A Brief History
The first Irish to emigrate en masse to America came in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, then later as starving poor fleeing the horrors of the Great Famine (1845-1850), then along with other Europeans well into the 20th century. Not until the mid-1960s was there any discernable break in Irish traveling across the Atlantic in search of a better life. At that time, Ireland was experiencing economic growth. Simultaneously the 1965 US Immigration Act made it more difficult for Europeans to gain legal entry into America. This stemmed the tide of people leaving Ireland for the USA, for a time.
In the early 1980s, Ireland fell into yet another deep economic recession. This time, they flew to America with holiday visas and never left. They became the first generation of undocumented Irish. In the late 1980s, with the influence of American Irish politicians, the Donnelly visa program made thousands of these young Irish legal. Following that, The US Immigration Act of 1990 had a provision that allowed 120,000 permanent residency visas to be released to countries from all around the world. The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland combined were allotted 48,000 of these visas (also known as Morrison visas after Congressman Bruce Morrison who sponsored the bill). A lottery system gave many undocumented Irish amnesty and people living in Ireland a chance to apply.
For the Irish, many who emigrated were considered part of a “brain drain.” The 48,000 who obtained visas in the ’90s were among the last Irish to enter the United States en masse. These new arrivals were mainly in their twenties; they included traditional blue-collar immigrants looking for jobs in construction and the bar trade, along with thousands of educated Irish searching for white-collar work.
Like most immigrants, they came with little money. They started off in the traditional Irish cities of New York and Boston. In Boston, a favorite destination was the small working class neighborhood of Allston. They slept in run-down apartments and socialized in local Irish bars. Some of them stayed for a week, some for a few months, some for years. The vast majority left Allston after they had saved enough to move on. But, for a short while, a temporary microcosm of Ireland was created in neighborhoods like Allston. They came from every county and every social background. This is a tale of two young Irish people who came looking for work and a life, as their forefathers had done. It is a story of the struggles that immigrants experience adjusting in a foreign country, and about how, if you are not careful or not lucky, life in your new country can rapidly go awry.