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RTE programmes focus on emigrants

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007

RTE has a few interesting productions coming up.

Tonight, it will screen “Duffy’s Cut�, the story of 57 Irish labourers who arrived in Pennsylvania in June, 1832 to construct a railroad. The men, who were mainly from Donegal, Derry and Tyrone, were all dead within six weeks; they were buried in a mass grave. While cholera claimed many, others were apparently murdered by neighbours fearing the plague.

An archaeological project by Immaculata University has been unearthing items which may have belonged to the men, including clay pipes, buttons and coins. The project is hoping to identify the exact location of the burial grounds on the one-acre site known as Duffy’s Cut. They are hoping that they will be able to investigate whether the men were victims of violence, and plan to rebury the men in a nearby church graveyard.

The network will also screen a new series focusing on Irish families who have moved abroad. “The Great Escapeâ€? producers say the programme is “about people making radical moves and changes in their lives by relocating to another country in search of a better life. The first programme will follow a family who left Swords in 2004 to move to France; it airs on January 8.

"Real" Annie Moore discovered

Friday, September 1st, 2006

The story of the real Annie Moore has been unveiled. Annie Moore was the 15-year-old Cork girl who was the first immigrant to pass through New York’s Ellis Island in January 1892. While it had been long believed that Moore had moved west, instead, it genealogist Megan Smolenyak has discovered that Moore had actually made it no farther than the lower east side of Manhattan, where she bore eleven children, of whom only five survived; she died in 1924 at the age of 47. Although two statues of Annie Moore memorialise her story – one in New York harbour and the other in Cobh, Co Cork, her grave is unmarked. Her descendents are raising money for a headstone for the grave in Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-09-15T223324Z_01_N15390578_RTRUKOC_0_UK-LIFE-IMMIGRANT.xml

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/nyregion/16annie.html?ex=1158552000&en=90f781f38cc27b3a&ei=5087%0A

NY mayor calls for "common sense" in immigration laws

Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, speaking at Sligo’s City Hall, pledged to fight for legislation that would help undocumented Irish immigrants in the US. “I know that many Irish-born New Yorkers are caught in the trap of our federal immigration policies,” he said. “If we are going to attract the best and the brightest — and Ireland has more than its fair share — we need to inject some common sense into our immigration laws, and I’m doing my best to make that case in Washington.”
The mayor was speaking as part of his trip, postponed from earlier in the month, to dedicate a memorial to the Fighting 69th, the “Irish brigade� of the US Civil War. The memorial includes metal from the World Trade Center.
http://www.nysun.com/article/38427

Fine Gael TD John Perry made a speech at the monument’s unveiling, in which he said: “This monument represents the unbreakable link between all those who emigrated from Ireland to the United States over the past 200 years. It is a link of dedication. It is a link of service to others. It is a link of sacrifice for others. It is a link of friendship between our two nations. And it is a link of hope for a future that is free and possible.�
The entire text of the speech is available at http://www.irishdev.com/NewsArticle.aspx?id=3608

Topics: US Immigration reform, history

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