`Illegal Irish' Seek Refuge Here

BOSTON - Call them the illegal Irish, the undocumented Irish, the out-of-status Irish or the just plain new Irish.

But call them if there's a job or an apartment available, begs Sister Veronica Dobson, who came here 30 years ago from County Carlow to work among Mexicans crossing the border into Texas and now runs an outreach program for Irish immigrants in Boston.

``And please call,'' she adds, ``if there's a stick of furniture available'' for them to start a new life.

Nobody knows for sure how many Irish between the ages of 17 and 30 have unlawfully overstayed their visas in the U.S. in the past eight or nine years since the Irish economy went sour. Estimates range from 60,000 to 150,000. They live haunted by the fear, often exaggerated but real enough, of being turned over to immigration authorities.

But they're not always unwelcome. ``They're handy at carpentry and bricklaying, so landlords and the neighbors like having them around,'' says the Rev. Gerard Burns, whose bishop in Galway sent him to the Dorchester section of Boston with the ``rather vague assignment of visiting the bars, the hurling grounds and dance halls'' to minister to a runaway flock.

As it was in the flight from the potato famine nearly a century and a half ago, Boston or New York is their first safe harbor. But an underground railway of priests, nuns, pub keepers, lawyers, even congressmen and aldermen, is helping them find refuge in ports of call from Galveston, Texas, to San Francisco.

A congressman from Boston's Dorchester section, Brian Donnelly, D-Mass., has become a household word in Ireland - ``as well-known as the pope or John F. Kennedy,'' says Irish Consul General Liam Canniffe - for sponsoring the Donnelly visa that since 1986 has helped thousands immigrate from 36 mostly European countries. Of the 15,000 Donnelly visas granted last year on a lottery basis, Ireland won 12,000.

Last St. Patrick's Day, 900 Irish men and women seeking legal status attended a visa clinic in Dorchester, and hundreds more lined up for applications at a ballroom in New York City's Woodside area, another haven for the new Irish.

The exodus of young people in the past decade has so depopulated parts of western Ireland, where the unemployment rate is nearly 50 percent, that parish priests in rural Mayo and Galway ``can't put together a dance,'' as Burns puts it. The Gaelic football team in Waterville disbanded for lack of a 15-man starting lineup.

Meanwhile, bars like the Emerald Isle and the Blarney Stone on Dorchester Avenue, and hundreds more from Boston to Baltimore, import bands such as The Dingle Spike and T.F. Much from Ireland for the packed weekend dances. ``Many Young Men of 20 Said Goodbye,'' the theme song of the new wave of immigration, dampens many an eye.

``The newcomers gave the kiss of life to Gaelic games in this country,'' says the Rev. Martin Keaveny, who was the first priest sent over by the Irish bishops to work as a chaplain among the undocumented aliens at the urging of Cardinal John O'Connor. Making the rounds of their homes, playing fields and bars in the Bainbridge section of the Bronx, Keaveny often runs into young people from his parish back in Mayo.

Monday night, when videotapes of Sunday's hurling and football matches are flown in from Ireland, is prime time for pastoral pub crawling.

``And the bar is where they are,'' says innkeeper Kieran Staunton, a legal immigrant from Mayo. ``The bar is their bank, their employment agency, their apartment finder, their social club, as well as the cure for loneliness.''

The ``undocumented Irish,'' as he prefers to call them, are reluctant to open bank accounts for fear of having their bogus Social Security numbers exposed and their funds confiscated by authorities.

``They pay cash for everything, even tools or a used truck needed on the job. They can't go into business for themselves without a credit rating,'' Staunton says. ``There's no building a future not knowing from one day to the next if you'll be deported. They can't even join a union, which is shocking when you consider that the secret organizations like the Molly Maguires built the union movement in this country.''

Undocumented aliens are not eligible for food stamps, Medicare or other federal programs.

``Very few apply for relief,'' says Sister Veronica. ``They're here to succeed. Going from the Irish dole to the welfare rolls here would be an admission of defeat, a blow to their pride.''

The new Irish compete with an even larger influx of Asians and Central Americans for jobs that have become much scarcer since the 1986 immigration reform act made employers liable for fines for hiring undocumented aliens.

Like their forebears, many of the new Irish work longer hours for less pay, without vacation or retirement benefits and no compensation if hurt on the job. They fall prey to greedy landlords, loan sharks and unscrupulous immigration lawyers.

Timothy Whelan, deputy district director of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Boston, regrets that ``despite the immigration reform act, some employers still resort to under-the-table deals, accepting fraudulent documents that wouldn't fool anybody else.''

His agents recently moved in on a South Shore nursing-home operator who hired 11 undocumented aliens as orderlies and nursing aides through ads in the Dublin papers promising green cards.

``For openers, we confiscated his Mercedes-Benz,'' says Whelan, who is reconciled to being regarded as ``something of a villain'' by the Irish.

``But I have a responsibility under the law, and I'm not insensitive to their plight. My father came from Cork. I made a trip there last year. I play the bagpipes. Tears come to my eyes when I hear the Clancy Brothers sing `Four Green Fields.'

``Sure, we nab three or four now and then, but I don't wear my black hat all the time. We could raid those Irish bars every weekend and pick them up by the hundreds, but we have more important priorities. Aliens involved in criminal activities, like the drug traffic, keep us plenty busy.''

Canniffe is relieved that so far, Irish illegals ``haven't contributed much to crime in Boston. But I don't like to see them getting involved in under-the-table jobs. Living on the margin of society, outside the law, is very dangerous. Most want to be honest, but if they find themselves treated as outlaws, they might be induced into more serious illegal activities.''

Burns also sees the danger: ``To be out of work in Ireland is no disgrace. To be out of work in Boston is devastating. They come here figuring things couldn't be any worse and don't know what they're getting into. In Ireland, you never worry about getting sick or growing old. Here, they worry about paying to send the kids to parochial school.''