The State Department is preparing to begin its version of the Irish lottery, with 16,000 prizes awarded in each of the next three years in the form of permanent resident visas.
But, of course, there`s a catch-a curious, two-step dance for the successful applicants.
Under the new immigration law signed by President Bush last fall, Irish nationals who were in the United States before Jan. 1, 1990, and who can show they have a job guarantee for a year will be eligible for one of the 48,000
”green cards” that have been set aside for the Irish Republic.
A State Department official noted that the quota for Ireland ”by far exceeds that of any other country” in the category of ”adversely affected” nations, primarily in Europe, that have been shortchanged on visas in recent years compared with other parts of the world.
”Any day now,” the official said, a date will be announced on which visa applications will be accepted by mail, and a publicity campaign will begin to make it well-known in the Irish community.
Charles Sheehan, the Irish vice consul in New York, said a post office box in Washington will be set up, and applicants writing to that box will be chosen ”on a first-come, first-served basis.”
Here comes the catch.
The applicants will have to be interviewed at the U.S. Consulate in Dublin before they can return to the U.S. with their papers as resident immigrants.
”They`ll just have to go back, they`ll have to leave the country,” said Sheehan, who insisted, ”There`s no aspect of amnesty in this legislation.”
A spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service begged to differ on why the Irish applicants were being required to go back and forth across the ocean for a piece of paper that could just as easily be issued here.
”Look, they`re here illegally,” he said. ”It would sort of go against the grain of why we have laws” to ignore their illegal status. Those applying for a visa simply have to be out of the country, he said.
Even with the requirement for a return trip, ”to say that this is not amnesty is ridiculous,” said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which opposes an increase in immigration.
”Nothing against the Irish,” he said, but ”this is happening just because the Irish have a lot of political clout.”
That political clout was not evident to Rita Mullan, executive director of the Irish National Caucus, who said, ”I think extra procedures are being adopted for the Irish, not the other way around. It seems that instead of making things easier, this makes it more complicated.”