National emigration history centre given go ahead in New Ross
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009A national emigration history centre is planned for the Dunbrody Visitor Centre in New Ross, Co. Wexford, as part of a €2.5 million redevelopment plan for the Dunbrody Visitor Centre. The plan was given a go-ahead by the New Ross Town council last month, and the new visitor center could be completed as early as next year.
Related website:
LosingYourJob.ie provides emigration info
Monday, June 15th, 2009The Citizen’s Information Board has introduced a new website called “LosingYourJob.ie”, which includes emigration information alongside information on social welfare entitlements, education and training options, reduced hours, and more. The information is culled from the larger database of information on the CitizensInformation.ie website.
The emigration information is located in a section called “Leaving Ireland” and covers such topics as applying for a passport, documents to bring with you, working inside and outside the EU, transferring social security payments abroad, and diplomatic supports abroad.
It might be helpful if the site included information on groups like the Crosscare Migrant Project in Dublin and the many support centres abroad for Irish people.
Related websites:
A look at unemployment rates in destination countries
Monday, June 15th, 2009With the increasing number of news reports about unemployed people seeking to emigrate, it’s useful to look at unemployment rates in a number of destination countries. These are, of course, only guidelines – no doubt there are national differences in the methods of compiling these statistics that make it difficult to make accurate comparisons.
Ireland’s unemployment rate is 11.8%. Here are the rates in some of the countries most commonly considered by those seeking to emigrate:
- UK: 7.1% (March 2009 – Office for National Statistics)
- US: 9.4% (May 2009 – Bureau of Labour Statistics)
- Canada: 8.4% (May 2009 – Statistics Canada)
- Australia 5.7% (May 2009 – Australian Bureau of Statistics)
- New Zealand – 5% (April 2009 – Statistics New Zealand)
“I never thought I’d have to leave”, says 23-year-old London-based emigrant
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009A quick, disturbing vignette excerpted from Olivia O’Leary’s “Viewpoint” article on the BBC website.
For James Mooney, 23, and his generation, the crash is particularly galling.
While Mr Mooney was studying to be a surveyor, his lecturer told them they would all be millionaires by the time they were 35, such was the construction and property boom at the time.
Instead he is one of the new breed of Irish emigrants, living in a house in London with five other Irish people in their twenties, in a position none of them ever dreamed they would face.
“Getting dropped back to Dublin airport, that’s when it hits home, that you’re leaving again,” says Mr Mooney.
“Sunday nights, flying back to London. I dread it.
“You see the same faces at the airport now. I never thought I’d have to leave.”
Read Olivia O’Leary’s article on the BBC website – “Ireland: boom to bust”
Irish Immigration Center celebrates 20th anniversary
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009The Irish Immigration Center is celebrating its twentieth anniversary as a provider of services to the immigrant community in Boston – marking the occasion with a dinner attended by President Mary McAleese.
The organisation was started in 1989 by a group of Irish immigrants; at the time, there were thousands of undocumented in the city. The organisation today serves immigrants from 100 countries every year and offers not only help with immigration and citizenship queries, but also runs substance abuse and counselling programmes, preventive health care programmes, English as a Second Language classes, and exchange programmes between the United States and Ireland.
The Solas dinner will be held on 27 May at the Copley Hotel; the organisation will honour President Mary McAleese with the Solas Award at the event.
Related web pages:
- Irish Immigration Center
- Wickedlocal.com: Irish Immigration Center celebrates 20th, welcomes Irish president
“Prairies or pampas?”: article explains why emigrants no longer ask
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009Argentina was once a powerful draw for Irish emigrants, although it is difficult to imagine given the country’s economic troubles today. How did it go from being an economic powerhouse to its current status today? Alan Beattie in the Financial Times documents the decline in a comparison of the policies pursued throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States and Argentina.
As he points out,
“Before the Great Depression of the 1930s, Argentina was among the 10 richest countries in the world. The millions of emigrant Italians and Irish fleeing poverty at the end of the 19th century were torn between the two: Buenos Aires or New York? The pampas or the prairie?
A hundred years later there was no choice at all. One had gone on to be among the most successful economies ever. The other was a broken husk.”
Beattie points out that America chose openness, innovation, skilled immigration and industrialisation – while Argentina concentrated land and political power in the hands of an elite who shunned the risk-taking nature of industrialisation until it was too late.
The article is worth reading for anyone interested in the history of the home of the largest non-English-speaking Irish diaspora community.
FT.com: Argentina: The superpower that never was
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