Ex-Ira Member Fights To Stay With U.S. Family -- Support For Cause Grows On Both Sides Of Atlantic Ocean

UNIVERSITY CITY, Mo. - Matthew Morrison, age 9, has a hard time explaining to his friends why his father might be sent back to Ireland.

"Matthew is mostly angry," his mother says. "He came home from school, and said, `Every day it's the same question: "Why does your Dad have to go back to Iowa?"

"I have to keep telling them, `It's Ireland, not Iowa.' "

While the family manages to laugh at the story, they've all grown tired of the 4-year-old battle between the boy's father, Matt Morrison, and immigration officials.

Morrison is a former member of the Irish Republican Army and spent 10 years in prison, convicted of attempted murder in a 1976 raid on a British barracks. Six other ex-IRA men, all in the New York area, face deportation for similar reasons.

Morrison's struggle has won support from hundreds of Americans, from neighbors in this suburban St. Louis community to state legislators to members of Congress.

The Irish Northern Aid, a nonprofit organization that helps families of Irish political prisoners, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians also have come to his defense.

At stake, Morrison says, is the welfare of Matthew and his 5-year-old sister, Katie. If he loses, his family will be uprooted from their quiet, middle-class neighborhood to a "war zone" in Northern Ireland.

But the Immigration and Naturalization Service is standing firm. Under U.S. law, IRA members are terrorists. And the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1990 does not look favorably on political asylum for convicted terrorists.

Adding to his troubles is the fact that Morrison didn't disclose on his visa application that he had been convicted of a felony.

Morrison, a soft-spoken man with a heavy Irish accent, cringes at the term "terrorist."

`Second-class citizens'

"We were freedom fighters," he insists. "We were made to feel like second-class citizens in our own country. I didn't suddenly wake up one morning and decide to join the IRA. There were a number of things that led up to my decision."

Morrison was born Nov. 1, 1955, in Northern Ireland, where Catholics have long been pitted against the Protestants, most of whom stand dead-set against any merger with the 26 Catholic-majority southern counties that make up the Republic of Ireland.

He was the eldest of seven children in his Roman Catholic family, living in the Brandywell district of Londonderry. His father, a plasterer, was unable to find work in the Protestant-dominated community and spent much of his time traveling in Europe in search of work.

Housing was scarce for Catholics, leaving his grandmother and aunt to share his family's two-bedroom house with only an outdoor toilet and no hot water.

"The discrimination was real and affected every aspect of our lives," Morrison says.

"In the late 1960s, young educated Catholics began to emerge from the universities. They were very disappointed with the status quo. They looked to the United States and Martin Luther King for examples of how a peaceful civil-rights campaign could be run.

"What they didn't anticipate was that the response from the British government would be so heavy-handed and brutal."

Morrison was 13 when he first joined his father in a riot. It was August 1969 and Catholic protesters challenged a Protestant march. They battled police for three days before the British government deployed troops. The temporary deployment became permanent, sparking the rise of the modern IRA.

A pivotal point for Morrison came on Jan. 30, 1972 - "Bloody Sunday." Morrison, then 16, and his father were at a civil-rights rally when British troops fired into the crowd, killing 13 Catholic demonstrators.

"For me, it was a cataclysmic event," Morrison says. "That day I decided the next time I faced the British army I would have a gun."

He joined the IRA.

Four years later, Morrison and three other IRA members were on an IRA mission when they opened fire on a British barracks near his hometown, wounding a British officer.

The men were captured on the spot. Morrison says his interrogators beat him so badly he lost the hearing in his right ear. He was sentenced to 20 years in Maze Prison outside Belfast, Northern Ireland, but was released after 10.

Correspondence to courtship

During his imprisonment, Morrison began corresponding with Francie Broderick, a third-generation Irish woman from St. Louis.

Broderick had gone to Dublin in 1981 to work with a TV film crew on a documentary. There she learned about IRA members in the Maze Prison who had gone on a hunger strike in hopes of getting British attention.

She began writing to the prisoners; Morrison responded. She visited him in jail and after he was released.

Morrison came to the United States in December 1985 on a tourist visa and the two were married. He never went back to his homeland.

Today, Morrison is a middle-age father of two who received his nursing degree in May from Forest Park Community College. He wants to put the IRA behind him, but U.S. immigration officials won't let him.

His petition for an "adjustment of status" has been denied. An immigration judge in Kansas City is to hear his appeal in December.

Officials with the INS, the National Security Council and the State Department declined to comment on Morrison's case.

Morrison and his wife spend weekends and vacations traveling across the country, speaking to groups such as the Ancient Order of Hibernians, an Irish fraternal order. They hope they and their supporters can apply enough pressure on the White House to let Morrison stay.

Hopes of presidential help

The family hopes for intervention from President Clinton. Morrison's wife even flew to Belfast in 1995 in hopes of getting Clinton's attention while he toured the area.

"We unfurled our banner as he drove past," she says. "We were only about four feet from him, so I know he saw it. He gave us a thumbs up, but I don't know if he knew what it meant."

The case has drawn support from thousands across the country. The family has received more than $70,000 in donations to help with their legal fees.

The Missouri Legislature passed a resolution last year urging the INS to drop its deportation proceedings.

U.S. Rep. Bill Clay Sr. of St. Louis has written Clinton and initiated a petition on Morrison's behalf that was signed by 30 members of Congress.

In an unprecedented move in December, members of the Derry City Council in Northern Ireland, with full cross-party support, approved a resolution urging Clinton to suspend the deportation.

In the meantime, the couple is trying to prepare their children for the possibility of a move halfway around the world. They stress their Irish roots. They fly Ireland's flag. They play traditional Irish music on the piano.

"I also tell my kids they are Americans, so the British won't mess with them," Morrison said. "I don't know if that's true, but I hope it is."