my Green Card by October.”

Today, he says, the same process can be arduously long—12 years or longer, and with nothing like a guarantee of a Green Card at the end.

Conaghan is executive director of the Irish Immigration and Pastoral Center, a small but vibrant organization headquartered in a welcoming, home-like property at 7 South Cedar Lane in Upper Darby, just off West Chester Pike. Since 1998, the center has provided counseling—and often a shoulder to lean or cry on—to immigrants who want nothing more than to set down roots in the Delaware Valley and make an honest living.

The center is also a central gathering place for the Irish who’ve been in the Delaware Valley for years. On the day I dropped by, a gaggle of local ladies had assembled for their weekly luncheon. Close your eyes, listen to all the accents, and you could be in Donegal or Antrim.

The sideboard threatens to collapse under the weight of all the cakes and sweets, some of them store-bought, but others deliciously homemade. There’s also a large bowl of trifle—and a little bottle of something the ladies refer to as “altar wine” is making the rounds. They offer some in a paper cup. It would be impolite to refuse.

One of the ladies—Annabelle Manly, with curly red hair—is from a town called Dunamanagh, in County Tyrone. It sounds like she just got off the boat, but she has actually been in the Delaware Valley since 1950. Her story is typical of so many who came to the United States.

“I came here in 1950, December 6, through Ellis Island before it closed, on the S.S. America,” she says. “My name is on that wall (at Ellis Island). I’m a very historic person.”

Like so many Irish newcomers, Manly’s transition into American society was eased by the presence of a large and welcoming Irish community, a good many of them from the North. She roomed with other Irish girls in a place at 48th & Baltimore. She met the man who would become her husband, William, at the Horn & Hardart’s where she worked. “He had just come out of the Air Force,” she recalls. “He had dropped by to meet his buddy, who was the manager. He was in his uniform.”

They were married in 1953 at St. Francis de Sales Church at 46th and Springfield. In due course, Manly became a citizen. “Back then,” she says, “you had to wait three years to become one.”

Today, that sounds like an immigrant’s dream come true. But that was a different time—and a different America.

The mission of the Immigration Center began with the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. From Conaghan’s perspective, “the Illegal Immigration Act literally took away every bridge and road the Irish had once crossed into legal residence in the United States.”

Conaghan and colleagues were also deeply motivated by the May 18, 1998, raid by agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service on the Irish Coffee Shop on West Chester Pike in Upper Darby. News reports at the time (Irish Voice, June 2, 1998) suggest that INS agents rounded up two, and possibly three, undocumented Irish citizens.

Conaghan’s recollection is different. The entire event had been shrouded in secrecy, but the Federation of Irish American Societies learned through overseas sources that the agents had actually picked up, jailed and deported five Irish young people—including one young woman from his home town.

“Those five young people were deported and were missing and the established Irish community in Philadelphia didn’t even know what had happened, except for a few people who were directly involved, like the guy who owned the coffee shop,” Conaghan says. “He suffered fines, as well.

“The young girl, who was 17, from my home town, was deported two and half weeks later in the same clothes she was wearing when she was arrested. She was terrified and still suffers anxiety.”

Years later, Conaghan and the employees and 40 volunteers of the Immigration and Pastoral Center continue to draw inspiration from this incident. To them, the question is not whether undocumented immigrants overstay their welcome (up to six years on a work visa). They don’t dispute that many Irish citizens have, in effect, broken the rules. However, they argue that the undocumented are victims of a system that has grown to be so muddled, complicated and expensive as to make the path to legal residence nearly impossible for all but the most determined.

Immigrants often are victims of a double whammy, he adds. That is, their work visas, which allow them temporary residence in the U.S., expire long before their applications for a Green Card are approved. (Nearly half of all those the INS regards as illegal are what are called “visa overstays,” according to the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center.) “And maybe, in the meantime, that person has started a family and there are children involved,” Conaghan says. “It’s a condition created by a bureaucracy, and it shouldn’t happen.”

Many Irish caught up in this bind exist in a kind of shadow world—often gainfully employed, even paying federal income taxes, but always living in fear of being picked up and deported. And there’s worse—they’re trapped here, unable to return to Ireland even to attend the funeral of a loved one, for fear of betraying their status and being barred re-entry to the United States.

“I know of one woman whose father died,” Conaghan says. “She was the only sister of the family, with seven brothers. She didn’t go home for her father’s funeral. Four years later, she walked in here one day, and she told me her mother was sick. She started to cry, and I cried with her. Her mother died, and she couldn’t go back.

“That woman has teen-age children now. Her husband is also undocumented. Unless there’s an immigration bill passed or some kind of comprehensive reform, the only hope that she has is that her oldest child, when he becomes 21, can sponsor her—but that’s three years away. In the meantime, she and her husband could be picked up and deported.”

The shame of it all, he says, is that so many young Irish citizens want to come to the United States. In his day, he says, leaving Ireland was a decision borne of necessity. Now it’s a matter of choice. So the Irish people who want to take up legal residence here are well-educated, potential assets to the United States. But they won’t come, he says, “because they’re afraid they’re going to be arrested.”

This, he says, is tragic on many levels, but especially because the Irish community in the United States, which has contributed so substantially to the life of this country, could be endangered. “Given our historic contribution to this country, the number of Irish who are let in here is a disgrace.”

To address these issues, the Immigration and Pastoral Center offers a wide range of services, including assisting those who are eligible for Green Cards, as well as rendering aid and comfort to those who live in the shadows. There are many other ancillary services. For example, Center staffers and volunteers visit prisoners. They run workshops. They assist with work authorization renewals and they provide a wide range of social services. (On a lighter note, the center also sponsors the local Rose of Tralee festival.)

Although mostly Irish immigrants avail themselves of the center’s services, Conaghan says the Immigration and Pastoral Center maintains good relations with other immigrant groups, including a local Spanish mission. Additionally, the center provides its services to any immigrant who needs it, regardless of national origin. (On the day I visited, one staff member took a phone call from an Indian woman who had just moved from New York City to Philadelphia.)

Those services are provided, he says, courtesy of donations from the Delaware Valley Irish community and from the Irish government. The center accepts no government support. That level of independence is important, Conaghan says. “Money is not our God. We do have a God, but the God that we believe in is the God that will deliver the freedom our people deserve in the desert,” Conaghan says. “We’ve been wandering in the desert for too long.”

Over the years, the Irish Immigration and Pastoral Center has helped thousands of Irish immigrants. The center has also become a cozy gathering place for those long established in the Delaware Valley.

On Sunday, March 16, the center will celebrate its 10th anniversary of service to the Irish community with an Immigrant Reunion at the Philadelphia Irish Center, Carpenter and Emlen Streets, in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia. Magician and balloon artist John Cassidy will be on hand to entertain the kids. Music will be provided by Mary Beth Ryan and Friends and D.J. Seamus McGroary. Food will be available from Mickey Kavanaugh Caters.

The fee is $25 for adults; there is no charge for kids. For details, contact the center at (610) 789-6355.

March 4, 2008 by