None of what follows will surprise anyone who has watched, or experienced, Niall O’Dowd’s journalistic and political career over the last three or so decades.
Cynical opportunism and an eye for the main chance have characterised his behaviour as editor/publisher of The Irish Voice, during his bromance with Sinn Fein, especially its leader Gerry Adams, and his wooing of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party.
Niall O’Dowd – wants Ireland to accept Trump’s ‘only English speakers’ immigration plan
But expressing support for Trump’s racist immigration plans – only English speakers need apply – and urging the Irish community here in America and back in Ireland to break with the opposition to Trump and strike their own visa deal with possibly the most racist, overbearing, dangerous and despotic US president ever to occupy the White House is a breathtaking low.
The message that this would send to the civilized world, that Irish political and community leaders should side with the Trump White House’s overt racism, and implicitly endorse all the other horrors of his administration (including nuclear sabre-rattling to N.Korea), to ensure that a few thousand more Irish people – potential Irish Voice readers? – gain entry to the US, is horribly reminiscent of the worst kind of appeasement to pre-war fascism in Europe.
But that is precisely the message O’Dowd is sending, both in this Irish Voice article, reprinted below, and in interviews he has apparently given to RTE radio in Dublin.
Now it’s official. The one time Hillary Clinton devotee and Gerry Adams aficianado has now joined the American alt.right. Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller are now O’Dowd’s new buddies. Because that is what the article below means.
Read it:
It is time for Irish to go it alone on immigration reform
Campaigners rallying in 2007 for comprehensive immigration reform: It’s time for the Irish to go it alone. Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform
Comprehensive immigration reform is dead – the Irish need to work with Trump’s plan
Did you know approximately 143,500 Irish-born people live in America down from 250,000 in 1980? In a few years because of immigration restrictions, there will be none.
Annie Moore from Cork, the first person off at Ellis Island will turn in her grave.
What are the Irish communities in the US going to do about it?
First, we must face reality. Comprehensive immigration reform is dead. It is time for the Irish to unhitch their wagon from that particular dead horse.
Second, there are significant positives in Donald Trump’s new immigration plan and the Irish need to work with it.
Third, the best hope for Ireland is a go-it-alone strategy.
Donald Trump’s new immigration plan
In a week when New York Times columnist Ross Douthat called out the left on its continued obsession with not appearing racist on immigration, it is time we all embraced a new reality.
Douthat wrote: “…liberalism has gone a little bit insane on immigration, digging into a position that any restrictions are ipso facto racist, and any policy that doesn’t take us closer to open borders is illegitimate and un-American.”
Hear hear! The left has lost its way on immigration. Britain, Australia, Canada all favor English-speaking graduates who immediately contribute to the economy. Trump is merely suggesting the same priorities for the United States.
“There are significant positives in Donald Trump’s new immigration plan.”
Currently, America is continuing its immigration obsession of family reunification, prioritizing even immigrants’ adult brothers and sisters living abroad whose visas take up to 12 years to process. The system is absurd and broken.
Ireland is one of the countries most badly affected. The Irish simply cannot immigrate legally to the United States. Yet, if we say that we are accused of overlooking other countries’ needs and breaking the compact on comprehensive reform for all.
If the election of Donald Trump clarified one thing it was that Americans have no appetite for comprehensive immigration reform – quite the opposite.
1965 Immigration Reform Act betrayed the Irish
We need to talk about the 1965 Immigration Reform Act and how it betrayed the Irish, one of the founding groups of this country who contributed mightily to its success (read Washington’s St. Patrick’s Day message to his Irish troops if you need convincing or Lincoln kissing the Irish flag at Harrison’s Landing after the Irish Brigade fought fearlessly for him.)
Yet we have been essentially excluded from America since 1965. We get one fifth of one percent of the million green cards a year. Somehow, if you lobby for the Irish it makes you an odd person as if you are not supposed to lobby for your own people but instead lobby for work visas for every country on earth.
E3 Visas – Go it alone
Consider this, Australia did some smart lobbying a few years back and got 10,500 visas a year for themselves – all on their own. Google the term “E3 visas” if you don’t believe me. How many Australians fought with Washington, gave their blood in foreign wars, died to preserve the Union?
The Irish government has been trying hard, but the effort needs a new intensity and focus which I believe should be an E3 visa scheme for Ireland which would re-establish the links between two countries forever bound together by history.
We should use the Trump proposals as a starting point. Unless we do this, soon enough an Irish-born man or woman will be as rare in America as hen’s teeth. It is not good enough.
The Broken Elbow 
The Irish who fought at Morristown were almost all Presbyterians from the North. Their descendents will hardly read the Irish Voice.
What are you talking about?
Did you not read the part about Morristown in his piece? A “justification” for special treatment for citizens of the ROI. The Irish who fought at Morristown were Scotch-Irish with no links to the present ROI, either culturally or geographically. To cite the large part they played in the foundation of the US is a case of extreme irony on the part editor/publisher the Irish Voice.
yes, you’re absolutely right. i missed that. he would have been better citing the civil war but i guess that might be inconvenient since he’d have to side with the slave-owners……
The civil war doesn’t help him. The Irish (the plain variety and the scotch variety) fought on both sides. The most notorious Irish contributions to the civil war were the draft riots in Detroit and New York. They hunted down and murdered hundreds of African Americans. On second thoughts that might ingratiate them with Trump…………
Sorry:To cite the large part they played in the foundation of the US is a case of extreme irony on the part of the editor/publisher of the Irish Voice.
How about we (Irish) use all in our power to further our interests? Others are free to do likewise.
yep, survival of the fittest. the american way…..and how would you choose which irish would benefit, because they can’t all gain?
That’s a tough one Ed. Maybe start by prioritising Spurs supporters?!