Greg Daly
Taoiseach’s Enda Kenny’s St Patrick’s Day comments in the White House have been welcomed by chaplains to the Irish community in the US.
Speaking alongside US President Donald Trump the day before St Patrick’s Day, Mr Kenny said of the saint: “He too of course was an immigrant. And though he is, of course, the patron saint of Ireland, for many people around the globe he’s also a symbol of — indeed the patron of — immigrants.”
The Taoiseach recalled how Irish people became contributors to American society after coming to the US in the hope of better lives and opportunities than faced them at home.
Immigrants
“Within the Irish-American community there’s always been a little bit of disconnect with the reality that their families were once immigrants as well,” Michael Collins, executive director of the Chicago Irish Immigrant Support Centre, told The Irish Catholic, continuing, “but they always align themselves with Ireland and being Irish, so the Taoiseach’s speech was a good eye-opener for the Irish-American community.”
While Mr Collins expects the speech to have a “minimal impact” on Mr Trump’s hardline approach to immigration, he said “it has started a conversation particularly among the Irish here which I think is important”.
Limerick-born Fr Michael Madigan, chaplain to Chicago’s immigrant Irish, agreed, saying several people had told him they felt “very positive” about the speech.
“Given the fact of the huge anxiety and uncertainty around immigration in America, it is a timely way of using the image of Patrick as an immigrant who came to our shores and found a home there,” he said.
Reiterating that “the reality on the ground is that there’s still a deep level of anxiety and fear,” he said: “The tendency here is to see the immigration issue as one that affects only those from Mexico and Central America, but there are undocumented people amongst all nationalities.”