As usual, the writer focuses on Trump as THE villain. If only he had not been elected. If only.... Trump unfortunately exploited a situation long in the making by elites. The individuals clamoring for mega change don’t need it and the ones who do and would benefit often don’t understand the issues and opportunities. That’s how we ended up with two of the worst presidential candidates in history. Both self serving. One with low moral character and questionable private sector deals and the other and her husband made rich from public service through extortion and self-dealing. Voters should do their homework this time. I’m still in search of a candidate worthy of my vote.
36
@Ross Burns in the end, a democrat still looks out for the interests of others, even if he's a politician who might also benefit, and a republican looks for out solely for his interests and his buddies, while the rest are in effect treated as suckers. i'll go with a democrat.
79
@Ross Burns Ah, poor maligned Mr Trump. At least Hilary quietly sank into oblivion after 2016. If the Dems win in 2020 do you think Mr Trump will disappear?
35
Your vote is not an instrument of your own glorification or sanctification. It is an instrument of power.
19
All the discussions that I have read, including this one, mischaracterize the term "white privilege" to include both men and women. Actually, it's only men that enjoy "white privilege" and, therefore, the term should be "white male privilege." All women, including white women, are treated similarly to people of color--2nd class citizens and not worthy of equality in civic participation, in job opportunity, in pay, in controlling their own bodies, etc. The overarching goal of Trump and the Republicans is to reassert their white male privilege, their dominance over women and people of color. Trump's disgusting tweets about 4 elected women of color are just about pitch perfect for his goals.
76
I am writing this from Scotland, having been in the Irish Republic just last week. What Mr. Egan describes is largely true. Ireland, having gained independence just a century ago, remains engaged with shaping its republic. This comes across in the attitudes and knowledge of average citizens as well as elected leaders. (For example, Google and listen to a speech by President Michael D. Higgins and compare it to the typical tone of American leaders’ words.)
For those interested in pursuing Mr. Egan’s line of thinking further, I highly recommend the Irish Times columns and books by Fintan O’Toole. Ireland is in many ways a “poorer” country than the U.S., but they are rich in republican ideas that could revitalize and nourish the American conversation.
1003
@Fintan I would LOVE to live in Ireland and even moreso now after this article. I don't have any Irish blood -- unfortunately (that I know of -- only a bit of Scottish). But my experience with the Irish and Ireland leaves me smiling. They are a truly friendly, interesting and intelligent people -- with that great sense of humor. So happy they are doing SO well - FINALLY!!
141
@Fintan
Fintan O’Toole also has a gimlet eye for the British condition, and its Brexit madness. He's a superb writer.
78
Just having discovered Mr. O'Toole, I am glad to see this reference. Lucky enough to have visited Ireland for ten days this past May, I came home to the States both refreshed and hopeful. Hopeful that the democratic ideal is alive and well in my Grandmother's home country.
35
As someone who has lived on 3 continents, held two nationalities, and has relatives in far corners, it is clear to me that the only meaningful path forward is further assimilation of peoples everywhere, not separation and tribalism. Every single act of this president, from climate and environmental policy, to equitable taxation, to race relations, to foreign relations, is in the wrong direction. He has turned a beacon of hope into a powder keg.
1538
@PT
Every single act of this President is in the direction of enriching him and his cronies. All you need to do with Trump is follow the money and you'll understand why he does what he does. It's all he cares about and all he will ever care about.
210
In the late 70’s my first ever flight was to New York on a college exchange. For a young woman raised in rural Ireland, the US was as far as one could get from the stifling parochialism, poverty, and religious extremism that exemplified the country as it struggled with independence.
In a generation, my beloved homeland has transformed itself into a leader in democratic principles. The primary drivers:
Affordable Third level Education
Membership of the EU and decline of nationalism
Elimination of the pervasive influence of the Catholic Church from every aspect of society
The last 40 years in Irish society is the American experience in reverse. Pay attention America.
1821
The influence of Catholicism has not been eliminated. That would be impossible, given history. But it’s true the Irish are reversing laws that were driven by the Catholic Church, like divorce and abortion bans.
77
@Berniem
"Elimination of the pervasive influence of the Catholic Church from every aspect of society"
THAT is the primary reason for America's decline and reversal. Not only the Catholic Church but the evangelical Christians who have inserted themselves into every part of the government, federal, state and local, and in every aspect of society, civil laws and regulations, and worst of all, politics.
Since Reagan and the Moral Majority, white evangelical Christians have taken over the GOP, and now their puppet Donald Trump has filled the White House and his Cabinet with this religiously driven special interest.
Mike Pompeo, a devout evangelical Christian Zionist, has turned our foreign policy into religious zealotry for the Rapture.
388
@Berniem...religion in the US has more influence on politics than it does in most modern, secular countries.
160
I was born and raised in the United States. I would like to go back to the country I came from, where presidents in my lifetime had a basic understanding of civic norms and human decency,
2529
@JM - That was my immediate reaction to the title, and what I expected this piece to be about.
52
Yes! Take me back to the country that believes “liberty and justice for all” as I said every morning with my hand on my heart in my classroom. Take us all here!
169
@JM I was as well but unfortunately that ship has sailed
35
Does "go back where you came from" apply to those who were brought here in chains? Either because they were to be enslaved or those who, despite their Anglo Saxon names and faces, were criminals so depraved that England believed its fetid slums were too good for them?
32
When commenting on the changes that have occurred in Ireland over the last sixty years it has become de rigeur to lambast the Catholic Church as a malevolent force in Irish society. Little thought is given to the fact that Ireland’s social, cultural, political and economic development was retarded by the forceful application of Britain’s imperial, colonial and racist boot on Ireland’s neck for centuries. One of the reasons the Catholic Church in Ireland became so powerful was because it was the only voice allowed to the disenfranchised Irish and even that voice was severely muted. It is, indeed, ironic that the “progressive” and enlightened Illuminati are taking the place of the British in their sneering attitude towards an institution that sustained and gave succor to an oppressed people.
29
FANTASTIC essay!!!!!!
23
I keep wondering which of my ancestral homelands I'll be sent back to.
31
How about a Bronx cheer?
Send him back . . . to the Bronx.
20
Great column.
9
Take me with you. Please.
19
Take me with...
6
For most American Jews, including myself, the countries we came from include what is now Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. Or do we just go all the way back to Israel? In any case, great editorial and I'd be happy to double the Jewish population of Ireland if they would take me.
57
I'd also like to go back to the country came from:
America before Nov 9 2016.
138
I'm all in. Send me back to Finland, Sweden, Scotland even England. Or Canada.
I guess I'm too white and have ancestral experience "tidying forests" but does living in CA count? Please?
15
I love Ireland. And I love Guinness. Yet what's most important here is that's it more important to be who you are than it is to be where you came from. Why can't we stop right there? Because others don't want us to.
Vote.
34
I'd be very happy to go to the south of France - I have ancestors from there. How long will they let me stay?
15
Please... send me back to Germany (dual citizen since my parents were German citizens). I'll even pay for the ticket. Thanks in advance!
17
You ask how Irish-Americans can vote for Donald Trump and quote Oliver Sears, who asked the same about immigrants. I ask how anyone can vote for him. Mr. Trump has proven himself to be probably the worst ever president of the U.S. and an embarrassment on the international stage. With all of his machinations and anti-immigrant, racist, misogynistic, evil beliefs and public statements he has almost single-handedly (he couldn't have won the presidency without the support of the Republican party and of like-minded voters) accomplished what I once thought of as an impossibility - making me ashamed to be an American. My parents, who immigrated to the U.S. from eastern Europe in the 1920s and became proud naturalized citizens, must be turning over in their graves in despair.
65
Trump has publicly declared his disagreement with what the Statue of Liberty represents, with its inscription "Give me your tired, your poor, ..."
Perhaps he would like to dismantle the Statue and send it back to where it came from.
51
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
- Langston Hughes
54
"Ireland, the country of my ancestors, has become what America used to be."
There's slavery and Jim Crow in Ireland?
19
We cannot tolerate this. We must not. If we do, the shame will fall to all of us, we will receive the judgement of history as spineless cowards who could not think of a way to counter a vile flow of racism from someone who knows nothing about the diversity and accomplishments of newer and long time immigrants to this country, a man who, having spent most of his life in places like the sex and drug den of Studio 54 and endlessly chasing women around the world, knows not of the America he thinks he represents and speaks for. He has revealed his mind to be a polluted sewer but he wishes to constantly share it with of all of us, to push it in our faces and down our throats, to use the media to ensure his continuation in power.
All Americans, including those who most ardently support Trumpism, should be outraged and should speak up. Now.
30
Enough of this medical shell game! Send me back to that country that provides for the health care of its citizens. That country has nothing in common with Donald Trump.
13
Timothy Egan, you have written an excellent oped but you spoiled it at the end by saying: "...I disagree with much of the policy initiatives of the four left-wing congresswomen targeted by Trump."
Exactly which policy initiatives of the four "left wing" congresswomen you disagree with? And why would you label them "left wing"? After all, all the things you admired of your native country Ireland like Health Care for all residents (residents, not just citizens), Good colleges nearly free to its citizens, A Prime Minister of color born to a non-citizen, etc would be FAR-LEFT in our country, the US of A.
And you seem to have nurtured a lie as a truth: "The Irish have become us — what we wanted and aspired to. They are living our national narrative, a country open to those fleeing oppressors and lack of opportunity."
As much as I love our country for all things it offers, I cannot subscribe to your notion. Our country never was what Ireland is today. I am not even sure if we actually aspired to such egalitarian society. Our Original Constitution (before Amendments), Our Laws, Our Supreme Court judgements, etc. should have informed you of the truths. Maybe, you can brush up your knowledge of our country by reading this link:
https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish-the-19th-centurys-refugee-crisis.
We have a long way to go.
38
Yes. We visited last year and arrived by chance in Dublin the day of the abortion referendum. Women were singing in the streets. Perhaps it was the history of living with such terrible abuse from the clergy, as well as the oppressive policies of England, that enabled this people to break free. And they are still friendly to Americans.
Let's hope Brexit doesn't destroy the spirit.
241
If the corruption in DC is not rooted out from the inside, then the Country will not grow for the better. It's an overall "mindset" that needs to be changed in this Country, especially in Washington DC. Modern culture is constantly feeding us lies and false promises that money equates to Happiness. People still don't comprehend that Happiness and Pleasure are 2 different things...
The world's promises of happiness are false promises, and a false promise is a lie. Our secular culture's philosophy about life and happiness can be most succinctly summarized in this way: The meaning of life is to get what you want; and the more you get of what you want, the happier you will be. We know it's a false promise, we know it's a lie. Still, we fall for it over and over again... Capitalism, if gone unchecked, it tends to spread the idea that "material wealth will lead us to happiness" myth. It's a total lie. A falsehood.
If the USA is to heal, and to survive longer term, then our politicians and leaders must start thinking more with their hearts and less with their minds, and consider the moral degradation, destruction and societal toxicity caused by their greed and selfishness.
7
Right now it may be mostly rainbows and pots of gold, but the Irish people have also been living with the looming prospect of a resurgence of unrest and violence should the border between Ireland and N. Ireland once again be hardened due to Brexit.
11
There's some Scandavian lineage in my blood. You'd better believe I've been looking at the immigration policies of that region, given the tone of the last three years. Ten, really. I haven't forgotten the GOP's behavior during the Obama years.
30
My Irish Catholic grandfather came to America as a boy, grew up and married a German Evangelical, brought my Irish German mother into the world where she grew up and married a Norwegian Lutheran and brought into the world me who grew up and married a French Canadian American with Iroquois ancestry and who brought into the world a daughter who grew up and married a person of Jewish ancestry and brought into the world my shining grandsons, descendants of Irish, German, Norwegian, French, Iroquois and Jewish ancestors. Now tell me one more time: Which one should be sent back to his/her place of origin?
703
This is all smoke blowing in our eyes.
The real issue is, when is the media going to cease re-hashing D.T.'s vulgarities and put pressure on the Democrats, who need to organize and unite to clamp him down in a vice, shut him down, and get him out?
24
I'm Irish to the core and I profoundly disagree with this romanticised view of Ireland. We're more progressive in some ways than the USA but we have a long, long way to go.
Right now there are over 10,000 homeless people in Ireland, thousands of them children. It's hard to comprehend this unless you actually see it. I work for a homeless charity and seeing the horrors they have to go through while there's around 200,000 empty houses in Ireland is sickening. The government is also doing very little to address the causes of homelessness.
Ireland doesn't have free health care. Certain people are eligible for a free GP card or medical card, but there's thousands more who need it and can't get it. If you don't have a medical card it costs at least €50 to see a GP and god help you if you get sick, don't qualify for a medical card and can't afford health insurance. Our mental health service is an absolute joke. Unless you have health insurance you will wait months, often years to see a psychiatrist or other mental health professional.
Housing and health care are just tip of the iceberg of the major problems Ireland has. You will never, ever hear me defend your fascist President Trump but just because things in Ireland isn't as bad as America doesn't mean things aren't pretty bad.
44
The far left? What far left of any size and influence is there in the United States? According to the Times' own reporting, it is more accurate to label the Republican Party far right. Why don't we?
39
My grandparents left Russia for the US to avoid conscription into the 1905 Russo-Japanese war. This worked out quite well for the family.
The US is preferable to Russia, but today we have much in common with it, the country multi millions emigrated from and that we fought the Cold War over.
We have our legalized oligarchs and Russia has theirs.
Much of our rw politics is financed by the Koch oligarchs, whose father had made money as an engineer for Stalin.
Our 'leader's attitude to power veers toward the authoritarianism of his pal, Putin.
We've seen our free elections interfered with by Russia, with collusion by our president.
America has its own GOP state media, FOX News. "CNN’s Jeff Zucker Says Fox News Is State-Run Propaganda: “TASS Has Nothing On Them."
The GOP dominates the senate, the executive, and the high court and is closely connected to rich, powerful election donors who call the shots.
Putin is not too pretty, but his facial expressions are not as horrifying to look at as Trump's threatening, hostile snarls, that are plastered all over our TV screens daily. We have to keep our TV remote in hand. I wonder if Russian TV viewers do that also?
19
Indeed, I visited Ireland 2 years ago, and found it to be a most civil country. It was also entirely accessible (by law) something that any New Yorker with a bad knee would appreciate. Most of the New York subway system is not accessible. My genetic heritage does not hail from Ireland,but most of my early education was delivered by young Irish Catholic nuns. They taught me how to read and also not to lie. If Trump gets re-elected, maybe it wouldnt be such a bad idea to get a job in Ireland.
19
FYI, if you look in the very top left of the photo, you can barely see an arc of the secondary rainbow, with the colors reversed. (The reversal is due to secondary reflections of sunlight within the suspended water droplets.)
11
I'm a native-born American, as was my family since the 1700's. No one has told me to go back, though I've heard it said to immigrants. I stood up for them too, then and now.
What troubles me is that the America of Trump and the GOP is not the America I'm from. I served in the military, including a tour in Vietnam. I was in public service until I retired. Fortunately, I didn't come from wealth and privilege, I'm proud that I worked to earn my way, and to care for my family.
So, Trump and the GOP are well on their way to take America to fascism, or worse. They could easily accomplish their goals, and it scares me worse than the Cold War did.
This means that their America is not my America. I wish I could go back to the America I love, the country of tolerance, open minds, good education, and care for everyone. There's always been more we could do, but now it appears we're going back. Way back, like the 1930's, when mindless people allowed fascism and evil to rule.
I'd love to "go back", but where can I, my wife and my son go?
26
In cleaning out my childhood home last month I came across my grandparents’ Irish birth certificates. I confess, I have been resisting the temptation to see if these documents would qualify me for their version of dual citizenship or permanent resident status. As a retiree I am not relishing this daily feeling that Trump and the GOP collaborators are destroying everything my grandparents and parents devoted blood, sweat and tears to, everything my husband and I worked all our lives for, and everything many in our family fought for in WWI, WWII, Korea, VietNam and Desert Storm. How many families, like mine, have two members resting in Arlington National Cemetery?
We ended up in America when Ireland became untenable. Some left to escape starvation. Some left to escape oppression. Some left in desperation at paltry employment options. America was the golden beacon for people willing to work hard, be loyal and join a multinational/multiracial/multifaith nation where freedom was like fresh air, rights were enshrined in a Constitution and nobody was above the law. We love our glorious diversity.
Now, Christians are strangers to me with their complicit acceptance of Trump’s immorality. The majority party gerrymanders, suppresses votes, demonizes newcomers, cages children, stacks the judiciary and lies, lies, lies, lies, lies and lies some more. This greed and corruption turns my stomach. I wonder if the prudent thing to do is have a Plan B. Ireland seems a viable option.
58
@Joanna Stasia, yes you should be entitled to get your Irish citizenship with those birth certificates https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving_country/irish_citizenship/irish_citizenship_through_birth_or_descent.html
You can then live in Ireland and have access to freely travel within the EU.
14
Bravo! Another great article Mr. Egan.
I first started going to Europe as a high school student in 1953. I was always amazed how superior the USA was at that just a few years after WW II. We had better infrastructure, agriculture, health care facilities, and educational insititutions. The value of the dollar vs. the local currency was amazing. Indeed. Our family felt quite wealthy as my father was a government employee.
Now to 2019. Reverse everything I just said and you have Europe. Better infrastructure, healthcare, schools, etc, etc. What happened? By now, every American citizen must have figured out that handing money to the upper one percent is a disaster, making corporations basically run the country under the veil of a Republican Party, and making students pay for a college education for the remainder of their lives, leads to a disaster.
This is a teaching moment with Trump in office, a symbol of why fascism just doesn't work. Money moves to the affluent, the middle class crumbles, and the majority of citizens eventually go into debt, not to mention the cultural values of integrity, honesty, and multicultural diversity are lost. What's left is a nation run by corporations that focus on never ending war. We've seen it on the movie screens before with Hunger Games, 1984, etc. It's just hard to recognize it when you're part of it.
2020 is Decision Time. Democracy or Fascism? Truth or Lies? Information or Disinformation? Peace or War?
43
I just want to be sent back to an America I understood and believed in. The America I used to live in, while far from perfect, believed in the future, believed in civility, believed in a civil society, believed opinions should be based on demonstrable facts, believed in dissent as a way to improve, and believed that protecting those on the margins of society was a just and appropriate role for government. Where did that country go?
It started disappearing with stunning post-WWII prosperity, with Viet Nam, Watergate and the 1973 oil embargo. It continued with the Iranian hostage crisis, and with Reaganomics hollowing out the belief that government could and should help its less fortunate citizens. It accelerated with24/7/365 media, with the Internet and related technologies fanning the flames of extremism and it has culminated - so far - in Trump, the Squad and little faith in government as a force for justice, tolerance and a tempering force between the elites and the rest of us. It gave us a failing infrastructure such that we envy some allegedly third world countries, the reinvigoration sand growing legitimization of hate and prejudice and a growing number of Americans who will never achieve the economic prosperity of their parents and grandparents, even as a shrinking handful of billionaires seek ways to live forever.
Give me back the long view of a common good, rather than the winning is the only thing of today.
18
Love Ireland. Would retire there if we could meet the financial requirements. You’re right, it’s what we should aspire to again.
10
One of the best life experiences that my wife and me ever have had was to live in Ireland for about 9 months for work due to an international assignment.
We’ve met some wonderful people who remain as friends to this day, ate unforgettable meals (The Fade Street Social and Hatch & Sons by The Little
Dublin Museum come to mind), and drank perfect pints at The Old Stand by Exchequer Street. Also sampled Irish literature by the descendants of Joyce and Wilde by enjoying the Fringe Festival, watching local plays, and subscribing to two of the most groundbreaking literary magazines in print today, The Stinging Fly and The Dublin Review that I still renew every year.
We travelled the countryside and met even more wonderful people.
Gone back a couple of times and we are still amazed by the people and the place.
I am not surprised that Mr. Egan and the some of the Irish Americans in this comment section may want to go back.
(As immigrants to the US ourselves — not because there are no opportunities back home, but because we are both employed by multinationals whose career path leads to the mothership in Manhattan — we both wonder how many workers are seeking employment elsewhere. We certainly would have preferred Canada or Denmark have Trump been president when the head office came calling, as what our juniors in the firm are now doing.)
24
A comment here from an Irishman stated that "elimination of the pervasive influence of the Catholic Church from every aspect of society" turned Ireland into the wonderful nation it is today.
THAT is the primary reason for America's decline and movement in the wrong direction. Not just the Catholic Church but the evangelical Christians who have inserted themselves into every part of the government, federal, state and local, and in every aspect of society, civil laws and regulations, and worst of all, politics.
Since Reagan and the Moral Majority, white evangelical Christians have taken over the GOP, and now their puppet Donald Trump has filled the White House and his Cabinet with this religiously driven special interest.
43
Even when/if we get rid of the many pathologies of our current system (gerrymandering, electoral college, Citizens United, paid political advertising, etc.) we will still be far behind Ireland's democracy because of ONE simple innovation that Ireland has, which we lack:
It's called Proportional Representation with Single Transferable Vote (SVT).
If we had PR with SVT, Trump, who had a minuscule portion of the Republican Primary vote wouldn't have been the party's nominee. And he definitely wouldn't have been the President.
27
Lovely piece! And all true. But as a native of Ireland, I'm perpetually baffled (and quite mortified) by the number of individuals of Irish ancestry surrounding Donald Trump. Pence, Bannon, Conway, Brennan, Mulvaney, and so on. Makes me wonder how many Irish-Americans one would find at his rallies. It's quite a riddle.
32
@JR There is a great book by a man called Ignatieff, entitled "How the Irish Became White". It's about the 19th Century, but it really explains the mentality of the 21st century Irish-American Trumpers, from Bannon to Hannity.
14
I hold an Irish passport in addition to the my U.S. one. When I started the process of dual citizenship almost 15 years ago, it was just a gesture and a symbolic way of connecting to my father's parents, whom I adored.
All that changed on November 8, 2016. Now, I'm wondering if it's time to reverse the trip my grandparents made more than 100 years ago.
36
Being a Florida conservationist, I have no love lost for Trump. I prefer Obama's personality, but think he made a lot of misguided decisions that contributed to great divide we see today. In either case, the media has been exceptionally successful at directing public thought patterns that have resulted in induced neurosis.
One symptom of neurosis—an object of displacement. The sufferer focuses their attention on an individual or entity as the source of their discomfort when the root of their discomfort is actually some other unidentified problem. The neurotic will expend an inordinate amount of time and energy in an attempt to harm/destroy the object of displacement that, in reality, only serves to exacerbate the problem.
I have some Irish blood, but I don't want to go back to Ireland. Ireland is a nice place to visit, but it ain't all that.
3
I was just in Ireland last May for the second time in my life. To me Ireland is the antechamber to heaven.
Kind people everywhere. Nothing obscenely overbuilt. Endless fields of green. Glorious skies. Great food.
Yes, I was born here, but to Cuban parents who emigrated before the rise of Castro, before the dictatorship.
I am a veteran of the United States Navy and have given my oath to defend my country. But I am grown tired of never seeing Hispanic faces anywhere in popular culture (only in baseball) where the dominant faces are white and black, as on political talk shows.
I am beyond demoralized with the naked bigotry of this now blatantly repulsive civic reality here. I go to bed depressed and hopeless and awake the same. I am amused (in a tragic way) by these waves of new immigrants and I ask myself, ‘Don’t they see they are trading one hell for another?’
The hell that awaits them is the hell of being treated as second class citizens, even if “naturalized” and sworn to defend the constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic - like the domestic enemy of America currently at her helm delivering a daily death blow to everything that made her singular in the world. A hell peoples by nasty, cruel white men and women who fear the growing numbers of Hispanics. One Trump supporter told me, “You speak maíd. Go back to your country” and I had to say, “This is my country. I was born in this now openly revealed shithole”
Wish my parents had gone to Ireland instead.
45
The comment I made to another column -- approved and 'published' in the NYT on July 15, 2019 -- 'bears' repeating 'here':
Thomas Murray | NYC
Unfortunately, I CAN'T 'go back' to Ireland ... 'those' of my ancestors having left County Mayo in the first decade of the 19th C. (thus 'leaving' me w/o the Ireland-born grandparent 'or better' that I would need to claim Irish citizenship and Irish passport); nor can I "return" to Italy -- same 'issue' ... 'those' of my ancestors having left the City-State of Genoa in or about 1850 -- just 10 years before Garabaldi's "unification" led Genoa into the "Kingdom of Italy."
(Kinda makes me feel like the bikers in the bar run by Chazz Palminteri's character in "A Bronx Tale" ... when, having just witnessed 'thems' insulting behaviors, he walked to the bar's front door, locked it from the inside, and turned back alone to say to the many of 'thems,' "Now yiz can't leave.")
[And, scene …]
4
As a woman doctor of Irish ancestry, I have little sympathy for the progressive left who want what they want, and they want it NOW!
Job One is getting Trump out of office and restoring the Democracy.
Coming from a family of immigrants (I’m 2nd generation), I and the generation before me greatly appreciate what coming to America meant for us in terms of freedom, access to education and employment.
However, also as a woman MD, I can cite numerous instances of sexual harassment and similar troubles that happened not because I was a loud feminist but merely because I was standing in a place where several of my professors thought a white man should be standing. Sure, I had rights, but I learned the hard way to lay low about espousing them. I doubt women doctors of the current generation have to do this as much, but I’ll bet they still have to do it.
Change comes slowly, even or especially when it is mandated by law.
The progressive left correctly demands more access to healthcare for all, increased focus on global warming, needed attention paid to the infrastructure, and more access to equitable education for all—including “free” college. All of these things must be addressed, but like urgencies of the past, they can only be addressed bit by bit, largely because the country with its trillions in debt simply cannot address all of these issues completely and all at once.
Progressives and moderate Dems must work together on their common ground—the defeat of Trump!
25
"A debased nation fighting over the scraps of our former principles" sums it up perfectly.
23
My family is from Belgium, England and Ireland. If Trump wants me to go back I'll happily take a ticket. I could use a vacation from him.
21
Trump, and so many who benefit from white privilege, have always played on the myth that anything government does to help someone other than the white-privileged diminishes the advantages of white privilege.
They also act as if the growth of immigration and the growth of diversity have not contributed to the growth of our economy into the greatest economy in the history of the planet. Immigration and diversity are not problems; they are part of the solutions to make better lives for all of us.
11
"White privilege" is not a pejorative. It's a statement of fact.
White people take for granted many things that are not available to people of color. When I get pulled over because I made an illegal turn, I have absolutely no fear. I smile and say, sorry officer, and he lets me off without a ticket. I'm a middle aged white woman.
The most common example: black men get "the talk" when they are teenagers about how to respond when pulled over by a police officer, in a car or on the street. Young white men do not need to get that talk.
Don't be offended by the term. It is just a reminder that we should be aware of how life is often smoother for those of us who are white.
32
I’m a Cuban American woman who came to the United States in 1960 full of hopes and dreams; married an American and became a naturalized citizen in 1962. I clearly recall when my ex-husband took me to a small town in Pennsylvania to meet his family and his mother was surprised to see I was a white, green eye Hispanic woman.
In America, there was an unequivocal underlying layer of racism that Donald Trump brought afloat while campaigning for the presidency. He dressed himself as a far-right Republican candidate to obtain the support of the Republicans in Congress as well as the Evangelical votes and he succeeded. From that moment on, Republicans in Congress turned over their power to President Trump. Up until this date, they cynically cover up his lies and deny his fascist doctrine.
How sad that after so many years of working; paying taxes, raising American children and grandchildren believing you might belong, you come to the realization that you don’t.
19
I came here from Poland as a political refugee in 1968 as a result of government instigated anti-semitic campaign. Gomulka, the head of the Polish government, called the Polish Jews the Fifth column and accused them of loyalty to Israel, and not Poland. The organized by the government workers participated in rallies, and carried placards saying " Zionists, go to Zion." What ensued was an international action when Scandinavia, North America and Australia opened their borders to the Polish Jews.
Never have I imagined that fifty years later I will hear an American president and a crowd of his backers chanting "send her back."
The echoes of my experience couldn't be stronger. History made a full circle for me. It has made me shiver over the state of this country.
677
Mr. Egan....My Finish, Irish, Scotch, French blood bubbles with Joy in Gratitude for your candor, as it Boils in Disgust at the
presence of a “President” who chronically parades his
Sociopathic Personality Disorder as Director Of American Insanity. I am grateful that Trump has good reason for his
social Paranoia. In his ubiquitous presence as our Presider,
He joyfully parades his Sociopathic symptoms from the Oval Office.....Daily, while we, the People are allowed the privilege
of counting the Lies and Fabrications of a “Leader”who does
Not know enough to Care...or care enough to Know. In his
sick Sociopathy, he is beyond Treatment; we, the People,
are in Need of it! Mr. Egan...Thank You for the Sanity of Your
Presence!
6
Thank you for reminding us all of our backgrounds. It seems simple: if your ancestors didn't cross the Bering Strait, then you are a relatively recent immigrant, whether it is one year or 400 years. My grandparents came from eastern Russia, in the early 1900s, and I consider it an ongoing gift to be able to remain in this country, but I have never imagined I possess it, and have the right to deny everyone else a chance to make a life here.
22
Mr. Egan I strongly agree with you! My mother’s side of the family (Callahan and Gallagher) told many stories about suffering from exploitation by the British who were intent on keeping the Irish subjugated finacially, culturally, and so forth.
I grew up in Philadelphia which was the seat of the Know Nothing party in the Mid-1800s. Their target: Irish immigrants including burning churches and violence. The parallel with what’s happening on our border is clear. We don’t want people who are different from us and will take jobs
I’ve been to Ireland several times beginning in 1969. Ireland is a thriving inclusive society with a leader who not only has an Indian father, but who is gay and married to his husband.
The EU and democratic socialism is part of the explanation.
Thank you again for your column
35
Timothy--- a great column with the vivid ironic contrasts we need and usually don't get.
Now, even if you're not an economist, talk basic money. If Ireland can finance health care for all and low cost college tuition, give us some facts we can use on how they do it.
What are their tax rates for various income levels? Compare to US.
Do most citizens and all political parties feel their taxes are worthwhile for the benefits they get? Do their conservatives run on destroying their benefits, like our GOP does?
Do Irish complain, US style, that they don't want 'to pay for somebody elses HC or college degree'?
What are Irish people's attitudes to their govt that they were able to get humane, stable public benefits while the US is still fighting over these basic rights in 2019?
You want to talk about parliamentary systems? Ok, but explain that effect.
Also, do they do voter suppression and party gerrymandering like the US?
Most crucially---who finances their elections? Do they ban paid campaign ads on media like other countries do, thus not needing billionaire funding, which US politics is dependent on?
26
Mr. Egan makes me proud of my Irish heritage. Just wish the other 30 (or 40) million Americans who share our heritage would remember, always, that we are descended from immigrants an revolutionist.
If you haven't seen it, find and watch Black 47. It can remind you of why people would and how desperate they can be to leave even a place as beautiful as Ireland. Thank God that Ireland has come as far as it has, and pray that the landlords and ruling class here never become what they were in the mid eighteenth century Ireland. Unfortunately, it seems we may be headed that way.
28
This column brought me to tears, I'm sorry to say, because I am astounded at how much I agree with it. Born on the 4th of July and always proud of it, I never thought I could have such a thought. But in these times, I do.
20
The number of uninsured up by 7 million under Trump. Sure it's worse under Trump. But it was bad before Trump too. We have such low standards. Kaiser’s web site says there were 44 million uninsured in 2013, then down to about 27 million in 2016. Improvement sure, but still awful by intl standards.
Even under the ACA, many people can't afford the high cost of insurance. Govt regulations of premiums, common in other democracies, are here painted as too 'left wing', thus suppressed for debate in our media.
We have enormous work to do just to reach the late 20th international standards of human rights in health care access common for generations in developed countries.
We're still blocked from these standards by the American credo of 'profit the 1st priority' over our HC, equated with ‘American Freedom’. We're thankful for Obamacare, under attack, but it's still an inadequate HC system. The GOP aim to destroy ACA makes it look better than it really is.
Trump and GOP can make even a mediocre Democrat look great by contrast. We settle for less. We have to do constant reality checks, and stand up for our standards.
13
Still, insured doesn't mean you can afford care, it just means you can afford insurance.
9
I feel that is also important to note that Trump has loosed his venom on WOMEN of color. Send HIM back does not work as well...
34
Oh please, if there's any group the Irish dislike almost as much as themselves, it's we Americans (especially those of us of Irish ancestry).
10
When I visited Ireland, I found the opposite. As soon as I spoke and my accent revealed my nationality, the Irish seemed almost universally friendly and eager to talk with me and my wife.
Not sure who you are referencing when you say the "Irish" dislike themselves or Americans.
32
Send me back to the country I came from: America before Trump
105
Yes, everyone except indigenous people has to go back if what President claims is right. Be it Germany, England, etc. So appalled to hear a nation's leader to speak such childish and vulgar statement.
50
When her father died, a friend took him home to Tipperary. She had traveled to the Sudan, been on mission to Egypt where she nearly was assassinated in the desert and continues to this day to work in the humanitarian community.
'You must be the Irish Catholic daughter', she exclaimed on her way to Shannon Airport with her father's coffin. 'I am reading your father's Indestructible Irish, she continued, and he writes well'.
"How long does it take for an Irish-American to become an American?", he begins. After my parents separated, my father went to Ireland for ten days to find out, and stayed for more than ten years.
Palleskenry, Co. Limerick 1969 - 'No more Apartheid!', my father raged, leading the village up the rural lane and we all joined in. To the honest, the nuns at boarding-school in France had never mentioned what was happening, but I was starting to learn more than some verses from Corneille.
The local Media covered the above demonstration. The teacher wanted to know of my seven-year old sister if my boyfriend was Jewish because he sported a beard. 'Tell her from me, replied my father with a twinkle in his eye, that Jesus wore a beard'.
My father, born in New Haven, had fled New England to pitch his tent in New York and believed in using one's Voice against injustice and racism. He wrote a love letter dedicated to Ireland, and against universal oppressors.
Use your voice, Alex, Ondine, Candida for your father is calling on you, wherever you are.
8
Oddly, the author remains here in the good old USA.
Odd, weird but not at all surprising.
Must be the good salary, the benefits and the right to spew his particularly sort of nonsense.
Once again, for the thick skulled, we Americans embrace everyone, so long as they arrive and remain here legally.
For those, such as the author, who presume to want all comers accepted, I again suggest that the author take in at least one illegal immigrant family; house them, clothe them and be responsible for any legal infractions they may commit while living here as his guests.
This isn't Ireland and it isn't hard to figure this out.
The US offers 100,000 welcomes too, we're just a bit more particular in that we want people who are not criminals and we do not want people who are criminals.
13
@Robert Cicero
So you agree with Trump that these women need to leave America because they disagree with his policies?
6
@Robert Cicero "we Americans embrace everyone, so long as they arrive and remain here legally." Representative Ilhan Omar DID arrive here legally and is an American citizen. However, I don't see the American embrace that you mention. The U.S. is at par with immigration policy with many other countries that aim to, among other things, weed out those with criminal records, but the results and attitudes are so much more ugly.
8
@Robert Cicero but his point is that Trump does not want people of color to come here. he very clearly singled out these four women because they are not white. And sir, I would say that unless you are Native American or descended from Native American people, you don't have a moral high ground to stand on here.
11
I wonder what Egan thinks of his fellow Irish Americans: Pence, Mulvaney, John Kelly, William Barr, Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway, Paul Ryan et al.
26
@Anne Leslie I know I'm embarrassed and angered all at once. But, I know many Irish Catholic Americans, including priests that back trump. I can't for the life of me understand. Our relatives were cursed and spit on when they came here. Why would we do that to others seeking a better life? I don't get it and pray to God that people will wake up and see how hateful his message is. We don't have to agree all the time, but we can be civil and show respect. If it didn't mean leaving my children and grandchildren I might look at my great grandparents homeland for my late years. I love America but I have been sick, literally and figuratively, since since this man took office.
16
You read my mind. My Grandmother and Grandfather on my mothers side came from Norway via Canada. Not Ellis Island. So perhaps being a descendant of illegals, can I go back to the Motherland, please.
21
I'd like to be sent back to the country I came in 1963: the US. Eve after the three assassinations and the Vietnam War, and, various other stupid policies, we had hope and we tried to improve ourselves..
15
The way Trump* has degraded American ideals and destroyed our reputation in the world, the countries we came from would be reluctant to take us back, even if we wished to go, fearing the spread of his malignant hate speech, racism, and sexism. We just have to stay and fight back.
29
Backward is the opposite of Progressive.
9
Well said. Trump likely has a 666 on his orange dyed hair. The country that founded Democracy has fallen for fascism. What a disgrace. The day is not over, but with Barr as his henchman and a right leaning Supreme Court we are all in peril.
27
Please send me back to the country I came from: Pre Trump America, before America went hate crazy.
38
My my. The white man shakes his head and says I'm against the use of the phrase white privilege, as he reaps its benefits and wields it to punish blacks by pushing for an honorable platform for the racism of the odious Charles Murray. Again the reenforcing platitudes of white supremacy, uniting alleged political foes like egan and trump. We black folk have to overcome all of this hydra headed monster. No surprise many from Colin kaepernack to the squad find the hypocrisy intolerable as white cops continue to kill blacks with near total impunity-- which is a direct result of Egan's arrogant refusal to acknowledge the white privilege he enjoys.
7
I'd like to go back to the country I came from.....it was pre-trump! trump has debased the office of the presidency, and he has debased the American people. he is a national disgrace, an embarrassment....to say the least!
22
What did America "used to be"? When was it better? Trump's base didn't just happen. These are the children and grand children of the white mobs that attacked black children trying to integrate their schools. These are the descendants of the Confederacy, of Jim Crow, lynching and terror. We can be all one thing or the other, but not both.
19
@mary bardmess
These are also the children and grandchildren of those who, well, said (and, especially in their day, were more likely to say, "There goes the neighborhood!" and/or be ordered (or order people of like race) to sell their homes right away for fear of "depreciated property values" (and by extension, blacks "ruining" the neighborhood and (insert other preconceived fears about Hispanics AND/OR African-Americans here)) and then move from their urban neighborhood to the suburbs or from their suburb to another suburb.
2
Will Americans re-elect an outspoken racist with fascist leanings as our president and face to the world. Most of the world is non-white the enemy of Trump's religion White Nationalism. Trump has displayed he has tanks at his July 4th rally has a reminder to what could happen to dissidents he will not tolerate. Dictators do not tolerate dissidents or a free press as they prefer to demagogue and instil fear and hate which seems to be Trump's modus operandi . If Trump wins America loses and the world is made chaotic bring a smile to Putin who seems to be Trump's puppet master.
14
Let me add a couple of other reasons. Ireland made abortion legal. Leo Varadkar is gay.
17
Thank you the author for this insightful and informative commentary
7
Mitch McConnell says, of the president’s racism that “he’s on to something.” And his foreign-born wife, Elaine Chao, a person of color I might add (Taiwan), also has no problem with her husband and his lifelong and career-long wish to return America to its antebellum “greatness.” You see, Mr. Egan, with people like them—and for the millions of your fellow Irish “hyphenates,” as you write, Donald Trump answers the deep call for what is—among charitable people—for the complete, absolute and total ruination of “people of color.” Why? Because it is bullying to its most logical conclusion—the destruction of others and the domination of the “survivors.” It’s the play-out of the ultimate us vs. them.
As your essay reveals, immigration in Ireland has resulted in many benefits now available to its citizens that were unthinkable not very long ago. It’s called progress, once an American lure but now a trap. His rabid, salivating supporters do not consider that their place in America—or their president’s—was secured by the sufferance of the immigrants before them—grudging though that may have been. It’s kind of like pulling up the ladder onto the ship’s deck after you and yours are safely aboard.
We won’t improve as a nation until or unless we take on a word that I used above—“charity”—until we take on its twin virtue: humility, two of Christ’s lodestars for the human condition‘s eternal salvation.
We, unlike Ireland, worship evil. Don’t we see it every day in Trump and McConnell?
10
The accompanying photo is of Dunluce Castle in Northern Ireland, which is a different country than the one described in the article.
11
And, also, send us all , those with very light tan skin as well as those with very dark brown skin, there is no such thing as black or white or yellow skin , back to southern Africa where we all originated.
As our ancestors migrated/migrate northward, - - often due to climate change - - , we needed less melanin because the Sun in the northern parts of the planet Earth is not as strong. Oh, and also, people with different shades of brown skin, from dark brown to tan, copulated, some lovingly and some violently [rape], and created different shades of skin.
Migration, most frequently throughout prehistory and now, -- is caused by dangerous climate change , - which modern humans cause-, as well as by greed and economic deprivation, that is by not sharing with one another.
And, lastly, humans suffer from Stranger Anxiety, which causes the rejection of and also violence toward strangers, human beings.
3
Talk to your fellow Irish-Americans Tim, such as Representative Mike Kelly from Pennsylvania. I'm sure he's not alone.
6
Joe Biden will take us all 'back' to the country we come from -- the 20Teens.
3
Except you weren't born there?
3
@mons
Neither were most of the women Trump was talking about. That is the point.
5
Hey, Trump, send me back! Norway has better health care, stronger wages, a more stable economy, and maternity and paternity leave.
The immigration system had been broken for a long time. This just makes it much worse. Both parties need to work on it and find a solution and stop making it a wedge issue.
If Trump was sending UCE out there to round up all the illegal Russians and illegal Chinese, that might show that he isn’t focused on black and brown illegals, but he likes being the flamethrower.
12
I've gone back home. I don't recognize America anymore. I cannot understand how so many people still support the narcissistic baby in the White House who desires to be a "bigly" despot. I have to pay to leave .... maybe Donnie can cut me a deal since he wants us to go back. How about it Donnie?
12
I, too, want to be sent back to the country I came from: Germany. Germany is a country where the Trumpists recently peaked at ten percent of the vote, not forty-five. It is a country that plants Stolpersteine, stumbling stones, in the pavement to remind Germans where their citizens lived before they were arrested by the Nazis. It is a country where the largest political party is now environmentalist, and dedicated to fighting climate change. It is a place with a dark history that strives to do better. It is certainly not a place where rabid mobs are given free reign to indulge in violence and hatred. Nicht heute, nie wieder.
20
This is easy because I am not an immigrant --- only you are an immigrant. I am l00% American, white, male, Republican, and rich. These folks surround the alien in the WH.
5
Let us all remember that “send her back” can apply to ALL white European descendants of immigrants to this land, much less so to many Hispanics, who up to the Mexican-American war, were residents of the current Texas, Arizona, California, Utah, New Mexico territories. In my worst moments enduring the current administration, I would welcome a send-back to the lands of my ancestors, but I wonder how far back they would have to research where mine came from? Human migration is endemic to our species, and I doubt it will stop, even if the orange monster and the rest of his ilk decrees it so.
12
My family is from Finlnd and Canada. Can I get political asylum because of the maniac in the White House.
Honestly, I'll leave and let the Faux Christians eat each other alive.
12
You cannot argue a logic of continuity in the NYT because they don't publish half the comments . Without any uncivil reasons.
It is not a professional journalist attitude .
They orientate the comments.
If you write a comment in Le Monde and there is nothing abusive , it is published .
Professional French journalists .
4
Yes, send me back to ITALY, please! I'd kill for an EU passport.
14
When all the immigrants "illegally" or legally, are rounded up, who will be next?
Me? I'm retired Navy but refuse to buy into this fascist-wannabe regime. Will I be rounded up?
I find it amusing we are letting 1/5th of the country, the ones with no direction or values, control the narrative.
A question to trump supporters: was he always like this? I recall him palling around with Hillary...what happened?
Keep your hate...and good luck rounding me up.
12
My family has been here for a long time. I have a so many greats grandmother who was charged as a witch in Salem, but they let her go. I had another great great something grandfather who came here in 1750, joined the revolutionary army, served at Valley Forge, with the Green Mountain boys and later at Kings Mountain in NC. His two sons served in the War of 1812 and one of their sons served in the Union Army, and his son was in WWI. My family members have served in every war the US has been in except WWII - my grandfather was too old and my father was medically unfit. I am a very liberal democrat and if someone wants to kick my butt out of this country, he has a full time job.
16
Aren't Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Megan Kelly, and other Fox News people Irish-Americans?
What is it about these Irish-Americans that they so hate their adopted country and their fellow Americans?
https://www.newsweek.com/why-are-all-conservative-loudmouths-irish-american-691691
9
Timmy me boyo, you don’t have to go back to the “country you came from” to celebrate diversity. Instead of living in the mostly white, privileged neighborhood in Seattle as you do now, come celebrate diversity here with me in The Bronx! Where you can enjoy some of the highest car theft insurance rates in the country, some of the worst schools, highest crime rates....I could go on. But I promise you, more diversity than you can shake a shillelagh at.
9
Beam me up Scotty. There is no sign of intelligent life down here. Then beam me down in Norway, the home of my ancestors.
And I thank the Lord that my millennial son now lives in Germany where his family is flourishing. He got his PHD in Germany for $300 dollars a semester. Now he has his own start up business in Electrical engineering . Could not have happened in USA.
21
Ireland is a small, centralized country with less diversity than we have. What works there won't here. The US is a mixture of first world and third and we won't get beyond that, especially if we keep letting third-worlders in. Might as well compare us with the Swiss.
Compared with China, Russia, and Brazil we look pretty good.
Want a civilized country? Move to Canada, which is what I've advised my kids to do.
The U S will get worse as the whites get more angry and violent. Bet on it.
7
Is it the Anglo Saxton place representative Mike Kelly of PA came from?
5
The left wants government by dictates of the left. They accomplished this goal in academia, mainstream media, big tech and entertainment industry which now includes professional sports. Everybody opposing them is deemed to have moral flaws racism being the most damning. Intimidation and social exclusion are their favored weapons. While their White Privilege campaign means absolutely nothing in practice it started the process of organizing politics alongside racial lines and creating basically two camps of white and nonwhite.
Trump is a result of a reaction not its creator.
Reminds me of the leftwing revolutionary movements of past decades. One day they bombed officer wife’s club and next day they screamed for human rights and due process while being pushed out of a helicopter by the husbands. From Russia to Cuba to China to Argentine to Venezuela there are no good end outcomes after the radical left goes for that “fundamental” change of society. Only sorrow.
5
I could live with and Irish immigration scheme: limit immigration in order to limit the foreign-born population to 12% and deport all illegal aliens.
4
I think very few of us were expecting your info. Somehow the idea of universal acceptance isn't so universal!
It's good to know about other countries'immigration policies. It make some of us feel a little more sane.
4
A far better analysis of present-day America than the starry-eyed plateful of platitudes served up by David Brooks in his column Donald Trump Hates America.
1
Send me back to Obama’s America
11
Love Ireland but it is basically a small state here with little to no diversity. Diversity is our American strength but getting everyone to agree can be tiresome - impossible! Also, on health care President Obama had the best advice. Go out and play a little basketball everyday, it will do wonders for our health. Not that some sick people can play basketball but the point is get healthy first then worry about health care.
2
@Dante In the middle of the article, Egan writes that one in eight persons in Ireland were born abroad, nearly as high a percentage as the foreign-born population of the United States.
2
Interesting column, Mr. Egan, and I share your sentiments. But we ought to stop and think about people who are simply not able to "go back to their countries".
My family are Assyrian Christians from Iran, although I was born in this country. As an ethnic and religious minority, even if the country's leaders let my family in, we would be targeted constantly. Continuing harassment of non-Muslims in Middle Eastern countries continues unabated. And in recent history, thanks for Dubya's disastrous foray into Iraq, that country has lost the vast majority of its Assyrian Christian population (roughly two million in 2003, now approximately 250,000).
So understand that many of us don't have a country, and no place to go. We are literally stateless people.
And now we are targets in this country because we have Middle Eastern ethnicity, coloring, and features. But we are targets in the countries of our ancestors' birth, because of our religious background.
And this is why so many people in my situation here in America are terrified. I'm in my 60's. I was born here. I never thought I'd feel unsafe here. That all changed in 2016. Now our family thinks of nothing more than where we might be able to go. Because we might very well need asylum in Canada, Australia, or any other country in which we're not literal targets.
26
I can top that. The accident of my birth was New Zealand. Until I was 24, I was a citizen of it. That was my age when I realized that for good and bad, I was an American. I swore the oath, and will now swear no other.
I've seen out worse, and will see him out.
11
Well written essay. So glad to hear of a country that works for its people.
7
Also, way better food. Less antibiotics, more farm to table, and corn syrup doesn't exist in mass market foods.
20
And because, Aidan Turner.
6
Let's not forget that the protestants asked the Irish catholics of Maryland to give up their land to create Washington DC .
4
Beautifully said. Thanks.
10
I console myself with the certain knowledge that my mother and her sisters, who got off the boat from Cork in 1929, would crawl over hot coals to vote against Trump. As would my dad whose father and mother fled the destitution of Ireland in the 1880s. America has been seized by fits of nativism before: the Know Nothingism of the 1850s spawned by the "horror" of being overcome by Papists from Ireland and Germany; the exclusion by law of Chinese and other Asians in the late 19th century following fears being swamped by "Coolie" labor; the early 20th century crackdown on southern and eastern European immigration led by such worthies as Boston Brahmin Henry Cabot Lodge and cheered on by none other than Teddy Roosevelt -- driven by the conviction that superior "Nordic" or Anglo-Saxon blood would be polluted by the likes of Italians, Slavs and Russian Jews. We made it through all these trials and became the better country. I have hope that we will again.
33
Let's start with Columbus then. The indigenous people might want everyone from his arrival on to "go back to where they came from?"
Love the concept.
15
Send me back to the country we had before MAGA.
52
@Cloud 9 MAGA is unfortunately the latest incarnation of anti-immigrant (or forced immigrants in the case of African slaves) sentiment. There's nothing happening in 2019 that didn't happen in the 1920s (except its now tweeted and televised.)
No idea how to address the resentment the MAGAts feel against immigrants. It feels like its the same groups bellowing at the little black girl entering grade school flanked by US Marshalls or screamed next to the fires of the Inquisition fires or were enthralled at the Nurenberg rally. It's not just America either.
I find it odd that there's all this send-them-back sentiment when the orange-tinted President is the son of a Scottish immigrant and the grandson of German immigrants. That's within living memory as opposed to many whose name of ancestors were lost to time.
4
@Cloud 9
Hopefully, you mean our most recent Presidential administration.
1
“I” did not come from Poland or Slovakia or Hungary. Those are today’s countries from which my ancestors came.
I’d be happy, I’d “settle” to be “sent back” to the United States of, say, five years ago. Pretty sure many others would agree with me.
29
When I was a child I learned in church a song as follows:
"Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white
They are precious in his sight."
I sang it and believed it. Has Mike Pence, supposed Christian, sung this song? Does he no longer believe in its message?
32
If Timothy was black and writing this ode to an African nation of democracy and equality, Trump would accuse him of treason.
18
From one Irish to another, outstanding column Tim!
11
Eeek! Some of my family's forebears came from England to this country in 1626 aboard a very small ship called the Mayflower. Others, also from England, arrived the early 18th century. Go back there? With Boris Johnson, mirror image of trump, possibly becoming PM? OMG! Talk about having to choose between a rock and a hard place!
16
@Sandy
Yes, Boris is Trump but a Prime Minister in a Parliamentary system does not have near the power of a president. He can & will be gotten rid of quite easily.
6
@Sandy. I've got lots of British (and Irish) blood as well. And lots of their ancestors came from Norway and Denmark. Here in MN most of the immigration came from Norway and Sweden, which 150 years ago were very poor countries but which are now very prosperous. How things have changed.
1
Tom Egan distills (truth) even better than Irish Whiskey makers
12
I recently learned, to my surprise, that there is such a thing as "anti-Irish racism," and it has a special name: "Hibernophobia." Here's a Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment . Apparently there has been historic discrimination or persecution of Irish people, going back to the 1100s.
6
@Eugene
Gee, you didn't know that because it is not taught in our schools. The English are always wise and good, except for that little thing called the Revolutionary War.
When the Irish arrived escaping the horrors of the man-made Famine (the English exported enough food from Ireland during the famine to feed every man, woman, and child in the country twice over), they were welcomed here as the people fleeing Central America are now. We were "dirty, lazy, criminals" who took American jobs. Signs said "No dogs or Irish" and hiring signs said, "No Irish need apply."
Really, we all need to know this history. As a second generation Irish American, I am aware of our history and would not wish it on anyone else. The stranger at the gate is not taking your jobs. Corporate America is to blame, folks. They ship the jobs overseas, not the immigrants. Wake up!
14
@Eugene. Yes, when the Normans, who had invaded England 100 years ago, evidently needed a new challenge. Throw in the Reformation and you've got a conflagration waiting to happen. Irish Protestant ancestors of mine emigrated to New England 370 years ago in order to not be killed by Catholics.
1
Don’t want to burst your bubble but I think this is exactly what Pelosi wanted, to make Trump crazy and to showcase the ugliness in him. She also got a twofer with this one, the Republican Party. No where in her wildest dream did she hope that Trump would be this easy to manipulate. I say kudos to Nancy and the squad, you go girls.
17
Tens of millions of Americans have such mixed ancestry and no discernible 'ethnicity' that 'send them back' is meaningless, since there are no unique ancestral links left and no languages other than American English. Maybe such folks are just a remnant of the previous 'melting pot' America – i.e. the ideal of assimilation into a dynamic land of unlimited opportunity- which has now become what? A tossed salad?
5
You may be declaring your immunity to Trump’s venom prematurely as an Irish-American, who are as much an ethnic group as any other. You may feel you have been shielded by "white privilege" in this instance, but during the early waves of immigration to America, the Irish were not considered “white.” Nor does your status as an nth generation Irish-American born in the United States protect you from being Trump's next target. If and when Trump finds it politically beneficial, he will turn his mob on the Irish or anyone else he can cast as “them, not us.”
15
@Dan88 Representative Kelly of PA has foreseen this very scenario and preemptively claimed to be Anglo Saxon.
2
@Dan88
I seem to recall Trump's mother was Scottish. I guess not so hated as the Irish or the Welsh or the Brits in general. But to be certain, his mother was not of US origin.
There is a viewpoint in the US that the rightful owners of the US are not the natives but people of British ancestry, which I guess would include Scottish and Welsh, but of course not Irish who were as hated as the Italians.
4
My grandfather was an Irish immigrant who came as a child with his family (child #11 in the family) fleeing the famine and British cruelty. He married my Philadelphia Quaker grandmother, and they settled in Washington, DC where he bartended, then owned his own bar.
My mother said he was quite the raconteur, and when he became successful, he moved the family to an upper-middle-class neighborhood, where his 6 children will tell you that they were called "shanty Irish" and teased and taunted at school and in the neighborhood. They became life-long Democrats against mindless and cruel prejudice and hatred.
Grandpa loved literature, music, took his kids to the theater, and fought with the Catholic Church over its rigidity. A feisty, funny man, he was, however, deeply prejudiced his entire life against—the British. He despised them, mostly for how they stole from the Irish, ginned up hatred, and treated Irish children and families.
He said the mark of country's civility is how it treats children—its own children and children who are "from away."
What does his conviction say about what has happened to our country in only 2 long years under the toxic presidency of Donald J. Trump, his minions doing his obviously cruel bidding, and his political party that is too afraid to do the right thing—even for the sake of small children?
Nov. 3, 2020 will be this country's final exam as a democracy and caring nation. Vote your choice.
32
@PB. The dems MUST produce someone worth voting for. Got to be more appealing than trump. Vote your choice?
3
The Irish were colonized twice: once by the British Empire and once by the Roman Catholic Church.
They're no longer colonized and can be free.
When will Americans over-throw what colonizes us? In my opinion, that's our government by and for the wealthy.
20
Ireland began a real renaissance when it finally got itself out from under the thumb of the Roman Catholic Church.
Separation of Church and State is something we Americans need to hold onto.
62
Send me back to the country I came from, please - the one before Trump.
9
Send me back to the country I came from:
America before Trump.
8
I would love to move to Ireland.
I was there once for a few weeks 20 years ago.
Familiar to an American the way Britain is not.
Sign me up, but alas, not at all Irish.
2
Those Send Them Back chants? Totally understandable. Like if Trump ever decided he wanted to emigrate to Canada.
1
Leo Varadkar: my goodness, a Prime Minister and Indian immigrant whom Trump has not yet insulted, or physically shoved aside when the opportunity presented itself?
The boor with melting bronzer [thanks so much for that, Mr. Egan] better get busy. His rabid racist choir need to know that he never would pass up a chance to sing loud and clear from their hymn book.
5
Words to ponder. Times are changing too fast when moral norms are shattered by an unhinged, and deranged, racist president, with the bully pulpit to harangue his troops into stupid, and shameful, rants. It reminds me of Bob Dylan's "The Times They are-a-changin" (it's lyrics worth reading, asking our politicians to 'heed the call, don't stand in the way...while the battle outside ragin'). What remains impressive is our short memory, and our unwillingness to think for ourselves, and stop listening to the raging bully in the Oval Office; all he has to offer is hateful nonsense; and while not having a single worthwhile idea of his own, he is an expert in distracting us with other's flaws he himself is so well endowed with. As to why this country, so rich, seems unwilling to care for it's own, forgetting the maxim that 'no chain is stronger than it's weakest link', shall remain a deep mystery...unless you think we live in a capitalistic society where the deep inequities may obey to dumping Ethics... in favor of selfishness and greed.
7
Great men and leaders send people to the moon, not back home from where they came.
11
Right on. Just. Right. On.
2
If Egan really want's to understand how Irish Americans could vote for a flagrant racist I suggest that he read How the Irish Became White, by Noel Ignatiev. This groundbreaking historical monograph examines how 19th century Irish immigrants to Ante-Bellum American were enlisted in the ranks of rabid antic-black hatred and eventually support for the Confederate States in the Civil War, and opposition to Congressional Reconstruction afterwards. Mr. Eagan should learn a little bit more about the history of the United States and about Irish immigrants. It might help him to think more clearly about how we came to this pass.
6
@john riehle This history is suspect. It ignores the anti-Irish policies of the post civil war Republicans, which drove the Irish to the Democratic Party.
3
While hiking on Achill Island, a friend slipped on a wet rock and hurt her knee. The physician at the local surgery advised us to get an x-ray at the ER in nearby Castlebar. We made a 40E co-pay and obtained a referral.
When we presented the referral at the ER, we found that our single co-pay covered treatment of the entire condition — initial visit, x-ray at the ER, and followup visits with a specialist. And this regardless of diagnosis: it could have been a torn ACL instead of the deep bruise it turned out to be, and our co-pay would have been the sum total of our contribution. BTW, the ER wait was brief.
Just saying...
17
Thanks for a great article. You note: "Oliver Sears, a British-born resident of Ireland and son of a Polish holocaust survivor, wondered how any immigrant could ever vote for Trump."
How? In ways that produce a Trump victory in WI, PA, FL, MI, SC. and OH. The rest does not matter much.
It is naive to attribute saint-like, victim-like status to all immigrants, or to attribute blamelessness, or to over-estimate our cognitive capacity. We are as dumb, bigoted, racist, as the next person.
Ask any immigrant, the hostility faced from other immigrants is way higher than that faced from native born people. My guess, this occurs because many immigrants hail from mono-cultures and/or from authoritarian states that regard everyone with suspicion and hostility.
Similarly, Trump and his constituencies hate blacks, Hispanics, and Jewish people too. But one too many people of these extractions will vote for him.
The notion of an authoritative imbecile and deviant, who offers daily evidence of what he is doing to hurt people (striking down Obamacare for instance), is appealing to people regardless of their status, religion, creed. The fact that he is getting away with an impossible mix of treason, misogyny, racism, bigotry, robber baronry, nepotism, and banana republicary, and beaten his opposition to a bunch of bumbling idiots, triggers the devotion akin to that reserved for organized crime bosses.
5
Sheila Carmody here: My thoughts exactly.
Too bad that Individual #1 is immune to facts.
1
Sounds like you should permanently move there. FYI, Benjamin Franklin and his son never spoke again after the Revolutionary War. His son went to England. Any person who doesn’t value our founding principles should leave and become a citizen of whatever nation espouses the principles that person believes in.
4
@Matthew
And what are the founding principles you and Trump believe? All I can tell he believes in is himself.
4
@Matthew "Any person who doesn't value our founding principles should leave"...including, most obviously, Mr. Trump!
3
@Matthew
In what way is a bad healthcare system one of our “founding principles?”
2
Just remember that as vile, ignorant, dishonest, and virulently racist as he is, Trump did not create anything that was not already here. The lost-at-life, braying hordes at his rallies are finally able to publicly express what they have privately said for their entire lives. Some of us knew that lots these people existed, the only surprise is how many of them there are.
14
i just said this to a childhood friend yesterday.
please send me back to the place of my beloved hard working ancestors who made the ocean voyage to an America of their dreams.
That is...send me back to France,England ,Sicily,
and Germany because people still feel manners apply in social settings. Society
has norms that are learned at the family table.
Discussion and passion come in the same sets of phrases. Outbursts are generally something one contains for the proper safe space.
Do send me back. My two sons want to return to the Ost Schweiz where they were born. They did not get citizenship but they grew to know a country of peace and beauty spending their summers in the Ticino.
Italian,French German English,Reto Romansch
are all languages my children heard and could even detect as little persons.
They had no fear. Their immigrant father softened the blow of certain life rules and behavior.
when we moved back to America my two children were called" nazis"
What is wrong with this country?
Where are these lessons being taught to despise your neighbor?
please. send me back
5
Unfortunately, Mr Egan, we can't go back to Ireland. It's not easy. I looked into it.
2
Love this!
2
How does any person of Irish descent support this man? I don't know, but you should ask Sean Hannity, Kelly Ann Fitzgerald Conway and so many more who are betraying the aspirations of their Irish ancestors every day.
12
Because Irish Americans are white they can vote for him; they know they are not a target. White privilege?
Irish Americans are generations away from the 19th century ethnic tensions and hatred of "Irish need not apply." So they can vote for him. That ancient old history is irrelevant, if people today even know about it.
2
@Barbara, true and honest history is never irrelevant. Never.
2
Mr. Trump's attack on the four representatives is directed at persons of color but also importantly at women.
For Trump, women are disposable like Kleenex. Marriage vows are written on magician's flash paper. Serial adultery is his modus vivendi. He is careful to use sacrificial cutouts (Pecker and the National Enquirer, Michael Cohen) to insulate himself from legal if not moral consequences.
Women (and young girls per his bro Epstein) are put on earth for the pleasure of men and may be discarded when they get too old or "uppity" or pregnant (see Elliott Brody).
We are at a crossroads. Either women adopt the strategies of Lysistrata or we all gather our pitchforks and torches and assault the ramparts, the voting booths having been hijacked.
9
About a year ago my adult son said to my husband and me in all seriousness when we were talking about trump and where the country was headed, why don't you move out of he country (we are near retirement). I said it was important to work to change what is happening. But I am so disillusioned. Trumps last rally sounded more like Hitlers speeches, fomenting hate of the other. He loves stirring up his base. They all have guns, and they too frighten me. He has torn children from their mothers arms at the border. Women of color should go back. I'm sick.
5
We live in Crazyland where an anti-immigrant President can claim that two of his three wives are/were foreign born immigrants and these two wives produced four of his five children. Also, since Trump became President, Melania's parents were brought to the U.S. and given fast tracked U.S. citizenship - no waiting in line - what a deal.
Seriously, you cannot make this stuff up. It really is stranger than fiction in the upside down inside out chaotic, psychotic and insane place of Donald J Trump.
17
"Trump’s hate blast was directed solely at people of color."
Stop trying to manipulate us. Trump was responding to vile and stupid things said by four people of color. So technically you are correct that his remark was directed "solely at people of color." But your insinuation that his rejoinder was BECAUSE OF their color is false. Trump's remark was like the bumper sticker says -- "love it or leave it."
And yes that applies to you. If America is the brutal racist dystopia that your newspaper says it is ad nauseam, then why do so many people with black, brown and white skin want more than anything else to be part of it?
Why has the Times spent the last 40 or 50 years peddling the falsehood that every "disparity" between the races (or sexes) is the result of racism? Naked, cynical politics. As Mark Lilla has pointed out in these columns, white Americans will soon be in a minority (indeed may already be). So one way of winning elections is by mobilizing the emerging majority. That means turning race against race by incessantly repeating the Big Lie that white America is racist and the implacable enemy of the emerging majority.
3
Mr. Egan, it's sad you felt the need to distance yourself from these articulate, progressive congresswomen. You've fallen for Trump and the Right's construction—and trafficking in their vile memes. You wrote:
“I should add in the interest of full transparency, I disagree with much of the policy initiatives of the four left-wing congresswomen targeted by Trump. It was wrong and incorrect for them to make Nancy Pelosi’s disagreement with them about race.”
You didn’t say those things in the interest of “transparency”; but to avoid being tarred by the Right.
You offered not a single policy you disagree with!
Are you against universal health care?
Are you against the Green New Deal, a welcome framework for combatting the climate crisis and economic inequality?
Do you favor of the continued occupation and the mistreatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government?
Do you favor AIPAC's excessive influence on U.S. legislators?
Do you think they are wrong in calling for immigration reform, ending family separations, providing beds and medical services, and ending wanton brutality in the detention ”camps”?
Finally, their disagreement with Pelosi is over policy not race; her failure to attach conditions to $4 billion border funding for this corrupt president. For months, Pelosi been bad-mouthing them publicly. After her scurrilous, snarky remarks to Maureen Dowd, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez rightly pointed out that Pelosi has singled out the women of color.
6
At least Trump isn't using Irish-Americans like he is Jewish-Americans equating criticizing the current government of Israel, which is making its own appeals to bigotry in order to stay in power, with being antisemitic.
The more Trump uses Israel to deflect from his own bigotry, the more and more likely that many American Jews will stop caring about Israel.
2
Reagan, Ryan, Hannity, O'Reilly, Kelley... the list of right-wingers of Irish descent is endless. Most of their ancestors were refugees from the Great Famine and were hated, harassed and physically attacked by the right-wing, anti-immigrant white-nationalists of that time, a party of hate called the Know Nothings. Why are they right-wingers today? History is full of such bitter irony.
10
@jimline
You left out Patrick Buchanan.
1
The phrase "Go back to where you came from" is not only racist, it is anti-intellectual. It bespeaks of a lack of curiosity about other cultures. It presumes, without a basis in fact, that all these other nations are inferior.
5
Ireland has gone hard-left, that's for sure. Not all that surprising, I guess -- given that probably its most productive and conservative residents LEFT YEARS AGO (you, for example).
But sir, if you wish to repatriate yourself to Ireland -- PLEASE GO! the US is full up and anyone who voluntarily wishes to leave, absolutely should.
Apparently your SOLE STANDARD is "free college" and "free health care" -- even if it is the British NHS which has so many problems I can't list them all here. Or that "free college" is almost certainly just for the very top 20% of students, who take college prep (denied to average kids) and THEN pass grueling tests.
But that's fine. Really. GO BACK TO IRELAND. In fact, I promise to drive you to the airport.
2
Why is it that politically moderate defenders of Representative Omar seem to feel compelled to say they disagree with her policy ideas? What she thinks is irrelevant: the only issue is that she is the target of reprehensible racist attacks. There's a veiled -- and, to be generous, surely unintended -- implication that somehow her left opinions justify these attacks in the minds of her political opponents. But if Justice Thomas were called the N-word, would those who express outrage feel compelled to note, "I disagree with his opinions on the Court"? I should hope not, and the same should be the case with Ms. Omar.
4
Ancestry tells me that I have Irish DNA and some from Great Britain and western Europe. However, most of my ancestry is from Africa, and we have been in the United States since long before the Civil War.
Perhaps Trump the newcomer ought to go back to whenever he came from and take his immigrant wife and her parents with him. Does this sound stupid? Yes. Because it is.
This is not a nation based on blood and soil. It is a nation "dedicated to the proposition that all men (and women) are created equal and they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
We need the strength and the love of those whose ancestors have been in this country for more than a century and we need the strength and the love of newcomers such as Trump and representative Omar. If only Trump and the neo-fascist GOP understood this.
3
The sad thing about those Trump voters is this. Suppose that USA was only white man and women; then who would this Pres. have turned on? Oh first women, then poor white men, and then, and then.
4
Look, when Omar said that “some people did something “ line, that was the end of her hiding behind her color, her gender. her immigration story and now even whether she’s here legally. She’s an anti- Semite and Trump has every right to say what many of us think to ourselves. She should go back and good riddance.
3
It's interesting that Tim Egan has to take a swipe against white privilege, another swipe against the ideology of the Squad, and has to claim the Squad pulled the race card.
White privilege means that white parents don't worry their kids will get shot for being white. It means that white people don't get discriminated against because of their names on a job application. It's quite real.
The Squad's terrible crimes -- like wanting universal healthcare, which Egan praises earlier in the piece -- are only seen as such because of racial bias. Nothing they want is actually radical. Tim Egan needs to ruminate more on this issue.
286
@Border Barry I was disappointed that Tim Egan had to play the "Don't get me wrong" card-- that is , by criticizing the Squad in order to show that he is NOT as radical they are, and also disapproves many of their statements. And all white privilege means is that no matter how hard your life is as a white person, race is highly unlikely to be a contributing factor.
31
@Border Barry Thanks for your letter. I appreciate Egan’s point, but in his dismissal of white privilege and the Squad, there’s a “I am here, close the door” undercurrent.
17
@Border Barry
It's their arrogant, divisive tactics such as publicly calling Nancy Pelosi a racist, not their ideas, that are causing harm. They espouse radical change, rather than moderate, measured change that most voters will accept. They may have ideas and intelligence but their actions show they have not acquired wisdom.
43
Personally, I'd like to go back to my grandfather's (and my great-grandfathers' on both sides) Scotland.
I just hope Scotland breaks free of England soon, stays with the EU, and welcomes returnees like me and my family.
3
My parents weren’t American citizens when I was born. The good folks at the Federalist Society opined that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution never intended that automatic citizenship be conferred on the American born offspring of non-citizens. Trump and Beauregard Sessions agreed and who knows how the originalist Supremes would weigh in on this one. I wouldn’t know how to answer the citizenship question on the census if it were asked. As soon as I realized that my citizenship could be even remotely in question I obtained citizenship in the country of my parents birth. Having an option should this go any further south does wonders for me even if my destination isn’t as progressive as Ireland.
3
Thank you Timothy. I visited Ireland for the first time last year. It was a beginner visit, limited to Dublin. I really enjoyed my stay in this vibrant and optimistic city. On my first day there I stumbled upon something on the periphery of St. Stephen's Green that moved me so much I had to fight back the tears to avoid publicly embarrassing myself: a neoclassical building with the name "Department of Justice and Equality." All the time I was there I kept thinking "I am in a nation for which equality is so important they have created Department for it!"
4
I was born in Dublin of Irish-American US citizen parents. By the laws of Ireland and the US, I am dual. I am glad to be a citizen of a great imperial power and I am glad to be a citizen of a small-island state. The Ireland of today is a dramatically better place -- socially, politically, economically -- than the Ireland in which I was born. Timothy Egan describes a real place.
Ah, but the Trumpian irony. Look at the number of Irish surnames working in the Trump Administration or supporting the Trump Agenda in the Congress. As Ireland has improved itself, Irish America has produced a seemingly endless parade of right-wing tough guys with zero compassion and even less vision.
19
My family is from Scotland. Centuries ago many backed the wrong sovereign and were punished with starvation. They came to America and we managed to survive and thrive. Now I would love to go back and hope Scotland adopts a law like Ireland that welcomes descendants.
1
18.75% VAT (a regressive tax) pays for the healthcare. Good luck moving there; they don't want you. If you overstay your visa they kick you out. If you apply for asylum, you get a quick court date, then they kick you out. Cross the boarder illegally, you're gone. But low income tax, low corporate tax also exist. So go, enjoy yourself, but don't give up your US citizenship, because you will be back. Along with everyone else who can get here legally.
7
I regret responding to a beautifully written essay full, of many fine points, by boiling it down to one thing-- but the idea that we are stuck in a horrible hateful "loop of idiocy" says it all. When you look at a place like Ireland--New Zealand in recent months also comes to mind--where positive energy is working hard and against all odds to a create a better quality of life for its people, you realize how low our discourse has become and how much time and human spirit we are wasting. We don't get any of that back. It's tragic and disheartening.
12
An engaging column, Mr. Egan highlights some of the ways the U.S. has fallen behind the rest of the industrialized world.
But it is not Trump who has taken us this low. Trump is simply a window into the soul of America. He is the merely the indicator that the GOP's Southern Strategy has come into full bloom. The angry, chanting whites a the NC rally were hardly born in 2016; they put Regan into office and have been the true spirit of the modern GOP.
17
Good article. Why, for heaven’s sake, should WE learn from other countries? Canada, anyone? The USA is the best, most exceptional...blah, blah, blah. Trump is turning our democracy into a cesspool. I love this country as much as all the flag waving conservatives. And we need to vote to make our voices heard.
10
Tidbits: The Trump effect
1. Something I never expected to see in my life: One couple and a friend we know who travel a lot told us separately that since Trump became president, they sometimes tell people abroad that they are Canadians. It's just easier that way they said, so you don't have to do a lot of explaining and apologizing for your country. Besides, one said, they automatically think you are polite rather than being, perhaps, an American jerk who likes Trump.
2. Someone else we know does joint research in Sweden, and she goes to Sweden to meet with their research team 1-2 times a year. She went in May and reported that the Swedes are very concerned about the immigration they are suddenly experiencing (from their perception). While they always thought of themselves as a tolerant, welcoming country, things have gotten nasty and mean with regard to how Swedes think and talk about the new immigrants. The people she talked with (mainly academics) blame the ugliness on Trump's influence.
3. Is Trump affecting people's views of the U.S. in other countries? Pew poll of 25 nations. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/09/how-the-world-views-the-u-s-and-its-president-in-9-charts/
One (unsurprising finding): Obama was viewed quite favorably in the EU countries--much better than G.W. Bush and far better than Trump. But so far, the impression of the US as a country is still favorable.
Make Trump a one-term president, so he can't do any more damage
12
It was also directed at women.
5
I'd like to go back the county that I am from too, but I can't because Donald Trump is destroying it piece by piece.
The country I am from was a place that others looked up to. It inspired millions. It wasn't perfect. And those that started the country knew that as they built in its laws the means to change them. To adapt. To improve
them.
That it strove toward being better is what made it great. That it believed in the future and that is a better place is what made it great. That it took part to make that future is what made it great.
9
Well written piece. The author seems perplexed by why this is all happening, but are contradiction and hypocrisy not a part of the human condition, if not US history? It is bizarre to hear what is happening in the US, but it’s not new human behavior.
The concept of every man being equal and free was written into our constitution by slaveowners. Each generation of immigrants since the start of our nation had children who led racist resistances to new waves of immigrants - against the Irish, the Polish, against those of the Jewish faith.
We do ourselves a disservice to express shock at the novelty of Trump. He symbolizes the very worst of America - but that doesn’t mean he’s not an American. Only when we recognize this can we stop our divisive tendencies.
2
Mr Egan
Your articles are always a breath of fresh-air in this atmosphere of fetid fumes emanating from WH.
I might add, Ireland has suffered and suffered to be where it is today. And a lot of progress came with being a part of EU.
Nothing came easy for the Irish.
They have come a long way.
I am afraid what we are seeing in US is not a surprise for anyone who has been watching from the outside.
What is a surprise is all these so-called Christians in their support for Trump, have forgotten, that they are going against the very values that are part of their religious dogma.
Humans can justify anything, even massacres, murders.
It was a well known tactic in the past to say racially charged things veiled in verbosity of the moment, so ambiguity was the game.
Now, we have a new reality....
Say openly racist comments, slurs, phrases--- and then openly deny them but also rather attack whoever is accusing you.
Backyard bullying tactics on forefront display.
That I am aghast, dismayed... doesn't even begin to describe what I feel.
John Marsden said it better "A storm inside, but a desert on my face."
7
US citizen still watching with horror and concern, as Trump’s suggestion to ‘Go back to where you came from’ has morphed predictably into his hate filled followers chanting “Send her back”. Everyone is focusing on the content of what Trump said. Whether it is racist or not. But here is the thing...he won an election, by whatever means, he took an oath of office, and that means he is supposed to be president of the USA including all of its citizens. His words indicate that he doesn’t really want to be that. So if he doesn’t want to be that, he can quit...
3
My father (and mother) were Irish immigrants. A brother worked for the airlines and he could have had a pass to visit many times but never returned. I asked him why? "Why would I want to visit misery?" Here he had indoor plumbing, central heat neither of which the lord of the manor where he came from had then.
How is it that a YUGE number of American citizens still take pride being a hyphenated American? Irish-American, Italian-American, Jewish-American, etc.
Teddy Roosevelt gave a famous speech calling for the end of the hyphenated American but it persists. Too many Americans don't want to be solely American.
Send 'em back?
2
The Republic from the 70s is not like the Ireland of today. The country and its people are modern, but still humble.
1
So many have forgotten that Trump's family wanted to go back to Germany, but they wouldn't have them. I'll bet it still stings and is part of why he is constantly striving for legitimacy.
4
I'd like to go back to the country I came from - the US before Trump. A time when people could express differences of opinion without being called names. When saving lives was more important than allowing people to own assault weapons. When helping the poor get healthcare wasn't considered socialism. When encouraging all citizens to vote was the goal rather than voter suppression. When immigrants were considered assets rather than an infestation. When diversity and civil rights were goals rather than dirty words.
4
Trump was right when he described the homeland of the Four Women as crime infested backwater states. He's president of them and their failure is his failure.
Our leadership has let us down and they can't see for the blindness that is greed for money and power.
It doesn't matter who wins the elections if our path continues down the way it is going now. By then, the momentum will be so great that no one will be able to stem the tide of hate that is swamping us faster than the heavy rains and coastal flooding that has become the new normal.
trump incites hate and refuses to lead the country, spending his time campaigning and insulting people. For that alone, he should be impeached. Add in his crimes and depravity, defended by the republican congress, and we have the grounds for impeachment and we have the means.
All the democrats need to find is the will.
3
I have been begging to be deported back to the country I was rumored to have been born in, Canada since 1981. Problem, my mother never registered my birth there. So let's go to my maternal grandparents, they came from the Finnish - Russian border. I have filed papers for Right-of-Return and am waiting in the Legal line for their answer and my documentation. I know I am stupid for following Finland's immigration laws, I should just cross their border illegally Central American style. But fleeing a shytewhole country is not grounds for asylum nor is an illegal crossing going to allow me to stay.
I have asked my congress clowns how to become undocumented so I could get free health care in TX. They didn't know. There are many US citizens who would love to leave for a better life but cannot afford the fees and most countries severely restrict the number of Americans. Many have points systems that disqualify people over 45. My best bet is to change the Government here.
2
I love Ireland. I’ve always felt welcome there and it’s beautiful. This doesn’t apply to me, but I think that if you can prove a parent or grandparent was an Irish citizen, you can get an Irish passport. I’ll bet most of the 30 million Irish-Americans qualify. So go get your passports folks. Who doesn’t love Ireland?
1
I'm a hyphenated American, a dual citizen of the Republic Egan well describes and the US. I'm proud of my Irish heritage and was proud of the opportunities the US gave my immigrant parents.
I have stopped being proud of the US because the welcome my parents enjoyed has now become a greeting only for immigrants from specific countries and economic classes. I believe that's been a constant, strong undercurrent in this society since the days of "No Irish Need Apply." Many nationalities could substitute themselves for the word "Irish" in our culture... so much for the words engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty.
The difference today is that the message "No-----Need Apply" originates with the current occupant of the Oval Office and is delivered with the repetitive, hateful and vicious tones of the Nuremberg rallies and the infamous German-American Bund rally of 1939 in Madison Square Garden.
The Oval Office's current occupant is regurgitating that hateful rhetoric with a vengeance only a dedicated white supremacist could use. He incites and condones violence with his words. He has done something else at the same time. He has shown that a serious late stage 3 or early stage 4 moral and ethical cancer has taken over both the White House and the GOP, and there is no palliative moral, ethical, or intellectual treatment to combat that condition. God help us, as my Irish mother used to say.
10
shocking that people in other western countries don't seem to think the usa is superior to their own.....what's wrong with them?
of course national health care is a birthright.
the horrible thing is that they exist--barely--under the yoke of socialism--now known apparently as democratic socialism.
i wonder if they're aware how rotten things really are..probably not.
and, as is true in many countries, they have a larger per capita number of citizens born outside their borders than the usa does.
this all seems a bit strange....i think mindlessly bellowing USA USA USA--without a clue about anywhere else--is in order.
4
Please, please send me back to the country of my birth...and you only have to send me back a few years, to America circa 2014. The one I'm living in now is quite different.
5
On a 2005 trip to Ireland, one huge difference between Americans and the Irish was apparent to this Irish American. Americans are ignorant of the stories of our immigrant ancestors, the reasons they left their homes, and the hatred many of them faced when they arrived here.
The Irish are educated in and remember their history. As Kate
Atkinson wrote of a mid-20th century character in Big Sky, “She was Irish, the memory of famine engraved on her bones, like the scrimshaw he had seen in the museum ...”
Or as a friend recalled a trip to a pub in a remote Irish town, “They talked about Cromwell as if he were still alive!”
4
@Kate G I had the same experience as your friend. On a trip to Ireland in ‘07 I was sitting next to a very friendly guy in a pub in Kilkenny, who quite passionately and animatedly spoke of the history of his town, going back 900 years. I was in awe. A shockingly high percentage of Americans cannot even name the 3 branches of our government, much less speak fluently of the history of their country.
2
Hmmm, makes me wonder what are the rules governing expats working in Ireland?
Do we really want "to send her (or him) back?"
Several years ago I tutored the first-generation daughter of immigrant parents - one was a physician and the other ran a medical research team. She was extraordinarily hard working and gifted - well ahead of many of her peers at an elite private school. Her older brother excelled at an Ivy League school.
During his campaign, when Trump began his rabble rousing, her father confided his discomfort. Was it safe?
Today, would he come here? Even, will he stay here?
With Trump we are the losers.
5
Exactly which of the so-called "far left" policy initiatives do you disagree with? universal healthcare? free k-16 education? The ones you praised Ireland for having?!
2
“The Irish have become us — what we wanted and aspired to. They are living our national narrative, a country open to those fleeing oppressors and lack of opportunity.”
A lot of countries (most of the industrialized world) have “become us” (or rather, aspire to similar values and ideals while forgoing certain nonsensical elements of America, such as the “right to bear arms.”) Just visit Germany, NL, Northern European countries, AUS, or Canada. To presume America is the best country in the world is something most others in the “free world” chuckle about.
1
Just as Pelosi's criticisms of "the squad" were not about race, neither were Trump's. But Nancy is let off the hook because she is a Democrat. For Trump, however, a reckless tweet that was for sure insensitive and offensive is elevated to point of CNN declaring with utter confidence, as news mind you, that our president is a racist. Don't they own a dictionary? Criticizing, even in crude terms, the policy proposals, anti-American statements, and socialist leanings of political opponents who happen to be "people of color" is not racism. It's not the black or brown of these radicals that most (sane) people oppose, it's the red.
1
@Southern Man. "Better keep your head.Don't forget what your good book said."
Neil Diamond
@malibu frank Actually, it was Neil Young. But good try.
1
Really? I somewhat see where you’re coming from but until Ireland’s population of ethnic minorities reaches say 30-40% there is no comparison between America and Ireland.
4
I thought except the native Indians, all Americans are immigrants. Even in the case of Donald Trump, his forefathers came from Germany. Does it mean that we have to send all the immigrants to their original country?
2
I'm glad Mike Pence was singled out. As the Catholic church once dominated Irish laws and behaviors, in the US the so-called Christian church dominates any talk of women's rights and particularly women's reproductive rights today. These so-called Christians look the other way when Pastors abuse their flocks, when corporations abuse their fellow citizens, when the NRA funnels guns to inner cities, when LGBT citizens make claim to their rights, and on and on. Pence, the smug toady, tows the Trump line and lies with his holier than thou being. With men like this in our government the US can never achieve its democratic destiny and will continue to sink deeper into the swamp.
8
The UK could certainly use an injection of 2 million wealthy, socially liberal Episcopalians into their politics.
2
"The Irish have become us — what we wanted and aspired to." Not all of us, Mr. Egan. Among the motivations for the American Revolution, especialky in the South, was the fear of Europe's turn against slavery. An independent United States was viewed as a bulwark against this trend.
That racist mindset survived the Civil War and is again bubbling up in the toxic national stew under the first Confederate president ever to come from from Queens. Taken as a collective whole, we were never the aspirational country portrayed in high school textbooks.
And what are the patriotic aspirations of today's Trump-driven, knee-jerk rally-goers? It is nothing more noble than brainlessly bigoted bile scapegoating people who look, sound, love or worship "otherly," and to poke progressives gratuitously in the eye.
There is nothing constructive or visionary about this, and I defy anybody to disprove it.
3
What about the America many of us came from? Where we believed in the rule of law, and that no one was above the law. Where decent people gave others the benefit of the doubt and people were too embarrassed and knew better than to shout their racist rants out loud. Where TV celebrities were seen and not heard and certainly not elected president. A place where the AG was trusted and not believed to be a lapdog, where the Supreme Court was revered and not seen to be illegitimate, where none of the cabinet members had to resign in disgrace. Where rules and regulations to protect us and our environment were installed, not torn apart. Can we go back or does that place no longer exist?
4
@Andy. Do your concerns about the rule of law extend to immigration laws? Selective enforcement of any law breeds ever more lawlessness.
1
@Al absolutely not. I think the Dem candidates are making a huge mistake by going all-in behind immigration. Middle America and I suspect the vast majority of Americans care much more about schools, roads, etc in their own community, as well as their paycheck.
2
I keep reminding myself that McCarthy once looked unstoppable and that he had popularity and incumbency as he ruined peoples' lives.
I watched the crowd behind Trump at the NC rally. Two women were not chanting, and I comforted myself. Perhaps they are--the way all of us can be sometimes--caught up in an identity crisis. They aren't liberals, they didn't trust Mrs. Clinton, and they think the country is changing too fast. But deep down, of course, they know this is wrong and they are--perhaps, I told myself--just a little ashamed to be standing in view of the camera lens along with this mob of people and this shallow, hateful man.
And then they both whispered behind their hands and laughed. I notice a lot of laughter at these rallies, as if this is grand theater and Trump's supporters are all being naughty children pulling a grand prank.
You can see the same laughter in those old photos of lynchings. I get it. The last people it's okay to make fun of are these Trump supporters with their bedazzled cowboy hats that make them look like Cowboys cheerleaders who have used the aging ap. Liberals ridicule. They dig in.
My mother was ashamed when we were children and living "up north." She kept us away from other children, fearing their ridicule of our poverty and hillbilly accents. But this made her compassionate, not cruel.
Nothing erases people like this horrible laughter.
4
Great piece Tim! When the history books are written on this Presidency, one of the saddest chapters will be devoted to all of the Irish-Americans who have enabled this monster of a President - Kelly, Conway, Mulvanney, Ryan, McConnell, Pense, ad nauseam . They are a disgrace to their heritage. They ignore that a scant century ago the then establishment in the USA were hanging "Irish need not apply" signs on their establishment businesses in America. They ignore the reason for their own prosperity today is their ancestors came here, fought the good fight, overcame native prejudice, and worked hard to provide for their families and future progeny - exactly what our current day immigrants seek. These Trump enablers forget they are standing on the shoulders of their great-grandparents - who would no doubt be disgusted at what their grandchildren have done to help debase this great country. No self-respecting Irish-American society should welcome any of these Quislings into their company when , at last, this long national nightmare of an administration is over.
8
My great-great grandfather and his brothers were sent to this country by their parents at the height of Potato Famine to escape the hellhole the was then Ireland. The Ireland of today would have been an unimaginable Heaven to those young boys who set sail for North America in 1849. Today, as a 63 year old American man, the hate-filled, disfunctional land we now live in would have been equally unimaginable to me just a few years ago. I only pray that reasonable Americans working together can turn things around before we reach the point of no return.
7
I'm sure the Galway Gazette can use a mediocre, unoriginal writer. Good luck to you.
This is another dubious entry in that species of spurious "Quality of Life" comparisons in which various northern European nations the size of Greater LA with a "homogeneous population" -- i.e., three to five million white people -- measure higher than the US in various categories like 'per capita cheese production. '
If that's what your looking for there are pockets like that in the Southwestern U.S. and in the upper Midwest.
The rest of us celebrate our big, vast, diverse, imperfect, frenetic, creative nation.
But send us a post card from the Guinness Brewery. I hear it is better than the one in Baltimore.
3
@Philboyd Ireland leads the US in gdp per capita, life expectancy, less inequality, more social mobility. Not excatly "cheese production". Whether this is sustainable over time, or transferable to the US, are good questions. But when a country starts falling behind many other OECD countries on so many fronts, you might start looking around to understand why.
3
"That 19th-century hellhole has become a 21st-century heaven. The Irish have become us"
From what I read, there is a serious problem of homelessness in Ireland.
The tax rates are high, driving youth away.
There is great fear as to how Brexit will effect it (qua Northern Ireland).
1 in 6 in Ireland live in poverty.
The OECD has criticized Ireland for failing to deal with pressing social issues.
While the economy is generally good, those in the lower rungs of society and income face serious difficulties.
There is poor progress in the EU-15 Sustainability Index.
And I could go on.
Heaven?
I would have thought things would be better in heaven.
4
It was no secret that Trump is a racist even before this week. Maybe the 4 congresswomen had a strategy to bait him by bringing up issues of racism. Of course, Trump heard about it and ran with it, thus stepping on it. If that's the case, let's do more of it!
Egan's lucky. They'd have to send me back to Louisiana.
2
I thought this was going to be something clever, such as "Of course I want to go back to my country, but Trump has ruined it!". But of course it is just the usual nonsense. As I have said before, I stopped having political heroes in the '60s because they kept getting shot. It really is about policy. You look for policies that will make the country better and find the candidates who will work in that direction. You shouldn't just look for someone to charm you and then follow him or her anywhere. It is about the issues. Much of the criticism of Trump is personal. He is Agent Orange, tweets too much, doesn't hit the books, lacks decorum. Then the over-wrought call him a racist, a fascist, an anti-Semite, a xenophobe, a homophobe, etc . . . . . Of course with little convincing evidence. The political climate is rife with accusations. Dopes on the right calling the Squad of Four communist. Dopes on the left call the president fascist.
A Martian looking at this scene would be perplexed. The economy is sound. Unemployment is low. Take-home pay is up. People are getting out of jail. The press is free. No one is getting locked up for their opinions or critical columns. Deportations are down since the Obama years. But Cable News, left and right, is in overdrive looking for rating and controversy. Foolish solutions come to the fore. Impeach the president, lock her up, send her back!
I think most folks are living their lives and toughing out a hot summer.
4
I think a large part of the problem is the total lack of familiarity and knowledge of Western European countries.
I live in Bourre, France half the year and am very familiar with the advantages( and some disadvantages) here. The Pros vastly outweigh the Cons.
If the floowers of our president visited and saw the difference and were able to speak to citizens of other Western countries they'd very quickly stop yelling moronic phrases such as 'send them back'. They'd find out how comfortable, in a non-american way, most of the people live. There must be a good reason why the ;life' happines index in the USA is so much lower than Western European countries. I could write more, mais ca suffit.
5
I'd like to go back to the country I came from, too. It's called the United States, pre-Reagan "revolution."
2
To work in Ireland you have to be legal. If you're not you will be picked up and deported with minimal delays. They do not have birthright citizenship, having seen it as an enticement to illegal immigration. They have much less emphasis on family reunion and more on a documented need for anyone let in especially if they at taking a job. Perhaps we should import some Irish laws?
6
If those who think America is number one could visit the world, there would be a revolution in America. The number one slogan is used to keep people blind to the fact they have being worked and exploited to death.
1
I expect there are a good number of Native Americans and First People who wouldn't be too sad to see the rest of us all go back to where we came came from. And I can't say I'd blame them.
2
I’m one quarter each English, French, Swedish, and Danish. I was born in the US.
In my wildest dreams I hope I get deported to one of those countries.
It is with great fear and difficulty that I write to you about what, at least from the other side of the river, is happening. It seems that the American principle “all men are created equal” has finally succumbed to mass hating. A nation that we once saw has disappeared before our very eyes. The land of the poor and destitute is no longer standing, but instead rapidly crumbling .To see and hear that this is being promoted by the head of state is so troubling. He maybe right it is the time for many immigrants to start thinking where to go next. Emigrating is a painful process, Miss Omar has been wrong in some of her speeches, but like her or not, she is an American citizen by choice, choice that many millions have made, but also the right millions more
have had by birth.
Be careful America you might be at risk of promoting what you least want; none sense baseless racism, “for all men are created equal” should be taken to heart
1
Can I be sent back, pretty please? I would much rather live in the sane country of Canada, where my grandparents hailed from in the 19 teens. I'm only a second generation American as is my husband, who has both Canadian and Lithuanian heritage. Will they take us back as well as our children and grandchildren? How sweet would that be!
I fear America is going to get far worse before we get better. The North Carolina rally was disgusting. Why did no one leave? What is wrong with trump supporters? As others have stated there seems to be no bottom to the vileness. Why do elected republicans continue to not only defend but support him? What is wrong with them? Congressman kevin mccarthy lied continuously, stating that trump tried to stop the hateful and terrifying chant, as well as stating that trump didn't mention the Congresswomen by name. Is he so ignorant that he doesn't understand VIDEO? Senator thom tillis stated that trump couldn't control the crowd. Funny how Senator John McCain controlled the crowd when a female rally attendee accused President Obama of being a Muslim, as if that should even matter, and somehow not American. But it takes integrity and honor to chastise your supporters, qualities that neither trump nor his sycophantic enablers in congress and the senate possess.
trump labels those who don't stand with him as anti-American. Either you're with US, the racists, or you're against us. How far we have fallen when racism is the quality that defines a patriot.
2
@sharon. Put Central America on the border of Canada and see how long your eyes stay misty. Canada would no more put up with what we are dealing with (is it a crises yet?) than would any sovereign nation. DJT is a buffoon but The democrats offer nothing but an acceleration of the mess we are in.
3
I have good friends who are local judges. They tell me that, if you want to see real patriots who love what America means at its core, you should attend a naturalization ceremony for new citizens.
They have an appreciation of what the Constitution means, particularly in the face of the growing despotism around the world. They believe in the representative government they have learned about. And it is a virtual certainty that they will practice the honor of voting.
This stands in stark contrast to far too many native-born citizens who excuse their unwillingness to vote by saying inanities like, "I love my country but hate its government," or, "they are all crooks, so what's the point."
So, instead of the President telling immigrants who care enough about what America is supposed to mean by running for office to go back where they came from, I say this - Thank you for coming, thank you for caring enough to do what it took to become a citizen, and never, ever be afraid to point out where the American Experiment is doing less than it can.
Because the simple fact is - the American Experiment can still fail, if too many people stop believing in it. And if it fails, the world will be a much, much darker place.
"Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."
3
I have Irish ancestors, as well as Canadian. And at this point, even the garbage strewn streets of Rome (Grandfather born in Italy), seem like a good idea!
This beautiful article is a scream of hope, a celebration of values and a moan of distress. It is what we need in this terrible moment; not the rotten gibberish of platitudes, repeating myths and slogans; rote statements of things we never were. Things that this tyrant is burying in a" bottomless coffin", as the blind lead the deaf and dumb in an endless dance of death; the spiritual death of a once proud nation.
How could any decent human being vote for this awful man? I suspect the answer is that decent human beings don’t support Trump.
6
Trump’s words were troubling to say the least. But we know who he is (and is not). As we say, he wouldn’t know the truth if it walked up and smacked him in the face. He “wasn’t happy with the chants”. Really?!?! Shall we “go to the videotape”?
What bothered me more was the crowd chanting “send her back”. I think we had hoped that Obama’s election was proof that we had progressed, at least, beyond overt racism, if not beyond its more subtle forms. Apparently not. For me it was difficult to watch.
In the past, I believed that most Trump voters, while I disagreed with them and found it difficult to understand why they voted for him, were when all was said and done, decent people. I’m no longer willing to make that assumption. That was ugly and hateful and I was embarrassed for our country.
2
I am an immigrant. 1968, from Germany, and a US Citizen since 1974. In one lifetime this land of opportunity and seemingly endless possibilities has become this hateful place, reminiscent of the Nazis that were still left in Germany when I grew, albeit by then somewhat hidden and below the radar. But everyone knew who they were. And now they're back. Both here and there to some extent. I fear for my children's future. Now young adults starting out in their own. There seems to be no really safe place left in the world.
6
White people like myself need to think about this. What was the white segregation of the past. Your neighborhood was not only segregated by color by also by ethnicity. It was class segregated so you would not talk about any difficulty in your family for fear of being shamed. Women were shamed for just about anything. I put myself through college. I told my dad I wanted to go to Europe. He replied "What for?". What creates a world where most of it is unacceptable. To whom? Look at him. Donald Trump has sold his soul to his backers so he can pretend he is something he is not. He expects us to support his fiction.
3
Tim, I have similar thoughts and feelings about Germany.
Thank you, Angela Merkel, for showing us how to treat the destitute as Syrians migrated in 2015. America could learn a thing or two about compassion.
The tables are now turned: the concentration camps of today grow at the southern border and Americans (who liberated so many in Germany!!) are deer in the headlights of fascism.
1
My grandfather fled Ireland in the 1880's, a fugitive from what was then British law. He had punched the English estate manager who had refused to pay him for building a stone wall. His family smuggled him, in a hay wagon, to Limerick, where some kind sailors from Maine offered him passage to the United States as long as he worked his way across. He became very successful later in his life and all 11 of his children went to college. He was a fugitive from a repressive British feudal system, but he was a good man...just like many of the people caught at our southern borders.
4
All the biggest US firms are fiscally registered in Ireland and not in the USA .Ireland acts as a trojan horse for the US economy to invade the European market without paying any taxes .
That is Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Starbucks, Netflix, and others .
They hide under multiple Irish fake fiduciaries and repatriate the cash money back to the US through the London exchange and its ties with the US offshore banks in the Caribbean .
5
The USA has always had a vein of selfish citizens in its history. I say selfish, not racist, because the comments I hear usually concern money rather then outright racism. I am sure some of these people are both. "I didn't get a hand out to get where I am!" is the most common I hear. They forget about what others have done for our country that are benefiting them. Fear is the other statement I hear very often, which Trump uses to mold his followers. Many Americans live in homogenous areas. They do not have contact with minorities very often. The only information they get is from either msm, like real TV news, or propaganda like the fake news from Fox and liars like Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones. Congress should re enact a fairness requirement for all our regular media and require a Liars warning for shows like Limbaugh and Jones. We are letting these outlets feed poisonous lies into a large portion of our population. The liars are not going to change on their own, they are making too much money spreading this poison. I think some of them actually believe what they are saying.
Blue wave 2020 !
1
Thank you, Mr. Egan. Wonderful and reasonable.
My aunt moved to England around 40 years ago. She’s become an immigrant hater (especially the Polish ones), a pro-Brexit voter. She has conveniently forgotten that she’s an immigrant herself—she probably thinks she doesn’t count since she’s white and spoke English before she arrived. She also glosses over the fact that her Jewish grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Poland around 1905.
I honestly have no idea how she sleeps well at night with all of her contradictions. Same with these vitriolic elected officials—and the people who elected them. How? Why?
4
God bless Ireland and the Irish. Maybe there’s hope for us in the states somewhere in the future.
We should all be sent back. I came from Elmont!
My families on both sides (Dutch and Welsh) have been living and working on American soil since the mid-1600s, before there was a United States. We've seen and lived through it all, and we aren't going anywhere.
No, we'll call in pest control next November, roll up our sleeves, and clean out this infestation. We don't turn and run. We fix the problem. That's what the Dutch do.
And we could use your help. You in?
3
Hear! Hear! Can't say it any better than you did. Thanks! (What's really funny is that the people in those "original" countries, do NOT regard any of us as "Irish," or German," or French," or Spanish," or "African" (NOT a country, DT.) We are Americans, which is kind of an insult, these days. A lot of us wouldn't want to admit that, while traveling abroad. They dislike us that much.
For this Caucasian grandson of Irish immigrants, I, too, feel the hypocrisy of Trump and his White supremacist supporters.
My grandparents came here escaping poverty, but also the political tyranny of Britain, just as the Hispanic asylum seekers of today are escaping the political oppression of their bloodthirsty regimes.
What would have become of the Irish seeking freedom and safety in America if a Trump had been president a century ago? In the 1850's during the Potato Famine?
It's not just Hispanics who are in danger. It's Jews, and Catholics, and Asians and anyone who opposes this new tyrant.
Trump and his henchmen will eventually find an excuse to come for us, too.
4
Ireland is a beautiful country.
1
Yeahbut, how many Irish aircraft carriers are patrolling the Middle East? If Ireland is so great, why aren't they pursuing any unwinnable wars somewhere in the world?
1
My grandparents emigrated from Ireland, and am so proud of the progress this country has made including making abortion and gay marriage legal. Their progressive arc and our recent decline are reminders that history is not static. As President Obama once said, we zig and we zag on the path to progress. He was a great zig, and now we are in a terrible zag with Trump. History should give us cause for optimism. Our better angels will prevail just as they did with our Celtic friends not so long ago.
2
Thank you, Mr Egan, for putting it so well. I too am of Irish heritage, and have done a lot of research on our family history. I discovered such hardship as my ancestors entered this country in the the mid to late 19th century.
My great great grandmother was an illiterate janitor working in Manhattan and living in Brooklyn. She was Catholic. The Protestant side had it a little better, as they were tradesmen. Amazingly when my great great grandfather stepped off the SS Alaska, he was granted citizen ship within 6 months back in the 1870’s . This was the NY era of “Irish need not apply” for jobs. They kept at it just like today’s immigrants and made a good life for them and their children.
With all this vitriol directed at today’s immigrants, I seem to always think of them and what they did for NYC...building St Pat’s and Rockefeller Center, as well as the building that was my first apartment. We as a nation must realize the present potential in these people who desire to be here. Stop labeling them, Trump, and educate yourself as to the history and plight of our melting pot nation.
2
There is no “far left”. The policies being discussed are, ahem, the center of Irish politics.
Pelosi’s comments were patrolled and could easily be interpreted as racially charged.
White privilege is real, and Egan just demonstrated it. Once upon a time, the Irish were told to go back, and they were considered diseased and subhuman. They received harsher
prison sentences for the same offenses as WASPs. That happens to POC, whether Egan sees it or not. The other day, a white security guard at an IRS office pulled a gun on a black sheriff with the intent to shoot him in the back. The local PD had to tell the rent-a-cop that, as a sheriff, he could go anywhere in the building he wanted.
But Egan wants us to believe that white privilege isn’t real, the four congresswomen are “far left” (again, without evidence), and that Pelosi wasn’t being a patronizing white Boomer.
I, too, grew up an Irish Catholic. The racism was just as bad at Notre Dame as anywhere I ever visited, and it’s a campus full of white privilege.
235
I am not sure where I would where I would go back to if I took Trump's advice. I am 5/8 German, 2/8 Irish and 1/8 English. Do I split up my body and send different parts to different places?
The idea of going back where you came from is preposterous. Most of us in the US have been melted into a giant pot to create what we can only call American.
It takes courage for new immigrants to get melted into the big pot that is the foundation of the USA. I sympathize with immigrants who are treated like cattle by the Border Patrol. I am grateful that the immigrants come here because they want to experience the good life that we enjoy in the US. We should be welcoming them, not weaponizing them.
2
Sounds nice. Also sounds like we are depressed people watching our own lengthy funeral procession.
6
Kudos. Just one observation. Every child is a descendant of someone born in a foreign land with the singular exception of descents of indigenous peoples.
4
@Nora Even the indigenous people emigrated from Asia.
2
@Kristine bean
Yes and all humans emigrated from Africa.
2
I love my country and I will be involved in the 2020 election but, if Trump wins I will have to consider whether I want to continue to live with those who are so wrapped up in hate.
8
As another article states, we worry too much about Trump supporters. They aren't going away, but they'll just die out. They're seem as vibrant as the dinosaurs right before the asteroid hit. Old age, unemployment, poor healthcare, opioid addiction, and the flight of their children to rosier prospects will gradually claim them. They can do a lot of mischief before that happens, but they're doomed, as much by their own ignorance as anything else. The Democrats should start planning for a world without the millstone of the GOP around their necks. Looking at Pelosi and the other corporate foot-draggers, that's the one thing I am not confident about.
8
@stan continople
As much as I would welcome this, demography is not destiny. A committed minority can easily cling to power and oppress the rest of us, especially one that comprises at least 30% of the population and is bankrolled by shady billionaires. Republicans are being very effective at cementing their power for generations to come. The ingredients for this to happen are in fact deeply ingrained in our Constitutional structure, which was designed to protect a tiny minority of property-owning white men from the masses. The Supreme Court, the Senate, and the Electoral College can (and currently do) work to insulate the political power of this minority. We just cannot count on changing demographics to save the Republic.
2
@stan continople
"mischief" includes a doubling in fatal attacks on transgender women; numerous of Trump-identified assaults on Mexican-Americans, including a mother who sought to protect her 12-year-old from a gang of four 12-13 year-olds, shouting "go back across the wall!" one of whom knocked her flat unconscious and put her in the hospital; and rogue police officers who now have been encouraged by the president himself to rough up suspects, among countless crimes to many to list here.
How much worrry is too much? Ask loyal, multi-generation Japanese-Americans, many of whom had grandfathers serve in WWII, just how long it takes for these kind of fanatic hate fests to die down. Rogers & Hammerstein were right, children "have to be carefully taught" to hate. And this president is doing a bang up job of doing just that. Watch his rallies. Watch the children.
Americans, who haven't even the excuse of Germany's despair in the pre-war economic collapse or WWII America's two-ocean war fears, should be deeply ashamed and alarmed! How easily we have been manipulated by our greatest enemy, by a bigoted sociopath president, and by powerhouse of propaganda like Fox television into an absolute hysteria of hate and fear.
And when the Republicans are done ripping this country apart? We shall be far worse off. Already 7 million more without health care. Our international reputation in tatters. A rogue nation that torments helpless babes "to send a message" to desperate refugees.
2
Some claims of racism are indeed made in haste, but what "majority" is it that Democrats are having trouble winning? It's not registered voters, actual votes or genuinely contested seats in Congress.
1
In our American history, Irish and Italians were considered non-white, if not black. Today's attitudes are not new, but endemic in the development of our country; and need always to be pushed back on in the name of decency.
6
Could some cleaver Democratic accountant type please explain how small countries with limited capital can provide a social safety net? And explain it in terms that ordinary people can understand and Republicans cannot repute. The United States is a wealthy country, but is its wealth dependent on a massive underclass of the inordinately poor?
If Democrats want non college educated voters, it is imperative to explain how Democratic plans will help them. And refute the Republican economic mumbo jumbo once and for all.
Yes, some Trump voters are dyed in the wool racists and nothing can be done about that. But many are economically fragile people who want to protect their families. Let's talk with them.
4
The US government spends more per capita on health care provision than the UK. The UK of course manages to provide universal healthcare and has better longevity and infant mortality statistics than the US. How is this possible? Because it addresses health care costs.
3
@Maureen Steffek If people could look at their health insurance premiums as taxes, they might understand how other countries provide healthcare. Other countries have higher taxes--good grief!--but get universal coverage back. American cry about the wait for elective surgery in other countries like Canada and the UK. How many of use have called for an appointment with a new physician or to schedule surgery, and been told it would be weeks, or months, before we can get in? Lots.
4
Mr. Egan's great book "Immortal Irishman" paints a vivid image of life out around Montana 80 years after this country's birth and the activity and hatefulness of the "Know Nothing " party. Over the years Hating emigrants has ebbed and flowed but always there. In Ireland new people have always been a novelty and have been welcomed and respected. In this country new people generally meant that the boss had a new guy to take your job and work for less...
I would return to England, where I left as a child in the 1960s, in a heartbeat—even with BoJo and Brexit—but for my aging father, my siblings, and my stellar American husband.
The bright and shining example of utopia that America seemed in those long ago days has deteriorated into a fascist state peopled by a frightened and hostile populace on both sides of the political debate.
The American people are better than this, but whether they will come back to their true selves in 2020 is yet to be seen.
7
I dream of living in Ireland. There are many tendrils keeping me here and I love my home state...but Ireland is like a dream to me now. A deep green dream of peace. Funny how things change.
1
America has been the destination for the greatest number of immigrants since it passed the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. The nation has taken on the burden of integrating and assimilating a greater variety of immigrants and refugees than any other nation.
Ireland has not been tasked with this burden, but has historically witnessed a steady egress of people beyond its contentious borders. The Republic today works because of its relationship to American corporations and the jobs and revenue generated by the presence of these companies--just like English banks' relationship to dirty Russian rubles--and its comparatively small population. Only in the last few decades has Ireland experienced a modicum of immigration.
Many early Irish immigrants to America owned slaves.
Your impulse is noble, but this utopian image of Ireland is a shimmering hallucination, just like the rainbow and ancient castle in your photo.
You know as well as I do that "the Troubles" are always just around the corner. It is the way of "the Fighting Irish."
2
Tim--in the same breath you praise Ireland for having universal health care, and then turn around and say that those who support it here are "far left." I'm tired of the media constantly pushing this idea that universal health care is some kind of radical left-wing idea, when in fact it's what every other developed country except us gets to have. The media should instead be educating the ignorant American public about how common universal health care is, and how good it is.
14
I want to know when other countries will start granting U.S. citizens existential asylum. Although born here, I'd be happy to escape if logistics weren't such a pain.
2
@Scott Douglas
You will find the logistics of leaving your own country is the real conundrum.
Ours is the only country in the world that vigilantly seeks to tax citizens long after they have left the country, and even when they have surrendered citizenship.
We aren’t really citizens. Just economic extraction units.
3
If every American lived in Europe for a year or two and experienced universal healthcare there would be pitchfork toting marches on Washington demanding the same. Sadly too many Americans have absorbed the decades of propaganda about socialized medicine and have no experience of the reality of universal healthcare. Echoes of citizens of the former USSR who for decades were told how awful life was in the west.
10
I agree with Timothy 100%. I just want to note that saying “Send her back” is much worse than saying “Go back,” which is bad enough under the circumstances. What a mob we’ve become.
2
I’m curious. What policy initiatives of Those congresswomen do you have a disagreement with? You site the universal healthcare, free college, and social reforms of Ireland and those platforms are what those congresswomen are working on.
7
Growing up in England in the 1950's, I saw many Irish "navvies" working on all kinds of building projects. Great Britain,as it still likes to be called despite its lowly modern role, needed male workers after the heavy loss of young lives in WW2, and most Irish people spoke English as a first or second language. Later, as a student I met young Irish people who, like me, were trying to move up the greasy pole of the English class system. Ironically, many young Irish emigrants chose distant America instead of England, whence they could have returned to visit their families much more easily... perhaps it was because the English were Protestants?
Whatever the reasons, England's loss was America's gain. And instead, people of African and Indian origin were encouraged to take jobs in the UK, and their descendants are now the object of discrimination, while the Irish who remained in the UK are more or less accepted (this of course has nothing to do with their white skin...)
Ireland doesn't have a SCOTUS-blessed Citizens United government does it ?
Nor do they have an Electoral College, do they ?
Hmmm.
7
A nation born of enlightenment Ideas, American has reached a time to look to other industrialized enlightened nations for direction and example.
2
"These are our principles and if Donald Trump doesn't like them we have plenty more where they came from," with apologies to Groucho. Sorry Groucho
While the article is well written, I believe it does not reflect the main theme of Congresswoman Omar that is we the immigrants are here to stay and will fight the wrongs and racism that is on the rise due to Donald Trump and his likes. Trump wants anyone criticizing him and his views to be taken as Anti US or Anti American. This approach I saw in the third World Countries. I recall that General Ayub Khan of Pakistan after revolting through Army Coup and becoming President of Pakistan used to name his criticizers as traitors or agent of enemy country. His specific targets were those who immigrated from India as a result of the infamous Partition.
2
My ancestors came from most of the northwestern European countries, so many of them, so long ago, that there isn’t one you could demand to “take me back.” For better or worse, I am an American. What the President said is, of course, outrageous. No American citizen or legal resident can be sent back and American patriots can criticize this country and try to change its laws. But I also don’t think it’s racist or any other ism to insist on the right of the U.S. to control its borders and to determine which foreigners are allowed to live here, which will be of benefit to people who already reside here and which should be sent home.
2
Why is it that all the middle-of-the-road pundits must first make the disclaimer that they, of course, "disagree with the policy initiatives of [the four representatives]" before they condemn Trump's racist actions against them? I don't recall anything particularly hateful in their speeches or proposals. And then, in Mr. Egan's case,he went on to praise the universal healthcare, free tuition, and open arms to refugees that he found in Ireland. Which is it? Did you find Ireland's approach to its citizens' welfare and potential citizens' comfort inspiring? If so, why must you dismiss the efforts of certain American politicians to make America more livable? Stop being so cowardly. If this is about Israel and one representative who has criticized it, well, that is sad. Is there really only one way to talk about Israel?
6
The squad are intelligent, talented, and immature. They should not have made it about race, but since they did, I feel a slight shift. Trump's one gift is baiting people into making intemperate comments. His cruelly cynical cages for kids program horrified decent people, drew a divisive line, and provoked Democratic hopefuls into calling for open borders and decriminalizing crossing it, and I despaired. I wonder if the squad didn't finally provoke him into going too far for the American conscience to bear and I hope I'm not grasping at straws.
4
@Boris and Natasha we can only hope he went too far at last but who knows...I've been disappointed before!
2
The country I came from was called the United States. It was a country of immigrants -- my neighborhood in northern Manhattan was mostly Irish and Jewish with a few Greeks and Italians and growing numbers of Latinos. It was a country making progress -- slow progress but progress -- toward racial equality. I'd love to go back there.
13
I’ve lived in Europe for a good portion of my life and visit often. I find it quite amusing when writers like this one write about leaving the horrible US for Europe. Sure let me sell my 4000 Sqf house with a huge backyard to move to a tiny apartment, get ride of my nice car to get a tiny one and pay triple for gas, get ready to double my income taxes and enjoy the “free (see point about taxes) but decidedly mediocre healthcare. Of course my kids could go to one of the great free Irish universities (can’t remember one on top of my tongue).
On second thought I think I pass. When you go back and AirBnB your flat because your heavily taxed and substantially reduced income don’t cover your lifestyle make sure to let me know. I’ll come visit!
2
@Robert You have lived in Europe as an American as most Americans do who don't understand anything about the European culture. They just see it as you do with their big car and big house which makes your ideas very little as ideas. Health care is number one in quality in France but only 34th in the USA by world ranking. No 1 in cost ; the USA !
8
That 4000 sq. ft. house with its energy needs is driving climate change. And that big backyard? The reason you and your neighbors have to commute so far. Some of us prefer small homes and short commutes with better mass transit.
12
@Robert Interesting that the happiest people in the world, as measured by polls, come from European countries with high taxes, universal healthcare, strong labour rights, generous statutory vacations and strong social welfare systems.
16
America is not a debased nation. That is what Trump and his ilk would like us to believe so that the blame for the supposed debasement can then be shifted onto immigrants and others who don't look a certain type. A false narrative indeed. Let it be noted that the value system of America has never depended for its validation on the frailties of any one man let alone the likes of Trump. The people Trump hates are those who came to this country largely to embrace its values and they are here to stay, and should assert their right to stay, because they believe that those values still hold true. To love a country does not mean that you have to be an uncritical admirer of everything around you. Rather, as responsible citizens it is our duty to work to uphold American values even if that means making justifiable criticisms of the leadership. If immigrants cave in to this man they would have forgotten why they came here in the first place. That is who we are and are the better for it.
1
My mother and her whole family emigrated from Germany, and I'm actively researching any possibilities, unlikely as they are, as a contingency. I overstayed my visa in France for two years of my youth, but that was before the digital age. Desperation may prevail, however. I don't know how much more of this daily assault of ignorance I can stand. It's like living in one big abusive family with an abusive "leader". It makes me wish I could go back to where my family came from!
3
@Chris P.: I'd say "please please go" but a few posts before you...a man who was BORN in Germany and lived there until age SEVEN...but then came to the US and was naturalized....was refused citizenship in Germany.
My guess is they are pretty strict now, what with the Merkel debacle and all those economic migrants she unleashed on the EU.
1
One of your best.
My ancestors - grandparents - emigrated to the US from Romania and Belarus in the late 19th/early 20th century, for the same reason that millions of their countrymen did so - to escape pogroms and staggering poverty. I recall my (Belarus) grandmother telling me, in Yiddish, via my mother, about hiding under her mother's skirts during one such attack.
This is why they emigrated to a nation that, while not necessarily welcoming, at least accepted them. And we, the descendants some 100+ years later, acknowledge that history and take to heart the words of Emma Lazarus on the Statue of Liberty.
It is beyond shameful that some - many? - descendants immigrants from other nations now condemn those fleeing from threats comparable to those experienced by my ancestors.
Sadly, the naked, vile racism demonstrated by the Trumpists at these "Nuremberg rallies" is no longer shocking, though it is deeply depressing. And I'm deeply disturbed to find myself agreeing with George Will that we as a nation cannot unring this bell.
4
@Matt: the Statue of Liberty has literally NOTHING to do with immigration.
The POEM by Emma Lazarus (The New Colossus) is on the BASE and was added many years after the statue was constructed.
It is a POEM -- not a law, and not a public policy! -- and from the 1880s! when the US had only 50 million people!
Sorry, but if liberals intend to take that poem LITERALLY -- it is time to sandblast it off the Statue's base.
2
This column represents why Ireland should not become united.
Let the North remains England's problem.
No sense in messing up the Republic with the religious dogmatism and mindset that has messed up the U.S.
Ireland is not so idyllic. The right-wing Finn Gael party dominates the country's politics with plutocratic policies of its own.
@Kevin Blankinship
Finna Gael is nothing like "right wing" as its used in this country or the rest of Europe. How much time have you spent in Ireland under Finna Gael leadership? It's as right wing as Clinton Democrats.
2
That's right, go back to where you came from! And take me with you please. I desperately want to live in a sane country where healthcare is not a scam and I don't lose it If my employer decides he wants to pocket my salary instead of using my labor. If it's four more years of this madness or universal healthcare my guess is that the middle class will choose the latter. Healthcare for all is long overdue.
2
@CR Hare: OK, but the Dems were in total power for 8 years and Obama only made things MUCH MUCH WORSE.
It's not as if we HAD universal health care and Trump took it away.
WE NEVER HAD IT -- not under FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Carter, Clinton or Obama!!!!
NEVER !!!
So why is Trump suddenly the problem?
1
You are quite right sir.
European nations once gained land and citizens by conquest.
The US, we believed, was different. We would be, as Winthrop said, a City on a Hill, and people would WANT to come here. No need for conquest when the world is knocking at your door.
And they did come, including your ancestors from Ireland, and mine from Scotland, and others from Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc. All of is here are from somewhere.
Until we elected a man who hated everyone but himself, and teaches others to do the same. Drive them away, he says. Send them all back, he says, unaware that he too once came here.
Winthrop would weep. A City on a Hill? A Castle in Ruins, unless we recover our senses.
8
"The Irish have become us — what we wanted and aspired to. They are living our national narrative, a country open to those fleeing oppressors and lack of opportunity. Its prime minister would never gloat over a “send her back” chant at a hatefest directed at new members of the republic."
Fabulous essay except for the need to write it all. Yes, we're in full-blown GOP brand fascism now, even if Madeleine Albright who delivered a mesmerizing lecture last week at Tanglewood said, "fascism isn't an ideology, it's a process."
That process includes: converting followers to nationalism, turning one side against the other, creating a welcoming environment for hate, and converting love of country into love of a charismatic leader.
Next comes weakening the judiciary, exploiting home grown demons such as the Squad, attacks on the free press, and creating a tighter grip on power.
Eventually, the fascist leader is simply a dictator and destroyer of democracy.
I suspect were almost halfway there. Until and unless the president loses the support of his true believers, it will get far worse. Were I younger, I'd seriously consider repatriation. Life is growing increasingly miserable for those of us who believe in American democracy and values.
5
As for a national healthcare system, I love with disdain the signs and coffee mugs that state “follow your heart” “pursue your passion” “do what you love” ...well those things that I would love to pursue don’t provide health insurance. So like many Americans I face the Monday morning blues and head out to work that is not my true calling but provides the need health coverage for my family. A nation of worker bees held hostage by the grip the healthcare system has over us.
9
I would love to be repatriated to my family's country of origin. Ireland is now the golden city on the hill of TARA!
The decline of America closely tracks the radical swing to the right of the Republican Party. They used to be a moderate party that was fully capable of governing but no more. They cry socialism at the least provocation. Even so, Trump is an aberration.
2
How do I go to live there. Sounds great.
I kept waiting for one of the congresswomen to say "I plan to stay because I like living in a country where you can disagree with a president who is trying to wreck the place."
To some people, these women are rookies, making a common rookie mistake of coming on like gangbusters with a lot of new ideas that have no chance to fly. But using their race and sex instead of challenging the ideas themselves is dirty pool. Besides, you need the rookies to shake the tree every so often, to remind the veterans that they might not be delivering what the people want or need.
So they've shaken the tree, and the reaction shows that people have noticed. Hopefully they'll learn to play a bit more cooperatively without losing their focus or ideals, and the country will start veering towards what their constituents sent them there to do. It's called democracy for a reason.
8
As a descendant of Irish immigrants myself, I’m less offended by Trump as I am Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Brett Kavanaugh, so forgetful of their shared Irish Heritage.
4
During the 1980s, I had three different opportunities to move to other modern, industrialized countries.
I was already unhappy with the direction the U.S. had taken during the Reagan administration, gradually evolving into the new meaner, dumber version of America, but like the characters in the German film “Nowhere in Africa,” I thought the rightward swing was just a temporary phenomenon and that America would soon come to its senses.
When I think about these missed opportunities, I could drop kick myself across either of two oceans.
Trump is A problem, but he is not THE problem. He is only the latest chapter in a forty-year story of successively meaner and dumber Republican presidents, figureheads for a heartless and ambitious group of millionaires and billionaires, who want more, more, more for themselves and their cronies and less, less, less for everyone else.
All enabled by Democratic leaders who simpered about “bipartisanship” and told members of their base who objected to this acquiescence that they were “too far left.”
I implore my fellow Americans to take a careful look at all the candidates at all levels this time around. Don’t automatically choose the incumbent in the primaries or the candidate with the most name recognition or the one you’d like to be friends with or the one whom the pundits “think can win.”
Choose the ones who want to start bringing America back into the ranks of civilized nations.
10
The irony of the slogan 'Make America Great Again' is that after the current administration is either voted out of office or carted off to jail we will have a Herculean task to actually make America great again. America was great even with our flaws until the moment Republicans said they wanted Obama to fail and set about doing their best to accomplish that. That anti-American attitude led us to Donald Trump and he has led us down the rabbit hole of hate and division while the rest of the world looks on with a certain degree of disbelief. Send me back to my country. America 2008.
5
The Irish are and have been for some time much more liberal than Irish-Americans. You should also mention that Mr. Varadkar is gay, and that the Irish passed a pro-choice amendment, in a still predominantly Catholic country. The USA is heading not only back to the 19th Century, but under #45. back to the caves. Where most of the GOP belong.
5
I thought you were going to say "send me back to pre-Trump America..." My wife's kids have EU Passports. One lives in Spain, and I can't see him ever giving up the good health care, etc that comes with being an EU citizen.
2
@Rupert Laumann: will he remain in Spain even through the next big recession? because Spain was very hard hit, and barely out of it today -- if your stepson just moved there, he may not realize how fragile the Spanish economy is.
2
This week, I keep flashing back to a classic scene from "All in the Family." After all, Trump is, if nothing else, an undated, especially sinister version of Archie Bunker, complete with a Queens pedigree and a theme song called "Those were the Days."
Archie comes home to find a door hanger with a list of candidates for local office. He reads off the names and then observes: an Irishman, a Polish guy, an Italian, a Jewish person and "a regular American."
Yes, that's where we're at again nearly 50 years later.
5
Hear, hear Mr. Eagan. Another Irish-American here, ancestors from Counties Mayo and Louth, who somehow escaped the Potato Famine and made to the U.S. The son of a father who encountered "NINA" (No Irish Need Apply) when applying for his first job. The only solution, put forward by the local Catholic Archbishop, was to put "Christian" in the "Religion" box instead of "Catholic". It didn't help as he had the so-called "Map of Ireland" on his face.
At that time, he met a new friend who was also having an even more difficult time finding work. Abe was Jewish. How about the Latinos, Asians and more who have encountered the same. thing. We must never forget not tolerate the injustice of all this and the betrayal of our principles. Yes, Mr. Egan, the "Old Sod" shines brightly in its "Emerald Green" as a beacon. Long may it be that way.
I had the opportunity to go to Sweden instead of war. I often think how different my life might have been. I assume better, because I was not able to surf well the dips and swells of the American economy. My father did not have deep pockets.
Oh, I'm fine now, financially, but with a deep disdain for nearly half of Americans, especially our Christians. Not proud. Ashamed of being American. Proud of the German people, but what a thumping it took to straighten them out.
1
Brilliant article!
I very seldom see something in the New York Times (or, anywhere else in the media) with an intelligent and thoughtful perspective on the racism and xenophobia that is so prevalent in the United States these days, but this article states it very well.
What stands out most: the article comes very close to calling out the phrase "white privilege" as the hateful, racist statement that it is.
Personally, I would go further: people would more likely call me a European-American, but if one looks to pre-history, we're all from Africa anyway. Every single person living in the US is therefore an African-American. Problem solved!
2
How can you say that Ireland is what the US used to be? We have never had universal health care. More like a fantasy of what the US could be were it not for the incredibly successful Murdoch brainwashing machine.
3
“This is how low Trump has taken us. We are a debased nation fighting over the scraps of our former principles.”
Yes. This is the dispiriting truth I wrestle with every time I watch a clip of a Trump rally. Who *are* these people? I always wonder. Did they grow up in the same country I did?
It doesn’t seem possible.
In 1903 my illiterate Sicilian grandparents (sheepherding and fishing) were hounded even after they immigrated and arrived in Chicago; luckily, they escaped the burning down of their grocery store and came out to California where the Sicilian criminal element had not become quite so entrenched. I have nothing but empathy for anyone willing to risk everything for a chance at contributing to a new nation and living without fear for your life. The occupant in the WH relishes inflicting fear but these courageous refugees show us what we have long forgotten.
1
In a few months my daughter will be "returning" to the country of my birth. She shares the feeling of many in her generation that are sickened by the President and his party. Once she experiences a decent working democracy I can see no reason why she would return to the fear and hatred spewing from the USA.
1
Send me back to the country I came from. It was called the United States of America and was a country of laws and respect for the constitution.
1
Ireland has two official languages: Irish and English.
There is an Irish language school - TG Lurgan - for teenagers that makes music videos in the Irish language. These music videos are filled with joy. Check them out on youtube. You will not regret it. So hope-filled - reviving an ancient language - though catchy pop music. Brilliant just like the Irish.
2
Trump did not propose sending groups of immigrants back to the country they came from. In his tweet, asked why members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who ““loudly and viciously” tell Americans “how our government is to be run” don’t “go back and help fix the the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
His tweet made no mention of race, ethnicity or skin color. It applied to just a few congresswomen who have harshly criticized U.S. polices and called for his impeachment.
He was complaining about their politics and virulence, not their skin color. The tweet was not equivalent to telling Irish, Chinese, or Latinos or any other group of immigrants to go back to their home countries.
1
Egan demonstrates his white privilege by saying he's against using the label. That's how white privilege works. Those with privilege, even in the midst of talking about tolerance and multiculturalism, still believe they control the narrative.
1
Lucky author. I have no interest in going back to the lands of my parents and their grandparents: Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary. :-(
1
Please don't include me and tens of millions like me in "This is how low Trump has taken us."
Well over half the nation - a distinct majority - is appalled at what has happened and is is happening.
Having been to Ireland many times, I can say it's not heaven-on-earth, but they have coalesced around a well intended, well functioning social fabric that the fearful and ignorant (most of whom never travel beyond the nearest walmart) in this country can't seem to tear to pieces fast enough.
3
Timothy, it was wonderful to learn that Ireland has become what America should be. You asked how could Irish-Americans vote for this awful man. I would ask how could ANY immigrant vote for Trump? How could any woman vote for Trump? How could any Christian vote for Trump? How could any person with a conscience and strong moral character vote for Trump? How could anyone in the United States vote for Trump?
4
Allot of us are thinking of going back if Agent Orange wins another term. Save me a seat on the plane.
1
What Mr. Egan wrote about Ireland is true for other European countries also. But what about countries from other continents? Just google life expectancy of African-Americans ( 78 years) and life expectancy in 34 countries of sub-sahara Africa ( 55-60 years). And instead of calling racists and xenophobes people who point these things out, why don't we acknoledge these things and do something about it?
I think Mr Eagan would find that the letter within this article (see link at bottom of comment, below) from a Lt. Commander to the son he would never see again was how we used to be. If anyone is discouraged that we have completely lost our way (particularly when politicians rhetoric is a complete disconnect from our values), sometimes looking backwards is useful in getting our bearings and this may be a better example than most.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/magazine/uss-wasp-lost-world-war-ii-aircraft-carrier.html
Actually, I also want to go back where I came from - back to an America that wasn't they way it is now. This country has never been perfect, but it's certainly been better than today. And it used to try to improve.
2
I have spent my vacations in Ireland for forty years though I have not a drop of Irish blood. I have long considered it my second home. If Trump is re-elected in 2020 I am going home to Ireland for good. It is everything we should be but have now lost.
3
Thank you, Mr. Egan. Wonderful.
1
Egan points to something really important--that America has now fallen behind many other countries along several metrics. He mentions education--but doesn't point out that Ireland not only has good colleges, but has a HIGHER college graduation rate (43.9%) than America. Indeed, as recently as 1993, America was #1 in college graduation rates, but has now fallen to #19. #19--and there are only about 24 advanced economies--America may well be dwelling among developing nations on this metric! Egan doesn't mention infrastructure, but the comparison is likely to be even bleaker, as America has by far the largest infrastructure "deficit" of any nation--and is doing nothing to address it. That deficit extracts an annual tax on the economy of $600 billion. And then we might look at investment in basic research--America probably still leads Ireland, but it has fallen behind many competitors having cut investments in basic research by nearly two-thirds as a share of GDP. And, in this case, the Trump administration wants to double down on those cuts in the budgets of NSF, NIH, DARPA, etc. And of course it has managed to destroy already a huge important research office in the Dept. of Ag. It is not just the comparison that is important here, it is the dynamic to which Egan is pointing--Ireland (an the EU) rising, America falling.
2
Attacking Trump as racist, while true on its face, doesn't advance the agenda of his likely opponents. They're advocating for things that most US voters don't want: Elimination of private health insurance, which employers provide and often subsidize. Medicare for All, which means higher costs for those of us already covered. "Free" college, even though at least a third of college students already drop out and which taxpayers will have to subsidize. And on and on. This is a losing agenda.
73
@Richard
Please provide the data, not the talking points, demonstrating that the people do not want the things you list. As you may recall, when Bernie was interviewed on Fox he received cheers over these same things, much to the surprise of the moderator.
53
@Richard -- I think the agenda is more accurately described as "healthcare for everyone" rather than "elimination of private health insurance". "Medicare for All" is one option for a way to work towards universal healthcare coverage, but it is not the -only- way being promoted by various Trump opponents. And the concept of "healthcare for everyone" is very popular with Americans (as is, interestingly, the ACA). Republicans, and Trump, would do well to consider very carefully if they want to run on a platform of 'denying healthcare coverage to millions of Americans'. That didn't work so well in 2018...
I agree with you about "free" college. I think we should promote college alternatives at a low cost, e.g. trade apprenticeships. I also think that college financial aid should be much more freely available on a means-tested basis. Why should college be "free for everyone" when that would amount to a massive subsidy to the upper middle and upper class families that are already capable of sending their children to college (often a costly private college)? Save the subsidies for the lower income masses of children - up to $100K a year or $200K with a sliding scale of assistance increasing to lower incomes. Make it contingent on getting decent grades, and graduating in a reasonable time. A blanket "free college" is not the only alternative being proposed, either. And, had I dropped out, I don't think the college would 'take back' the knowledge I *did* manage to learn.
37
Most Americans DO want universally available affordable health care -- by whatever vehicle best provides that, single payer, or an expansion of the ACC.
Most Americans ARE sufficiently concerned about climate change to make sacrifices to slow the pace warming -- even when they don't concur with every nuance of the Green New Deal.
Most Americans agree that immigration benefits the country -- and would like to see laws changed so that crossing our border is what it was until recently: a civil, not a criminal, offense. Very few people think large-scale detention, even of adults, helps anyone outside the private prison industry.
The politics of the squad are not radical at all--they are honest attempts to promote what their constituents need -- and what they were elected to support.
73
I too have Irish ancestry. Indeed, as my grandfather was born in Belfast, I'm told I too can obtain Irish citizenship. I'm torn. I find Trump so abhorred that I find myself wanting to flee this land. I hardly recognize the dialogue, it feels more foreign to me than when I speak and travel in Europe. The hatred, the ignorance, the behavior, has become so toxic that I sometimes feel like I'm in a building on fire, and my instinct is to run. And yet, I was born here-in Alabama no less! If I flee do I leave the house to the crazies? Am I obligated to fight for a return to decency? If a healthy, productive progressive from Portland runs, then this country is doomed, is it not? And so I feel like I cannot move to Ireland. I need to stay and combat the hatred. In the end, while the crazies are newly emboldened and loud in their hate, they remain the minority.
17
@Mark If you can find your grandfather's birth certificate verifying his birth in Belfast, you are indeed eligible for citizenship to the Republic of Ireland. You also need his marriage certificate, death certificate (if applicable), his child's birth, marriage (and if applicable death cert) and your own birth certificate. This establishes the lineage. If you know your grandfather's name, birthdate and his parents' names, you can find it by writing away to the authorities in Belfast.
I have always loved Irish literature and Irish music (the Pogues, Sinead O'Connor, the Cranberries, U2, Elvis Costello...) but I was always hesitant to visit Ireland because of the racist way the 'Scotch-Irish' treated me and my family and friends in Ohio. Now I am determined to visit Ireland - it sounds wonderful.
5
@EM. The Scotch-Irish are descendants of those the English Empire sent to the North of Ireland to colonize it and supplant the native-born Irish there.
@EM. I visited Ireland in 2018. It is a beautiful country full of warm, friendly people.
1
@EM.: it seems weird you blame "Scotch Irish" in Ohio -- those folks must be 300 years out of the British isles!
Ireland is a lovely green island. I'd like to visit it someday too! but not because I prefer it to the US, or because "anyplace with free colleges MUST be better than the US".
It's a tiny, all-white nation of 5 million, that over the years has turned hard-left liberal. No real surprises there....some of this is backlash against the abuses of the Catholic Church there.
2
Ireland doesn’t have the same free at the point of delivery national health service as the UK. People on low incomes in Ireland have medical cards, most other people take out private or semi - state insurance. It is nevertheless much better than the system in the USA. I think it is also worth mentioning that the Taoiseach ( Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar is unapologetically gay. This at a time when the some Democrats are struggling with the electability of the impressive Mayor Pete. Ireland has also strengthened reproductive rights for women at a time when they are under attack in the US. And the power of religion is waning in Ireland, at a time when evangelicals wield a malign influence in the US. I really hope the US resists and reverses current retrograde policies.
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Most perplexing: it is those chanting "send them back" who want to claim the mantle of patriotism. I wonder, what do Trump voters mean when they say they love America? They don't love the people of America, because half of us are liberal too many of us aren't white. They can't love our system of government - they don't trust our government to do anything, want it smaller, and don't want to fund it. They claim to love the Constitution, but don't seem to like what it has to say about speech, the press, immigration, and voting rights. They may claim to love democracy, but they gerrymander and suppress voters. They don't love diversity, or freedom of religion, or immigration. So what DO they love about America? The sports teams and Hollywood movies?
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The morning after the Lights for Liberty vigil, my husband and I headed for our local Saturday market for our weekly dose of normalcy. Surrounded by the usual colorful crowd of people of all kinds enjoying sunshine and a local band, for a little while it’s possible to pretend your country isn’t falling apart.
The band, at some point, did their usual self promotion bit of future engagements. Topping their list was a benefit for a child with cancer.
How crazy the benefit model of funding for life saving healthcare must sound to people from Europe who never have to ask how they can pay for cancer treatments.
And I thought about all the other people being treated for cancer in our county, quietly going bankrupt, for whom no one will throw a benefit.
I remembered a lifetime ago, when friends held a similar benefit for a musician boyfriend who had been injured in an auto accident, and how I had to tell them there was a limit to the amount he could accept so he wouldn’t lose Medicaid.
All these years we believed we lived in the best country in the world and yet, most of us lived, and continue to live, with and without healthcare insurance, one medical catastrophe away from bankruptcy.
In other developed countries, that fear is unknown.
Maybe it’s time we stop accepting all the excuses and we start demanding the benefits citizens in countries far less wealthy than our own, take for granted.
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@Chickpea: in some of those nations, perhaps most....they will cut off cancer care for you or your child (or your aging parent) if they decide you are a hopeless case. Sometimes those folks come HERE -- because we will treat anyone (for money).
If your SOLE DEFINITION of a good or proper nation is "is there free health care?"....then you must think CUBA and the former USSR are/were paradises.
Most Americans do have health insurance and no Americans are dying in the streets.
Typically when I see these fundraisers, they are NOT to pay direct medical bills but to help the family (so that the parents can quit work to be home full time) or pay outside bills (mortgage, rent, tuition, food, etc.) because having a kid with cancer is overwhelming.
But very very few cute little kids have cancer. That's an easy shot.
The real problem are people without health care, who are not tiny or cute or young, and who don't have sympathetic problems.
I'm 63; I have lousy worthless Obamacare with a $9000 deductible. That's your Democratic "solution". I can't even see a doctor when I am in pain or sick! because I'd have to pay 100% out of pocket. WHERE IS YOUR PITY FOR ME?
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In November 2020 we'll find out how many Americans are willing to stand with the howling 'send her back' mob. How many descendants of European immigrants voting in Great Lakes states will vote again for Trump, now that they know who he really is and what he stands for? I'm afraid this election will reveal more about the USA than what we really want to see.
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Thanks for this timely article, Mr. Egan. And let me say how I enjoyed your book, The Immortal Irishman. I just returned from my first trip to Ireland. I stopped in Waterford to have my picture taken with Thomas Francis Meagher, an immigrant hero to the US. It was one of the highlights of my trip. How welcomed I felt in Ireland. In Galway, at Crane’s bar, a woman said, welcome home. Later in the week, we chatted at length with Finbar, an actor, who led our literary pub crawl in Dublin. What a delight! We discussed the emigration of the Irish and how everyone of Irish descent must reject this nationalist rhetoric and hate from the president of the US. (Seems everyone wants to claim a bit of Irish decent in their family.) How frightening that nationalism is spreading throughout Europe. We then discussed Brexit and the implications a hard border could be in Northern Ireland. We in the US must speak out, we are still looked upon as leaders of a democracy. We are failing with our present leader. And how I wish my grandparents emigrated from Ireland. I believe it was my great, great grandparents. Maybe the Irish will still take me in.
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@Gripah: please please please go. Maybe you and Egan can charter a plane and all you America-haters can go together!
BTW: Brexit happened MONTHS before the US election, but you blame it on TRUMP?
1
One BIG factor is that a US policy, we have sought to help white countries thrive. We had a hand in negotiating The Troubles, we had Poland’s back, the Ukraine.
Our policies in countries of color from the Middle East, Asia, Africa is typically to take their resources, whether natural or human.
The micro hate at Trump rallies is a vocal symptom of a more macro hate of the US when it comes to people of color.
They questioned Obama’s birth and citizenship, but not Melania’s And her’s seemed more complicated.
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@Lynne
What countries of color are you talking about? Do you think they call themselves people of color or--otherwise--COLORED? That is a US imposed colorist interpretation of the rest of the world that speaks volumes of American existential racism. By stating that most of the world is colored you are dividing humanity in a typically and ignorant US way. And I am speaking as an American. One Is not "progressive" or progressing anywhere when one is thinking of them colored peoples as different. Humanity is above all.
Great essay. Having spent a few days in Dublin last summer, agree with everything. I was urging my daughter (who starts college this fall) to consider one of the fine colleges in Dublin, and then continue working in Ireland, taking advantage of the generous visa opportunities there, and settling down somewhere in the EU. I told her that just as I came to the US back in the 80s, in search of opportunities in engineering and tech, she might need to seek other shores given the situation here today. Her reply to me was perfect, she said, "this is my country, I was born here. I will live here and fight to make it better".
Vote, help people vote. Volunteer for one of the many fine organizations that are working to mobilize democratic voter turnout. Do everything it takes to get the Orange Menace out of office. Even after that happens, it will take a long time for the country to heal and unite.
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@MS Kudos to your daughter who is wise for her years. I wish her good luck in the future, wherever it takes her. I can only hope there are more young people with the same attitude.
I wish her energy and success.
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I work in the local courthouse and I asked one of the judges if there was any way she could sign an order deporting me (back) to Ireland from whence my people came in 1839. No such luck unfortunately.
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Ah...to be able to be exiled to either the small village northeast of Paris, ancestral home of my father's distant family, or the small county of Ireland from which my maternal grandparents fled. Either or both would be preferable to the US which is now in the grips of an identity crisis and has seemingly forgotten that we're all immigrants.
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We just returned from Ireland and Timothy Eagan is (once again) spot on with his analysis. Like Mr Eagan, I also find much to be hopeful about in reflecting on modern Ireland. We visited with a lot of local people and often discussed politics. (Almost everyone recognized trump for the danger that he is.) I repeatedly let them know what a beacon of hope Ireland is for me. I’m horrified at how many people in the US are trying to pull us backwards with their very restrictive ideologies. The formerly very conservative country of Ireland has transformed itself in such a short time- divorce was only legalized in 1996 and yet they were the first nation to legalize gay marriage by popular vote (2015) and abortion was just legalized in 2018. Their Prime Minister is the gay son of an Indian immigrant and their parliament just became the second in the world to declare a climate emergency (and is implementing a plan to address it). We were there for Pride and it was huge! Irish people can also show us a way forward through the painful divisiveness of the past through their now peaceful relationship with Great Britain— which pales in comparison to some of the political divisions in our country. The reasons behind these changes are many, but if they can turn towards progress so boldly, we can too. Keep shining the light!
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Oops, typos: divorce was legalized in 1995 and their relationship with GB pales some of the political divisions in the US (not in comparison to those divisions).
@Erica F Many of the changes in Ireland are because of the younger generation--they are less rigidly Catholic and more open to the ideas of divorce, birth control, abortion, etc.
@jfdenver Precisely, just as the younger electorate in our country is much more progressive — we just have to fight for their votes to count (ie. gerrymandering, the electoral college, voting in person on a week day, etc.). It is indeed the fact that the Irish have been able to, in large part, shake the yoke of dangerous elements of the Catholic Church that gives me hope in relation to the ardent efforts of evangelical conservatives in the US who are trying to bring us back to the Dark Ages with their denial of science, provincial xenophobia, and legislative efforts to force women back into becoming second class citizens. That isn’t even taking the role of conservative religion into consideration with regard to fueling aspects of the immigration crisis in the first place by denying birth control and abortion and forcing families to have more children than they can support. So, yes, I’m in agreement!
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My grandfather left Scotland for a better life. I finally went there last year and would move there in a heartbeat. A caring civilized nation that educates and takes care of its citizens.
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@Emily
I lived in Scotland for a few months in 2013 and have access to a wonderful community of friends there. It’s one of several on my list of places to which I may move if things here get worse.
Luckily though, I’m a native of the great state of California which is in the messy midst of transforming itself into America’s Ireland. Because we have the dead weight of American hyper-capitalism, historical ties to Ronald Reagan, and other American philosophies antithetical to a 21st century Ireland, it’s slow going. But I believe that if any place in the country offers an American antidote to Trumpism, it’s California. Long may her golden light shine.
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It's true that despite centuries of oppression, Ireland turned out to be one of the most economically productive, highly educated and livable places on Earth.
So it's hard to make this point without sounding non-PC, but in my opinion Somalia is not the next Ireland.
And even if you think so (despite all observable facts and evidence), maybe it would be prudent to wait and see?
Because current statistics show the vast, vast majority of Somali immigrants in America today are underachieving:
"Eighty-percent live near the poverty level, with a median household income of just $20,600 annually. That’s well below the federal poverty line of $25,100 for a family of four."
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@Mmm
And where were Irish, German, Jewish, and other immigrants to the US in the 1800s and 1900s after less than one generation of being in this country? Look back at their history and you will see that if often took one to two generations, at least, for an immigrant family to succeed. It will be the same for Somali, Mexican, Central American and other immigrants who come to this country. And in a generation or two, with good educational options, they will be as successful as early immigrants. Where did your grandparents or great grandparents come from?
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@JH
Thank you, JH. My ancestors all came from Ireland between 1843 and 1871. A couple of them were "farmer" immediately in the Census. The rest never got beyond "Laborer" until after 1900, except the one who (obviously disliked by the Census taker) "works in liquor store."
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I would like to point out that among the Somali immigrants I have met and worked with, I have not observed underachieving. These immigrants have taken on the low paying jobs that ordinary Americans shun, such as CNAs in hospitals or service industry clerks. None of these positions pay more than 27000 a year. These are hardworking folks spending good money and paying taxes. I applaud their tenacity and guts to travel to a new country to better themselves and their families
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Recall when FDR addressed the DAR (Daughters of the Revolution) as "fellow immigrants." If my memory serves it was about the time when the DAR refused to let Marion Anderson sing at Constitution Hall. She sang instead at the Lincoln Memorial.
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@Robert D Ms. Anderson was first INVITED by the DAR to sing at Constitution Hall. Sadly, racism led to her being disinvited. The fact that the invitation had been made by the DAR in the first place is often forgotten.
There have always been enlightened people among us. Let's keep shining the light.
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@Kay Tee Correct, and it was through the intervention of Eleanor Roosevelt that in the end she sang at the Lincoln Memorialo.
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Well said! If you're a citizen, have a Green Card, Political Asylum or a valid Work Permit you have every right to be here as I do. End of discussion. I don't like Ms. Omar because she is prejudiced, ill-informed and of herself. I dislike, no detest Trump. Anti-immigrant sentiment has been here since Colonial times. No less than Benjamin Franklin was jaw-boning about German and Swiss immigrants in PA (they arrived in large numbers in the period 1730 to 1775, 110,000). He was 24 in 1730, but his complaints were made much later after their numbers had risen to 200,000 in 1775 or 8% of the population of the colonies and they were a big minority in PA.
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@Alexander I come originally from India. We have had immigration in our country for centuries --I think the past 50 years have been the exception where we are now emigrating on a net basis. Our history is full of great examples of assimilation of foreign people (Bactrian, Greek, Arab, African, Persian, Mongol, Scythian, Afghan, English --first rounds of immigration were peaceful and cooperative). But we also have a past littered with episodes of downright bigotry and xenophobia --even down to modern times. I guess it is human nature to form tribes.
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@Alexander
And if you work here and pay taxes, you have every right to medical care.
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@Alexander
So I guess, using your reasoning, we should not strive for equality for all?
As a US citizen who was born here many years ago, I would also like to go back to the country I came from. But that country no longer exists. Any pretense of being a civilized society was completely demolished when Donald Trump was elected as president.
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@Martha
He wasn’t elected. He was “elected”, or elected*.
@Martha May I remind you that he wasn't elected. He lost the election by almost 3 million votes. He was SELECTED by the fossilized electoral college, a slave era solution to giving some legislative clout to an area of the country where the negro to white population was sometimes 75:1, and only white, male landowners could vote.
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On our honeymoon to Ireland 30 years ago, we hid the fact that ours was a second marriage, since divorce was not legalized until 1995 (barely - the vote was 50.28% to 49.72%, less than 1% - never say your vote doesn't matter). If Ireland can advance so quickly on so many fronts despite such deep divisions (including recovery from the Celtic Tiger financial meltdown of 2008), so can we, as depressing as our current political situation seems.
Sometimes it's just a matter of a handful of votes, and a tipping point is reached. Maybe this week's racist screeds have already created that handful of votes, and we can set our country back in a direction similar to Ireland's. Thank you, Mr. Egan. Your article gives me hope today, not despair. VOTE.
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@Anne H I am of the opinion that a grassroots movement (rather than top down enforcement of ideals) is more lasting. This type of progress, when achieved, can outlast many parliamentary (or in the US congress) sessions and administrations. The bigger the margin of support at grassroots --the more politicians fear to tinker with it.
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@SupermanCannotFly I agree with you. But I've also seen that, like divorce in Ireland, sometimes you need to change something first, then the rest of the country will follow. Take ACA, for instance - unpopular before it was enacted but now quite popular. (Just watch if and when a court takes away our preexisting conditions - rise up grassroots!)
And we need votes to dismantle the apparatus of voter suppression - it seem to take two progressive votes to every one conservative vote to get anything done right now, because of gerrymandering etc.
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Mr. Egan, out of a shared sensibility, a belief we can all create a equatable country comes with a shared a value to do just that. Today's Ireland sounds much like Canada, a country expressing it's ideals and transforming them into things like universal healthcare, providing the underpinning for a country to build up it's nation. This ideal is what the Republicans coin as socialist, communist, and evil, which of course is the fear-mongering their supports lap right up. The vitriol being spewed is designed to drown out any chance of change that will be the benefit for all.
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Great essay. I personally would like to be sent "back" to Norway, from which my great-grandparents came. Unfortunately I cannot emigrate because most Western nations have age barriers and I'm too old. So, your essay did leave out one salient fact: There are plenty of immigration controls everywhere and places such as Australia, Canada etc. do not want you if you're over 50. No one has open borders.
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@Anne Anne, I don't know what the age barrier for Norway is, but I knew a couple, of which the husband had Norwegian ancestry and also relatives in Norway, that received permission to immigrate when they retired in their sixties. I have no idea how far back his American roots went.
@Anne Nor should they. You'd be a huge leech on tax resources because of universal healthcare and such.
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Tim you say: "That episode was another textbook illustration of why the far left has trouble winning a majority." Do not make the mistake of associating four people with an entire movement.
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@Steve I agree. Ilhan Omar may or may not be leftist, but she is definitely a millennial. Their mistakes are not from ideology but from a generational problem of immaturity.
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@Anne and generations have said that about every new batch of young people. Please give me solid evidence, not anecdotal, that millennials as a whole are immature?
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@Anne
I don't see many legislators who are NOT immature.
Excellent observations, but some real disappointments having just returned from there:
The Irish have become one the most overweight populations I have seen in Europe. Most don’t exercise and they eat pretty badly. Finding F&V was not easy, except the wonderful Irish-grown strawberries still in season. But of course not found on restaurant menus, most of which sadly lack healthy options.
The air is key cities like Dublin and Galway is becoming the most polluted in the EU because they've opted for mostly diesel fueled transportation to save everyone a few pennies per gallon, and you can smell it anywhere you walk and it is causing respiratory problems to sky-rocket.
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@Food Guy I found fruits and veggies in abundance everywhere I went. Including fruit and veggie stands in nearly every town. You can choose to eat unhealthy but it wasn't hard to find healthy food. Not sure where your numbers/ideas are coming from but they appear to be anecdotal observation and inaccurate.
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@Chris We spend weeks bike touring every year and find that getting F&V in restaurant meals is difficult - we cook our own and have no problem, anywhere.
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@Chris It seems to me that @Food Guy just returned from Ireland of the 1980s and not 2019. Over the years I have been thrilled to see how much more is creatively offered in restaurants and markets. Yes, I ate myself sick but not from eating "badly."
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As a descendant of Irish immigrants to Boston, I find it shameful that Irish-American leaders such as Mike Pence, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy show so little feeling for the less fortunate among us. Great-hearted empathy is the most valuable inheritance wrought from a saga of suffering. We honor our ancestors when we recognize their plight among people in need. Never forget.
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@Peter Myette I sometimes wonder whether they became part of the lace curtain Irish who got theirs and would often fight to the death to keep it from anyone else. Of course, many immigrant groups once no longer considered "black" take on the prejudices of their oppressors - they had to go through it, so why shouldn't the new ones...
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Going back to the country you came from is easier said than done. I immigrated to the US from Germany in 1953. Four years later, when I was just 11 years old, my mother urged me to become an American citizen. About 50 years later, when things started to go downhill in the US, I wanted to go back to Germany, but they wouldn't take me.
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@Jack Edwards: good for them!
Who wants a citizen who cherry picks which nation they will live in (or be loyal to) on the basis of "who is in office this year"? or leaves the minute things do not go their way?
That being said: I am genuinely surprised Germany did not recognize you as a native born citizen.
2
@Concerned Citizen: After serving in the Vietnam war and watching Bush get us into another war on false pretenses, it's not cherry picking a country in which to live. It's getting out of a country that's constantly at war. I tried to immigrate to Canada as well, but they don't want older folks either. It's hardly surprising that Germany and a lot of other countries don't want older folks that are going to need a lot of health care.
Besides, my point was that it's easier said than done to get out of the country. It had nothing to do with loyalty. I served in the military, voted in every election, and never complained about paying my taxes. Isn't that loyal enough?
1
I'm Irish born and living in the U.S. for 30+ years. I left Ireland for all the usual social and economic reasons (lack of women's opportunities, reproductive healthcare, unemployment, church-state dominance). I agree with much of Mr. Egan's opinion piece. Except .. more disturbing than the power- and money-grubbing U.S. pols are the hordes of 'ordinary' U.S. citizens who have attended and chanted at his hate-fueled rallies. Politicians can be voted out. The populace in their MAGA hats--and all their hate-filled hearts--cannot. If I choose to use my Irish citizenship to re-emigrate, it will be because I can never un-see this dark underbelly of "ordinary" America.
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@Aine Greaney . I agree - to see even people you would never suspect of such terrible behavior join in with relish is terrifying. My family, both sides, have been in this country since before the Revolutionary War. i have the papers for one of my ancestors when he got out of the army then, and another's from the Civil War (Union). Although I am proud of my heritage, I am no more American than someone who became a US citizen yesterday! I imagine that Native Americans would like to chant "Send them all back!"
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I’m afraid Mr. Egan got a couple of things wrong about Ireland. We sadly don’t have universal healthcare. We have two tier public/private system where if you have private insurance you will be treated far more quickly than if you’re in the public system.
Our educational system, despite being comparatively inexpensive - especially as compared to the insanity of US 3rd level fees, is still difficult for lower income citizens to access. This problem starts well before kids even start in school.
We also, I think, in 2006 voted in a constitutional referendum to remove birthright citizenship from the children of “non Irish” parents. A shameful example of xenophobia and something trump would very much like to see happen in the US.
I appreciate Mr. Egan’s enthusiasm for 21st century Ireland. There is much to be proud of but there is much still to be done.
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@Liam O’Neill
A sensible reply to a commendable opinion piece that is somewhat less than well informed.
5
You should not flatter yourself too much.
Ireland has profited much more from being in the European Union than any other country. It has gotten huge infusions of cash. Only the Slavic countries rival Ireland for the benefits it has received.
Now Ireland is the primary cause for why Brexit has not been resolved. This little insignificant country has had an effect on the U.S. and Europe because 25% of Americans say their ancestry derives from there.
Ireland has produced some great writers, but nothing else.
5
25 percent of the American population seems a production of some significance, never mind the percentage of the British population. But you’re right, Ireland has given us fine writers. Perhaps that is enough.
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Well good for Ireland if it benefited from the EU, why shouldn’t it. And it’s certainly not Ireland’s fault that the UK (well England and Wales, not Scotland or Northern Ireland) chose to vote Brexit without a thought for the Irish border. I have no sympathy at all for the UK xenophobes who would gladly tear up the Good Friday Agreement that has transformed relationships on the island of Ireland. It’s a UK mess, why should Ireland damage itself to help them out of it. Ireland may be a little country but it punches well above its weight. I won’t even dignify your last comment with a response. Go google.
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@bigdoc Correction -- Northern Ireland (not the Republic of Ireland) is the issue in Brexit. The Republic has no political connection to the UK and has nothing to do with the issue.
2
As others have said a column that reflects quite well what many of us think and feel.
One quibble: Four young people have been recently elected to Congress. As young people are often blessed with a somewhat unrepentant idealism, they are free to push in a more seemingly radical direction with little chance of reaching the extremes of that direction. But they might, in the process, break through the ossified state we are in to something more than we are likely to otherwise achieve. So is it always going to be necessary to qualify our acceptance stating that we are not so radical ourselves while praising something that looks very much like what they would do if they had the chance?
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Well, my Irish ancestry is very recent. But, I understand the difference between legal and illegal immigration. Mr Egan chooses to ignore that issue. Like the rest of the media establishment.
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@Tim Dowd REp. Omar is a naturalized US citizen, that is the issue of this op-ed not the issue of undocumented residents. The crowd chanted send her back about a US citizen, that seems to be something "ignored" by some.
2
@Tim Dowd None of the congresswomen involved whom Trump disparages are illegal immigrants (in fact they are not all immigrants, but born in the US), so what exactly does the concern of the need for an improved immigration policy have to do with these latest insults?
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@Tim Dowd
Mr. Dowd - this column refers to the recent suggestion by the President and his groupies that LEGAL American citizens be sent back to the country of their ancestors. You are the one who is choosing to ignore that issue.
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My 31 year old nephew moved to New Zealand a few years ago. He awaits his residency papers. His adopted country would never shout out to him to go back to the U.S. They welcomed him and the talents he brought to their workforce and community. Please do not spread the word to too many Americans. The New Zealand immigration system will be inundated and unable to process the overwhelming number of "asylum seekers" from the U.S. trying to cross the waters to their borders.
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@HMP
New Zealand controls its immigration system, allowing in people they need and want because of their contribution to the country. Sometimes they want doctors and sometimes tech workers, etc. In any case, the rules are very clear and there are no open borders. Americans wanting to live in NZ can invest some millions of dollars in the country to get in. It is an island nation. They cannot take everybody.
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@HMP Our son joined his Kiwi wife and resides in NZ over ten years ago. The people there are wonderful, but they don't love the US. We're too violent and in love with our nukes for their taste. But one thing they universally admire is our generosity. We could learn a lot about healthful living, care for the environment, treatment of indigenous peoples and respect for visitors and immigrants from the good people of New Zealand. Plus their rugby team is spectacular.
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@Lapis ExThe comment about investing millions to get in is preposterous. Yes, my nephew had a marketable tech skill but I can assure you far from even $10K to his name.
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I'd say most of Europe is a better place to live than the US at the moment - unless you are wealthy. And in the US, it's the wealthy who get to drive the political process, aided by Citizens United.
The money is US politics is just mind-blowing and illegal in most of Europe. That needs attention and, until it is legislated, the US will see inequality and poverty grow - almost as fast as the wealth of the 1% grows.
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@Dean...
Good heavens...It is amazing just how much "power" you have ceded to that Citizens United Decision...
Do you have anything by anecdotal evidence to back up your claim?
If so, please present it. It might make for hilarious reading.
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Seen from almost any other perspective, it’s not surprising how confounded other countries are over the USA’s downward spiraling. Now the time and effort needed to make up for the damage that’s been done will usurp time and effort that could have been spent on advancements, like universal health care and an education system that actually teaches people to think before casting a ballot.
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There is also a fundamental sense of decency among the Irish that the prototypical Scots-Irish-American Trump voter seems to have forgotten. I was there a few years ago, and I well remember virtually every tour guide we had bringing up the situation in Syria, drawing parallels to the Irish experience, and reminding us that it's a recurring human theme that we must all confront with compassion, understanding, and aid. No one had to go there, but they did. I wish we were more like that.
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@JRK This is complete nonsense. The Irish were responsible for extreme discrimination against immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe who came to the U.S. after the Irish. They did the same thing in Australia and Canada. You need to do some thorough reading about immigration to the U.S. and elsewhere.
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I’m planning kayaking and canoeing trips to Canada in the coming weeks. I just hope they don’t close the border out of fear that we won’t go back home after our trips. If I didn’t have a job and family to return to I’d seriously think about it.
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My son and I went to a U2 concert in Dublin in 2005. One thing that struck me was that the police, there for crowd control, were so friendly. Their attitude was that they were facilitating a fun event, keeping everyone safe. I am not trying to denigrate law enforcement personnel here, but it was a very different feel from going to a large public event here. Of course, the police in Ireland don’t have to worry about a mass shooter trying to get in, either.
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@Susan...
I doubt seriously that they are as facilitating as they once were...
Too much has happened for the police to become spectators.
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@Susan
My visit to Ireland 15 years ago had a similar vibe. I found in general that the police there embraced "protect and serve" rather than "intimidate and collect revenue". Of course they still garnered due respect.
Ireland isn't perfect. But the author's general observations are pretty spot on. As an adopted person who has found and documented their Irish grandparents, I am seriously contemplating investigating dual citizenship.
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@The Owl they still are. I was there for a 6 nation's rugby match at Aviva and law enforcement was polite and helpful. You can be facilitating, polite, and pleasent and sill be watchful. These are not mutually exclusive behaviors
1
During WWI my Belgian Mother, her mother and grandmother became war refugees. They were welcomed by Ireland and spent the war years there. At the end of the war they were able to return home. My mother and her family were eternally grateful to Ireland and the Irish. They were well treated and assisted by the Irish, who shared what they had with their new residents. She always felt a little bit Irish. We forget that anyone anywhere can become a refugee and we would want to be treated kindly. The Irish had empathy. It’s a shame that so many of us have lost that character trait.
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Tim, you were doing good until this..."I disagree with much of the policy initiatives of the four left-wing congresswomen targeted by Trump. It was wrong and incorrect for them to make Nancy Pelosi’s disagreement with them about race."
Those four are asking for what you outline in this option:
- Healthcare for All
- Free College for our Citizens
- A better life for our Citizens
Not sure which are of this you disagree with!
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@manutx And AOC wants a Green New Deal, which is forward thinking and necessary to address this Climate Crisis.
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My dear fellow Texan,
I suspect Mr. Egan would disagree with these four ladies about the issues that I disagree with, namely that any opposition to their driving style is the source of racism and xenophobia...
You distilled their positions smartly, but as in everything else, the devil is in the details...
1
In the 1950's I delivered babies in Dublin in slums where one large family lived in a single room without sanitation or running water.
Yes, Ireland is better now, but that is more thanks to being a member of the EU than efforts of the Irish themselves.
And they have yet to settle the border dispute.
So let's not pretend Ireland is a model for the rest of the world to follow. The USA has much to change, but look to how Western Europe has done it and rejoin the modern free world.
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@M Clement Hall While Ireland has certainly benefited from membership of The EU in many different ways, I think it is an unfair prejudice to suggest that the progress there has been entirely due to outside influence. The first country to vote in a referendum to legalize marriage equality, the recent referendum allowing abortion and, perhaps most importantly, the Good Friday Agreement, where the Irish, north and south, found common ground in a peace process that has held for twenty years. These achievements along with sustained recovery from the global economic downturn of 2008 are evidence of a country that is ready to absorb new Irish citizens.
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@M Clement Hall
Membership in the EU with the corresponding regional aides and market access help in development.
Italy, Spain, Portugal and now the former Eastern block countries such as the Baltic states and Poland have all made incredible progress after joining the EU. However, joining the union alone is not enough when financial irresponsibility and mismanagement remain prevalent such as in Greece a decade ago and now in Italy.
Ireland was exemplary because it was hardest hit by the financial crisis triggered by the meltdown of the subprime bubble in the US. They have rebounded incredibly strong and can be proud about it.
The UK has also profited immensely from joining the EU, transforming from a rundown country on the verge of financial collapse into an economic powerhouse over 30 years. It will be interesting to observe what will happen after Brexit. My bet would be that the effects will be largely detrimental.
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@M Clement Hall "they have yet to settle the border dispute." What players are you not mentioning? The English populace who voted for Brexit and therefore made the border an issue again? Or the 500 years of colonizing British Empire which created that border in the first place?
4
If Trump; his administration; and congress actually and seriously heeded his own advice, this government would be left with four Native Americans in congress.
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@TommyTuna--Native American wish that their ancestors had built a wall.
3
People have confused capitalism with democracy. This country has turned into a place where people have sold out their values for money thinking somehow wealth will make them happy rather than health care and education.
Even Forbes magazine calls itself 'The Captialist Tool' recognizing capitalism as a tool but it's to be used by a democratic society. Ireland is using it for good. Sadly, America hasn't been so wise.
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@Paul I remember that W. used to address the citizens of the US as "consumers", and urged people to go shopping after 9-11.
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@Paul--Extreme capitalism, as it is today, in the antithesis of a representative democratic republic. We must alter its destructive nature in order to help all citizens become self-sufficient, if not downright prosperous. The rich will still be rich, but they won't run our government. The PEOPLE WILL RUN THE GOVERNMENT. Get the money out of politics!
23
@Paul Its not a surprise though. The recent arrivals have all come in order to make money. They are using education as a weapon. Not one is standing up stating that ALL students should be allowed a seat in an appropriate class that fits their academic preparation. Instead disparate impact reigns. All favoritism for their chosen groups.
1
I am a 58 year old Irish , Scottish and Sweedish American. I have congestive heart failure and am alive only due to the ACA. Due to the threats to that law, along with the universal age discrimination that makes work here impossible to find, I will be emmigrating from the US for Taiwan in less than two weeks. While I bitterly resent the loss of my home and family I look forward to living in a country where there is good universal health care ( leading to the longest average life span for women in the world, 84) and where I will be free of having to hear the racist screaming of violent mobs praised as the only true voice of American patriotism. Maybe a couple years ago we could have reversed this corruption of the American creed but at this point I see no reason to believe that Trumpism will come to an end even if it is defeated in the next election. Moreover, I dont expect that Americans will stand up for the Constitution if Trump declares himself president for life, why should be when we have video games to play and Game of Thrones is on TV?
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What a great column. Thanks for so eloquently stating what many of us are thinking.
"Send TRUMP back!"
but not to Scotland or Germany
(I wouldn't wish that horror on them)
just back to his gold tower New York City
and away from the White House.
ANY Democrat in 2020 (in ANY race--President, Senate, House, state legislatures, dog catchers...)
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@slim1921
Send him back to where he belongs.
Sing-Sing or Riker Island.
Even let him share a cell with Jeffrey Epstein!
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@slim1921 New Yorkers don't ever want to see him again, unless it's permanently on Riker's Island.
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A headline from mid-June: " Ireland to unveil bold plan to tackle climate emergency".
From the article, the prime minister Leo Varadkar, said: “We are going to change how electricity is produced and consumed, how our homes and workplaces are heated; the way we travel; the types of vehicles we purchase, and how food is produced. Above all, we are going to decouple emissions growth from economic growth … This plan represents the sum of our hopes for the future.”
Can we follow Ireland's lead, please?
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@Jude: I'll bet the congresswomen that Trump wants to "send back" would support some variation of that plan.
9
@mlbex
Not just bet; they do! They back the Green New Deal, an important framework for addressing the climate crisis and economic inequality.
Trump hates America and what it stands for: equal justice, a land of immigrants, freedom of speech and the press, the rule of law, the Constitutional process, democratic norms and values, etc.
7
Blarney, as it were.
Racism remains a major problem in Ireland, despite the Happy Talk in this column.
Ireland is a profoundly bad actor in the global economic system. It's corporate tax policy enables massive tax avoidance by multinationals, costs American workers hundreds of thousands of jobs, deprives the American government of tax revenues that might be used for healthcare reform or reducing the cost of college education, and has contributed to economic despair across Continental Europe.
It has also been a recipient of a massive amount of funding from the EU over the past 25 years, while undermining the economic opportunity available to citizens of other countries in the EU.
It will be interesting to see how Ireland reacts when the EU implodes in the coming years.
The global order is in the process of being restructured. Ireland is going to be forced to make some very difficult choices when the smoke clears.
I'd keep my American passport if I was you.
America is going through a tremendously difficult time right now. Trump is a forcing function to compel us to redefine America for the 21st Century.
It may be difficult to see right now, but all this turmoil is healthy part of cleansing the system, and there is no country better positioned to dominate the 21st Century than America.
The delicious irony is that our diversity and immigrants are going to be our biggest competitive advantages in the Digital Age and the next iteration of bottom-up globalization.
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@TB
"Ireland is a profoundly bad actor in the global economic system. It's corporate tax policy enables massive tax avoidance by multinationals"
So this is IRELAND's fault?
I don't put MY money in a tax avoidance scheme.
Maybe these American corporations should care more about helping pay for the American dream instead of lining the pockets of their billionaire CEOs. OR a Democratic Congress (when we win the Senate) can force American corporations to "do the right thing"
How about THAT?
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@TB Goodness, you are truly living in the past. Yes, America was once positioned to lead the world--and in fact did lead the world--circa 1970. Back then America was indisputably the leader in human capital--education and basic research--as well as having excellent infrastructure. But America decided it didn't need to continue to compete--we didn't need to continue these investments in ourselves. We now trail many other nations in our investment in public sector basic research, having cut that investment in half as a share of GDP. As recently as 1993, our college graduation rate was #1--it is now #19 and dropping. And we are much much further behind in the share of critical STEM graduates; India graduates four times as many, China six times. Our infrastructure "deficit" is by far the largest in the world and extracts annually a $600 BILLION tax from our economy. Along virtually any metric, America is falling behind and becoming less competitive.
Meanwhile, what have our competitors done? They have in fact adopted what was once the American model--i.e. invest heavily in human capital/basic research and infrastructure. The most striking example is of course China--read Made in China 2024. What is it except a Chinese adaptation of what was once the American model?
The sad reality is that we have chosen as a country to try to hide from the world--hence the Walls and the Trade Wars--rather than compete. I suppose our women's soccer team is a taste of what we once were....
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@TB: "Trump is a forcing function to compel us to redefine America for the 21st Century."
A forcing function... I've never heard that phrase, but I get it. I think of him as a symptom of a disease that we'd better treat before the patient dies, but you're phrase does the job too.
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Your column made me sad. Rather than move away, citizens of principle should stay and fight for the true principles that we all pledge allegiance to: one nation with liberty and justice for all.
There will be neither liberty nor justice if citizens of principle decide to abandon the country.
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...that’s, “one nation, under God, with Liberty and Justice for All” That’s how I was taught
@hlampert
The Germans thought the same thing in 1937.
Yes, yes me too, either Canada or France. There are so many of us. Our ancestors had some good reasons for leaving (although not all) but now it's time to go back.
20
Ireland is not the home of my ancestors; it is the home of my husband's people and we both hold Irish passports. We have been considering a move, but it feels so complicated at our age. But lately I think about it more and more. It feels like one of the safest places in Europe. It was never a colonizer, it's location away from the nationalist fray feels ideal, and it's becoming more progressive.
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@aginfla ...and it's a Neutral country, aiding peacekeeping yes, war, no.
"For this Ireland has become what America used to be. If only America could be more like this Ireland."
A perfect encapsulation of how I feel.
I am an Irish American who is eligible for Irish citizenship. As much as it pains me, I will be applying for Irish citizenship and moving to Ireland if trump wins another term.
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@Former Hoosier You are fortunate in being eligible for citizenship. Many of us have less resources available. I wish you well (and particularly HOPE you don't have cause to leave!) I certainly understand your feelings and would not hesitate to leave if events conspire for another term for 45!!!
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Well put. It is a very sad state of affairs and it seems to be escalating so quickly that I dont know from one day to the other whats next. Nothing really shocks me anymore. And that worries me.
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Born in the Bronx into a family of four living in three rooms on the 4th floor of a walk-up apartment. I was given a good education all the way through a free City College of NY earning a Bachelors Degree in Science. I fought for Civil Rights and an end to segregation. I marched for peace and an end to the war in Vietnam. After the disastrous invasion of Iraq and the Great Recession of 2008, hope was once again ascendant at the inauguration of our first Black President.
But the dystopian view of America that our current President used at his inauguration to justify his election has finally arrived. Carved by his hands and small mind he has marched us back to intolerance, hate and the overwhelming odor of privilege. The cheapness of his rhetoric will buy nothing but a longing for decency, which at least can be found in beautiful Ireland. Thank you Timothy Egan for your excellent column.
.
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@Marvin Raps Trump's inaugural speech was the most depressing one ever -- American carnage was his calling card and he's achieved it within two years.
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Unstated in this article is that the total irish population is under 5 million and that many of the national level services it's government provides are really only feasible because its the defacto tax-haven of europe for all of the big US tech companies to have their EU operations. So yes, they can provide a high level of gov't services to a very small population due to their unique situation of being a corporate tax haven, that's not a roadmap plan for American success.
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All civilized European countries provide a thorough safety net to their residents. And most of them are anything but tax havens. They simply levy higher taxes on those who can afford it, and are better managed.
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@J. Smith You may have not thought about economies of scale. Size can be an advantage.
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Why would the author allow the facts to get in the way of a good political point.
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Wonderful paean to the blessed Emerald Isle, Tim Egan! A joy to read of where one American's ancestors came from. We're all immigrants, and America's experiment in democracy was built by immigrants from the world's countries to our hemisphere.
Remember Jonathan Swift's brilliant 1729 satire of England's colonial power over Ireland (still in effect in Northern Ireland)? Swift's " A Modest Proposal" -- that the poor starving Irish should sell their children as food to the rich English elite? His modest proposal may be stolen by Trump to solve his problem with starving immigrants invading our southern border.
We all heard and loathed the racist chants from Trump's anti-immigrant nationalistic base at his 2020 rally in North Carolina. That meme defines the president's hatred of immigrants. That mantra -- "Send her back!"-- will continue to sound through our 2020 Elections: Isn't it past time to send Donald Trump back?
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@Nan Socolow
Summary of immigration in the 21st century:
Everyone want to live with the white man even with Trump as President.
Kudos to the Irish my Mother would be delghted reading this. Unlike Ireland at present we are living under deliberate chaos, intolerance and learning more about the inequities regarding Justice and income and blatant corruption on a daily basis. Succumbing to bitterness or accepting the status quo has become the American Ebola. Deliberate lying to the public, even with film proving it is an egregious lie, on any issue should be an impeachable offence. Setting that example of removal would teach those in office or aspiring to be what is expected of a person who holds the honor of being elected to represent their constituents as opposed to the twisted Party loyalty and that big money that buys their seats.
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@rhdelp
God uses strange people to push his agenda. Trump is a flawed, sinful man but he will be forgiven and saved by Almighty God because he is not a baby-killer.
All well and good on the immigration/racism points, but Mr Egan's assertions on what he construes as a 'far left' of the four members of the Squad is way off base. In fact, the economic prescriptions of the Squad and Bernie et al are actually mainstream, including higher taxes on the wealthy, higher minimum wage, help with college costs, enlarging and bolstering Social Security/Medicare and tackling climate change with a green energy initiative. Why is it so hard to integrate into one's political argument that many of these 'far left' economic positions are popular with so-called moderates, and even majorities of Republican voters?
Perhaps it's because it means admitting that establishment/mainstream Democratic policy, in practice, is warmed over Reaganism and austerity.
There is a great deal of agreement among the American people about a lot of issues, and it is Democratic timidity, and their refusal to wield power when they have it, that is really a big part of what gave us Trumpism.
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My family goes back for generations in this country. My mother's ancestors immigrated here before the Revolution. I would also like to go back to the country from which I came-the U.S. before the insanity of trump took it over.
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This column made my patriotic eyes water. Right on Egan. My mother was born in a thatched roof cottage with a dirt floor, and educated by the nuns because she showed some promise. She took advantage of the war to learn nursing, riding out the bombing in London alone at 17 years old. My grandfather told her of Ireland, “My girls are too good for this place.” When the war ended and the Irish became unwanted - the “blacks of Europe” - she slipped away from Cork never to see her parents again. I have an Irish and an American passport. I have considered leaving and returning to what increasingly feels like the land of my people. But you can’t hide. What we as Americans must realize is that we have an obligation to the world to lead.
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Ireland is a tax haven. Most US corporations launder their revenue through Ireland to avoid EU taxes. The EU will soon crack down on Ireland tax evasion. What happens then?
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@Mr Gary that's not factually correct... Ireland always had low corporate taxes (and actually increased them as part of an EU agreement) as all the recently updated and signed tax treaties with its EU partners have attested. When the EU Commission loses the Apple case that will put it to bed for quite a long time. Besides comparably few of the 1350 multinationals in Ireland do not have substantial substance to back up their revenue run thru's...
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@Mr Gary Yes. It is all the result of Anglo abuse .The Republic of Ireland was very poor when it entered the EU, after centuries of abuse from the English.
So it needed tax incentives . Now the USA have abused the tax evasion to a point where all the US biggest corporations are there cheating to pay zero taxes in the EU .
And the money is still whisked back to the US with help from the English banks in London, who take a chunk of money at each passage .
The EU is trying to fight the Trojan horse .
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@Anon the tightening on the US fiscal fraud in Europe will only go forward. France just voted a 3 % tax on volume not on benefice because it is much less possible to cheat on the volume of sale.
Uk is prepared to vote a 2 % tax. And the vote at the EU global level only failed because the Germans backed up at the last minute because of trumps black mail with the auto industry. But German auto makers pay taxes in the US but Apple , Amazon, facebook ,Google, yahoo, Starbucks and Netflix pay zero tax in the EU>
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I gained Irish citizenship through my grandparents during the GWBush administration, thinking that if I needed to emigrate with my children, living there as part of the European Community would be a blessing. Then President Obama arrived on the scene, and that option receded. Now I find myself checking out retirement options in Ireland- as well as Ecuador, a beautiful country. It is not the answer- we need to hang tough, fight Trump, and reclaim our wonderful country and its humanitarian legacy, forged through years of struggle and suffering. Ireland’s progress from third to first world status is due to its elections of female leaders, its detachment from both Britain and the Church, and its resolution to preserve its own culture while opening itself to the world. We can learn a lot from little Ireland, but we cannot give up on our own country.
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@Kate
I so agree. I could probably make Irish citizenship happen for myself, but at this point it would mean that I had given up on being part of the solution to problems that I, as a U.S. citizen, have helped to create.
But I'd love to move to Ireland.
12
@Kate Fight or Flight? I left after the 2016 election for a while but am back. Still the next election looms. Despite the threat of a trump presidency only 55% voted. Despite 18 months of Trumpism only 49% showed up for midterm elections and this broke records. 1/2 the country does not care enough to do the simplest thing - vote. I will take flight with no regrets! The greatest gift my Irish Nana could give me -- dual citizenship!
6
Which Ireland ar we talking about ?
There are 2 different nations now . Northern Ireland , still in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, in the European Union. Northern Ireland is stii very poor even if it benefitted from the European investments .
The Republic of Ireland is harboring all the US firms who aregistered fiscally there and not in the USA.
They invade the European market from within and without paying any taxes in the EU .And London still works as the money laundering back to the US, but if Brexit happens the triangular business will be more complicated .
These US firms are Apple, Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Dtarbucks, Netflix, to name a few.
They already were send back to Ireland where they don't come from .And they send the money from their huge European business back to the US without paying any taxes to the EU .
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@JPH those firms mentioned who are in Ireland employ about 20,000 directly and one and half times that indirectly.... Not the mention billions of their global It infrastructure (Data Centres) based there... hat and talking through
1
And your comment relates to healthcare ... how?
When I read the headline, I assumed Timothy was referring to the country the US used to be, when there were principled politicians who put country before party on both sides of the aisle. What happened to us? Extreme gerrymandering, Fox News, Citizens United, Facebook, Russian interference. How can we get back to the country we used to be? I'm wondering whether any of the Democratic presidential contenders can help us get back on the right track.
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@Paul Smith Let's put our hope in the Democrats as it is a sure thing that the Republicans will not get us back on the right track.
15
Ireland has two official languages: Irish and English. All Irish children learn the Irish language in school (some better than others). It is shown that there is agility to the mind when one can think in more than one language. Could this have something to do with what Ireland has built? Is there something America can learn? Perhaps we could provide our children with opportunities to learn a second language starting in kindergarten?
21
All elementary age children who go to school in Ireland learn Irish - not just Irish children. If Americans move to Ireland, their children not only will learn Irish, but also be part of the Catholic culture of primary schools.
If children attending primary school in Ireland are not Catholic, they will sit out during religious activities that are part of the curriculum. They will study religion as a subject like all the Irish children but when it comes time for first communion, confirmation, etc. they will not participate. The teachers will not ask you as parents whether you want your children to participate - they will just separate them.
When you engage in a discussion about diversity in Ireland, you will be told that it exists, as they have been getting along with Protestants for quite some time (?!!!). Ireland is lovely but it is not a cure for what is ailing the US. Rural Ireland culturally is about 50 years behind the US - and that’s why it’s appealing at the moment.
3
A good column, Mr. Egan. But I object to your casual dismissal of "white privilege" as a pre-emptive pejorative.
White privilege is a reality enjoyed by every person included in the category. The category of "white" is defined by exclusion - not by description. "White" exists only by identifying those who are not.
If we cannot recognized the inherent privilege in "whiteness," we cannot be an inclusive nation. White privilege is relative, not absolute, as we know from the many white folks who complain, "But I have been . . . "
White privilege should not close minds and end conversations. It is a reality that must open minds and start conversations.
11
Good point. Power, privilege, and prestige mark all societies. No place is immune from hierarchies that make human life unequal and life chances variable as a result. The experience of slavery in the USA and the historical perpetuation of white power since Reconstruction means that the first step toward a more inclusive future is the recognition by all of us “whites” of the necessity of owning up to this legacy.
4
When the opportunity arose to get my kids dual EU citizenship, I jumped at it. We are already talking about them studying “abroad” for college. Some have tried to warn us, “be careful, they might not come back to the States.” If we keep going on the path we’re on, why would I want them to?
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@Boston I have had many conversations with friends about our "escape routes", since my international family offers a few options. But here is the thing we all need to realize: if he wins another term, NO PLACE will be safe. He is already having loads of success creating global trade wars, currency wars, nationalism, populism, racism, aiding demagoguery everywhere. Give him a second term and the entire world will be re-made in his image.
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@Alicia ogawa I share your sentiments wholeheartedly. That being said, I have also lived abroad since 1991 and have never regretted our decision. Not once.
Trump must and should be defeated in 2020. If not, does he have the capacity to drag the rest of the world down with him? I'm not so sure. Since 2016 and the insuing trade wars, threats to NATO, the EU, you name it, the rest of the world has been preparing for the end of American Exceptionalism as leader of the free world.
Trump at the helm means you're on your own, America. And the world will muddle on without you.
15
Nice piece. I am also Irish born and came here after college in the 80's. The comments on what is called direct foreign investment in Ireland are accurate. DFI makes up around 60% of the Irish economy. That said, Ireland is a good global citizen and has largely gotten the basics including education and healthcare right. The Irish Healthcare system is far from perfect but it gets the job done. You can also opt-out and get private insurance for around 10% of the cost of the US. If anything Ireland proves that any country can take simple steps to make life better. They don't have all the answers but Ireland seems to be asking more of the right questions.
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Thanks Tim. I have returned as well and delighted in the history of my ancestors. One thing I would add is that Ireland has one of the most restrictive gun laws in the EU, something to be wished for. All of that said, my home is America and I will do what I can to make it right.
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My people came from England and Ireland long ago in the mists of history. The earliest immigrant my sister (the family genealogist) has traced was a schoolteacher who came to the Carolinas in the 1790s. I'm not leaving this country. But as Timothy so eloquently points out, I''m not who Trump means.
18
Well said, Mr. Egan. I am ashamed of my country and what it has become over the last decade or so. We countenance racism, bigotry, and cruelty in ourselves and our policies. If this continues, I will have to look for another home country. Ireland sounds like an option and most of my ancestry is from the British Isles. In retirement, I never thought that I would consider leaving the country in which I have lived for 68 years, but I seriously am making just that consideration.
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My mother was born in Scotland [ her family can trace there history their for generations ]. If Scotland would grant me citizenship I would be their tomorrow.
21
@gerry If I am not mistaken, Trump's mother was born in Scotland.
1
@gerry, So would I, and I'm Polish. My ancestral country's not doing as well, but the Scots? So down to earth! They'd never put up with this nonsense from a leader.
1
@gerry The "there " "their " inversion almost makes sense. Specially from Princeton.
2
I want to go back to the county I came from, the country that the United States used to be. I miss the intelligence and decency of Richard Nixon, the fairness and patriotism of Gerald Ford, the nobility of Dwight D. Eisenhower- none of my preferred candidates, but ultimately better than we appreciated, and so much better than what we have now.
Oh what I would give to have people leading us to solving problems instead of making things worse day by day. Can we all back? Return to striving to fix the country (and maybe the world).
We need to all go back together to the work of trying to make things better. Destroying the Trump regime is the first step on the road back to America. Only after the detrumpification of our country can decency and honor return. Let's take care of business in 2020 to avoid any final acts in bunkers and hasty cremations.
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@Robert " I miss the intelligence and decency of Richard Nixon..."
That is not how I remember Nixon. It can be argued that Nixon's nasty, paranoid, and cynical campaign themes set the tone for the current mess America is in. Love it or leave it? Enemies list? "I am not a crook" Trying to use DoJ as a political tool?
9
"intelligence and decency of Richard Nixon"???
That's not what I remember.
8
@Robert the decency of Richard Nixon? Reality much?
7
Decades ago, I could not imagine being so ashamed of what my own country has become that I would be searching immigration requirements of other, far more healthy nations to see if I could live there.
Unfortunately, the Canadians, the Dutch, the Germans and others are pretty much wise to us. It’s not that easy to become a citizen unless you’re bringing a lot of money or a successful business with you. I recently asked my Italian-American friends if they would adopt me since that country is far more liberal in offering citizenship to people of Italian descent.
I would gladly go back to my grandparents’ native Germany if only they would take me. If Trump wins next year, that’ll be me you see pounding on the doors of the German embassy.
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@LIChef
Good luck on getting German citizenship. I grew up in Germany and became an American citizen in 1976. To regain German citizenship, I would have to live in Germany for five years.
9
@LIChef: I investigated gaining a second passport during the G.W. Bush administration.
One of my ancestral countries grants citizenship to the children of emigrants from their shores. Too bad. I'm a grandchild of emigrants.
Another of my ancestral countries grants citizenship to the grandchildren of emigrants, but I'm a great-grandchild. If only my great-grandparents had waited to emigrate until their children were born.
The third ancestral country is so poor and troubled that I haven't even investigated its requirements.
5
Walking through LaGuardia airport the other day affirmed for me that no matter what Trump says or his crowds chant, diversity is here to stay---it is embedded in who we are as a country and has been, and will continue to be, a powerful driver of our social, cultural, economic worldview. Yes, these nativists outbursts have broken out throughout our history, but, the arch of our history has always bent towards the values inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.
23
It's worth noting that since Puerto Ricans have been American citizens since 1917, it's almost certain that AOC, a native born American, is the daughter and granddaughter of people who were American citizens from birth. The same cannot be said of Trump, who had at least one grandparent born in Germany, so if someone is not American enough to stay, send him back.
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@SAO. Good point. And Trump’s mother was an immigrant from Scotland with ship records noting that she was a domestic worker.
27
Most people, myself included, don’t view Puerto Rico as really part of America. We should cut it loose and stop supporting it.
3
@Meg
And in contrast: has anyone noticed that African Americans have been here for 500 years? The Trumps started with a grandfather who fled Germany to avoid the draft. Possibly because of bonespurs.
4
Thank you for this essay. We need more of these illustrations of what could be, the alternative universe we need to imagine fully and strive for.
28
@CFB I alsowould like thank Timothy Egan for this article and also thanks to all the people who gave such heartfelt and informative replies.
I am Irish born and my mind recently ( after more than 30 years in the USA) began to consider living back "home" I found this article and ALL responses to it so helpful in slowing down my risk of acting on my feelings without fully accessing the collective knowledge and wisdom that became available to me through reading this article.Go raibh mile maith agaibh
At this point, I would not mind being sent back to where my forebears came from. I have a lot to choose from, however. If I am anything, I am Heinz 57. In my background are English, Irish, Scots, Welsh, German, Swiss and probably Norwegian. But most of all, I am an East Tennessee Mountain Man, not anything else, and I would be happy in a hollow eating whatever ran through the yard or grew in it. The lure of the mountains is not in the soul of my wife. She is a flat land Indiana girl from the farmlands. Although she lived in rural indiana, in a place with few of the finer things of life about he, today she needs shopping centers and hospitals. So finding my hollow will probably never happen.
25
My daughter recently vacationed in Dublin. She was in awe of this charming and progressive city, where to quote, “Mom, their wit and intelligence,” was everywhere to be found. Not to mention its natural beauty, a magnet for a daughter whose marine biologist dad was a protector of the public trust all his professional life.
Ireland is not my ancestral home. Sicily is. And my husband’s is Eastern Europe close to Ukraine. But both these places do not call us to return. I grieve for the America of the past. Heaven’s, I grieve for President Obama’s America where universal health care was beginning its long journey, where young Dreamers were given hope, where the brown-skinned community which is a large part of my community was not afraid to leave their homes. Indeed I want to be sent back..to the home where I was born. Here. And call it the Sicilian passion or hot-headedness, but by darn I am determined that this crumbling, foreign city led by an evil man will again, and soon, be one of hope and love.
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@Kathy Lollock Yes! I appreciate your words of hope and encouragement. We have a lot of work to do to reclaim what we took for granted, and then begin moving forward once again.
26
@Kathy Lollock actually she can probably apply for jobs here online, do a Skype interview and get a work visa via her prospective employer. Ireland wants global talent as the economy is growing rather fast and we kinds like most Americans given the genuine strength of our relationship. Actually from memory most recently qualified US students can apply for a special visa to work here. Silly fact the Irish Prime Minister used to give the US Congress tour when he was seconded there in his early political career. I believe that the US students oft give the one of the Irish Parliament... Which was modelled politically on the US by our first, and US born, Irish Prime Minister back when the Irishs Republic was formed.
7
My daughter recently vacationed in Dublin. She was in awe of this charming and progressive city, where to quote, “Mom, their wit and intelligence,” was everywhere to be found. Not to mention its natural beauty, a magnet for a daughter whose marine biologist dad was a protector of the public trust all his professional life.
Ireland is not my ancestral home. Sicily is. And my husband’s is Eastern Europe close to Ukraine. But both these places do not call us to return. I grieve for the America of the past. Heaven’s, I grieve for President Obama’s America where universal health care was beginning its long journey, where young Dreamers were given hope, where the brown-skinned community which is a large part of my community was not afraid to leave their homes. Indeed I want to be sent back..to the home where I was born. Here. And call it the Sicilian passion or hot-headedness, but by darn I am determined that this crumbling, foreign city led by an evil man will again, and soon, be one of hope and love. And Trump will be but a nightmare from which we have finally awoken.
9
This is a romantic and beautiful essay. To suggest, however, that there is something unique about the Irish in America (like VP Pence) joining in racism is to ignore US history.
The massive Civil-War era Copperhead riots are often dismissed as being about the draft. They were at least equally a protest, mostly by Irish immigrants, of black freedmen in New York having decent and often good jobs... jobs that required skills which the impoverished recent immigrants (primarily from Ireland) did not have. An orphanage, the home of over 100 (black) children, was burned down. They were the worst riots in New York City's (founded 1624) almost 400-year history. Racial threats were central to those riots.
Pence has at least some US history on his side.
The current screams against universal healthcare and in favor of cutting education funding in the US are the natural outcome of Reaganism. His children may object that their father would not support racism, but 'government is the problem, not the solution' is a necessary part of how we got here. It makes cutting taxes needed to fund education and healthcare a virtue, not a vice.
33
Well, except Brexit—the UK harbinger of the self-immolation the US achieved by electing Trump—will do who knows what to Ireland if it reinstates a hard border between the North and Éire.
My husband is an immigrant originally from Belfast, later Dublin, and then London. He is daily reminded of the irony of what Timothy Egan has said here about Ireland's forward thinking against US backwardness.
Our daughter visited her Irish cousins (the sons and daughters of my husband's five siblings) during her junior year of college. They started talking about college tuition. When she said what her tuition was, they were shocked: "How can you afford that for four years of college?" "Oh," she said, "that's just for one year." And that was in-state tuition at a public university.
We need to wake up to the fact that stagnant wages plus education and healthcare costs in the US have turned us into indentured servants, not citizens of a republic that prizes both equality and true individualism, which is the opposite of how much money you have. And it's no accident that the party that enforces policies to keep us un-free carries the banner of the Confederacy in its putrid heart. That is the connection among racism, misogyny, and denying that healthcare is a human right: your body is a commodity, a thing for them to use or dispose of. Unless you are a white male, you are not a person to Trump and the Republicans.
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@C Wolfe
"Unless you are a white male, you are not a person to Trump and the Republicans."
For the record: I'm a white male, and I'm disgusted by everything Trump stands for.
7
Thank you very much for writing this, Mr. Egan. I visited Ireland not long ago and came away with similar impressions.
I hope that the Brexit mess does not undo the progress made on the entire island.
24
The success of Ireland, including universal healthcare, is the result that starting in the 1990s Ireland became the world's largest corporate tax haven as 100s of corporations "moved their headquarters" to Ireland and reclassified as Irish corporations to pay far less in taxes from their real home countries. The irony is that the good fortune of Ireland today is the result of a massive migration to Ireland...of corporations.
38
The picture you have for this article is of Dunluce Castle on the Antrim Coast Road in the North of Ireland - part of Great Britain where we have an English government that looks and smells like the Trump Government. I love my wee country, and I hope they have the sense to rejoin Ireland as they voted to stay with Europe. Otherwise, the NHS will become a for profit venture if England has any say in it.
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@Sharon
LOLOL Thanks for the reality check
The NYT and Egan must not understand the difference between Great Britain and Ireland.
And the fellow wants to ... return? LOLOL.
He's just looking or a castle somewhere, me thinks.
1
I would "return" to Inverness, Scotland in a nanosecond. This place was home to multiple generations of my ancestors, until a McPherson immigrated to the US in the mid-1700s. I visited Scotland, including Inverness, several times and felt a connection there, before I had done the research which turned up this long line of ancestors, along with others throughout that country. (Also descended from Robert the Bruce...) Obviously, by now all of my family is in the US, and it would be difficult for us to leave. Not to mention that Scotland has its own nationalism to deal with, although it appears to be a smaller problem than ours.
6
@Kimberly
On the whole, Scotland's nationalism is more 'let's escape from England and its Brexit chaos'. It is unfortunate that the current party in power is the Scottish National (no -ist, note) Party - a better title for it would be Independence Party. We're a peaceful, open, welcoming lot, like our Irish cousins. Although if Donny were to be sent back to his Mummy's Isle of Lewis? Now that would be a true test of our national tolerance ...
1
I think it's time to take Disney's "It's a Small World" exhibit on the road to Trump rallies. The highlight of the exhibit will be a mandatory rendezvous with a 2 X 4 as they exit to reinforce the wonderful message of love and acceptance.
11
I wish I could emigrate to Norway.
But they don’t want a second generation Moe, my name is a town in Norway.
I don’t qualify as a Son of Norway.
My step daughter has USA and EU passports.
And is in Estonia right now with her entire family.
I can’t go with...
6
Informative piece by Mr. Egan. First generation Irish American here.Two ingredients of Irish success not present in US are stident access to Irish public higher education determined by results of stringent leaving exams and a society not burdened by the original sin of slavery .The Irish accept that the egalitarian ideal of democracy is incompatible with a meritocratic higher education system.That all men are created equal is easily accepted in a country that monolithically had practiced the Catholic religion.
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@Sabine Farm Besides not burdened by the sin of slavery, the Irish have also not been burdened by the sin of near genocide of the indigenous, living on stolen indigenous land.
1
Easy there tiger. Be careful what you wish. If the left and the potential democrat candidates get there way, Ireland will be the new America. Ireland will also be the beneficiary of all the money and wealth that goes with it. Check out what is going on with Cal, NY CT and NJ. Taxes drive people away. The same can take place on a global level.
5
Nothing to fear, unless of course you are bearish on America. The rest of industrial world can provide universal healthcare for less. Americantism says we cannot.
13
@Matt Have you bought into that "socialism" argument Matt? That cheap Republican trope attempting to keep equitable taxation off the table by calling it "re-distribution"? Some of us are being "driven away" by $20k per annum health premiums, or $200k student loan obligations. I love the rich (they're fun to watch), but fewer and fewer people are able to move into that sphere because the game is rigged. Hopefully a Democratic POTUS victory can frighten intransigent Republican legislators into more centrist social positions.
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@Matt
All we get here is weapons and no healthcare for those taxes. I would much rather all my taxes go to something beneficial to maintaining my life, health, roads, bridges, freedom from toxic chemicals, etc. Too many generations out of Sweden to go but expat is on my list anyway.
45
I was born and raised in the United States but I've become a citizen of Ireland because I could. It was easy. I just provided proof that a grandparent was born in Ireland by providing the necessary birth and marriage certificates to the Irish government. After I registered, I applied and receive my Irish passport. I'm a dual citizen now and it feels great.
I may never live in Ireland, but I breathe easier knowing that I can flee America when or if it gets really bad here.
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@Jude What will be your tipping point? If I had the option, I'd get out now. I'm comfortably poor in retirement, barring any dire medical diagnosis, but that last Trump rally has me wanting to head for the exit.
10
@Jude Owning a passport does not only give rights... but also obligations. Whenever you move to Ireland, I hope you will be able to adapt to the Irish society, to its norms, its values and to the European Union obligations...
3
@Jude
I have a great-great grandparent born in Ireland...wonder if that would work. Thanks for giving me something to hope for.
2
Three of my four grandparents were immigrants to the USA in the early years of the 20th century. The fourth was the daughter of immigrants who came in the 1880’s. Nine of the eleven grandchildren of my generation are college educated. One died. The other 10 of us have been law abiding, tax paying citizens. My family is living proof of the contribution that immigrants make to the USA.....as are millions of other people and families.
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Returned from Ireland yesterday where many of the things written in these comments can be found to be true. There is indeed a noticeably different posture among its citizens. In many ways the two nations are not comparable--you can touch both coasts after a morning's steady driving and its entire population is about one-quarter the population of New York State. So, yeah, much more manageable in terms of policies and practices. It is also, though, as we observed in many conversations, a nation with a good deal of very raw, recent history. In this way, yes, the country is very much the country "we once were," as they are swinging the hammers of nationhood, hammers that have in that way stood idle a long time on this shore. Lastly, I would also argue that many, many of our nation's issues stem directly from its success--from the excesses many of us no longer regard as excesses.
19
"We are a debased nation fighting over the scraps of our former principles."
Trump took an oath of office at his inauguration that reads in part "... to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
The First Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights. Calling to "send her back" violates the presidential oath. Per se, that should provide sufficient grounds for impeachment of the president.
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@Blue Moon That is not how half the population reads the constitution ( they cannot read ) .
4
Simply put, this was brilliant. Spot on in every regard. Thank you for writing this.
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"And I should add in the interest of full transparency, I disagree with much of the policy initiatives of the four left-wing congresswomen targeted by Trump."
Just an aside. Tim, your description of today's Ireland sounds to me like it's the product of successful left wing radicalism.
36
@sherm
Radicalism? Or just sensible policy-making in the public interest, motivated by something other than sheer vicious greed?
5
I'm 82. If Trump wins in 2020, and I was younger, I would go.
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@Bill Metcalf I'm 70, seriously considering it.
5
I’m going.
4
Thanks for reminding us that the overwhelming majority of Americans were immigrants once. I have always thought that has been our great strength--the ambitious, the bold, the strivers and the dreamers came over looking for a better life, while the timid stayed home. As depressing as things are now, at least we can be comforted that this is not the first time that immigrants have been vilified. The Irish of course, the Germans, the great waves of middle Europeans and Italians who arrived at the beginning of the 20th century (including my ancestors) all were met with disdain or worse. They got through it, and I hope we will too. In the end, America is much more than the hatred stirred up by a bitter old descendant of German and Scottish immigrants.
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Thank you for writing this piece. I too am Irish-American and have been appalled by the "send her back", as well as the so called raids on undocumented people. I have noticed that the raids solely have been targeting people south of the US border. Not raiding places where undocumented Russians, Irish, Polish, etc, live. It is the hate the president has of people of color, that makes it racism and targets people of color. I too, am puzzled as well as to why any Irish-American would support this president. I think people do not even know their own history of what happened in Ireland's history and our own history of immigrating to the US.
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As an Irish American, I am glad to hear the land of my forebears is doing well. And I agree that has a blue eyed Irish-American woman said about Trump what the four Democrats did, he would never have told her to go back to.. That the bulk of Republican leaders will not stand up bravely and denounce the president shows what little honor exists among our elected leaders.
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Thank you for this essay. T is hard to know why our country has gone so haywire. One person, Donald Trump, seems to have the power to bring out the very worst of us. And our beloved system of checks and balances is stymied by one person, Mitch MacConnell.
I would not leave though. I still think there is something here worth trying to save.
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Just returned from Ireland a few weeks ago, I really just should have stayed there...Trump isn't there, and my God what a beautiful country. And such nice people! Looking forward to my next trip...
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Great piece on Ireland a lovely place which I have visited often.
13
Ireland has a 2-tiered tax rate:
20% of your income for the first $35,000.
40% FOR EVERYTHING ELSE.
Ireland has the lowest military expenditure in Europe: 0.3% of GDP. Ireland is not a full member of NATO.
13
@99percent Ireland was also NOT on our side in WW2. They were neutral. They don't depend on our nuclear umbrella or much of anything else. They are more or less off the beaten path.
9
Sounds great to me, especially considering the excellence of Ireland’s higher education and the availability of health care.
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@Terry McKenna
Lots of Irishmen served with the British. But you’re not wrong about Devalera and many American and british merchant sailors lost their live sin 40, 41 and 42 because Dev denied England the use of Cork and other parts.
1
Yes people in Ireland have universal health care, however it is rationed and if you need specialty care you will go on a waiting list unless you pay for health insurance. Mental illness is stigmatized, doctors and medical workers are not held accountable for their mistakes. Drug and alcohol abuse is common and homelessness is a real problem. The grass is always greener.
13
@MA - How long does it take to see a specialist in the US? People don't call it a waiting list, but that is what it is and it is usually many months of waiting unless you are dying. Mental illness is stigmatized here as well. Doctors, medical workers, drug companies, medical device companies and hospitals hardly ever face substantial punishment for their mistakes. Drug and alcohol abuse in the US has been on the front pages of newspapers for the last decade. Homelessness has been a major issue here since the 1980's.
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@MA but considering that Ireland was a land of peasants 3 generations ago, they are doing ok. And yes, lots of alcohol abuse - quite well known too. But again, they have been historically among the poorest. We on the other hand are a supposedly advanced nation.
In the 1970s there were still cottages that were fueled with peat and where hot water was made by boiling it in a kettle. Again, they have moved up. We have moved down.
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@Terry McKenna What's so strange about using a kettle to boil water? That's still how it's done, except now the kettles are electric, or maybe put on a gas stove rather than hung over a peat fire.
Hard to compare a small country like Ireland with a continent-sized one like the U.S., but insofar as Ireland has done well it has been due to openness, diversity, adopting what works well elsewhere, maximizing opportunity and minimizing barriers for its citizens. Where we're not doing so well is mostly due to the monopolistic influence of "special interests", administrative inertia, a certain residual insularity, and the often dreary weather.
20
Excellent piece, Mr. Egan. Hope that you’ve enjoyed your trip.
Kudos to Ireland and its citizens for their many successes. America can learn much from them.
23
As a proud Irishman, it is always nice to see our country featured on the hallowed pages of the New York Times, but I have to make a couple of brief points regarding this supposed paradise.
Yes, compared to America our healthcare system is miles better in many ways - but that doesn't mean there aren't a litany of problems with it. It has been the bane of our nation for the past two decades. There is still a public/private divide which is tacitly accepted but universally despised.
As for our colleges, they are only becoming more expensive - though they don't even come close to approaching the ridiculous system in the US where people are seemingly punished in the pocket for pursuing something that should be a right.
We will never have our leaders spitting vitriol like 'send her back', but we are not a stranger in this country to bizarre gaffes by government officials.
So, bottom line: Ireland has a lot going for it, but Mr. Egan's view of things appears to me, a Dublin man, a good deal rosier than the reality.
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@David
Agreed--as a sympathetic emigrant from there to here.
1
As an Irish-American, I agree completely. It's easy to over-romanticize Ireland, and Irish friends are quick to remind me that the Ireland, like every country, is full of political nonsense, corruption, and bad faith. However, unlike the U.S., Ireland seems to be engaged still in the project of building a better country.
In the U.S. many politicians and business people, and it appears almost all Republicans, have adopted a zero sum approach that makes the near-term accumulation of wealth the sole objective. While they won't admit it, their actions imply a belief that the U.S. can no longer produce a good life for a majority of its citizens.
Maybe I am naive, and I admit to being seduced by the cliffs of Donegal, the blind shots at Lahinch, the trad music in pubs from Sligo to Dingle, and a hundred other charms of this beautiful island. However, my sense is that Ireland is still a place that honors humanity and respects the beauty and mystery of the world.
It costs the small trifle of 3 million euros for an investor visa that can lead to permanent residency and citizenship. Yes, I have researched this several times since November 2016.
So when people say why don't you go back, the answer is, I would if I could.
67
€3 mm is an awfully big trifle! But I would do it, too, if I could.
I did 23 years ago and I don't regret it at all...
4
Hmmm; tne Irish don't have Citizens United-financed elections, do they ?
Nor do they have an Electoral College ? Anyone heard of extreme gerrymandering in Ireland ?
Moneyed interests have bought out Democracy in America.
1131
@R. Law How in the world is a minority party with a lying airhead for a leader supposed to win an election in without gerrymandering and corporate corruption backing it/him? Poor Ireland, I don’t know if it will ever catch up to us.
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@R. Law
No, but the Irish have the Roman Catholic Church, which they are finally reigning in.
15
@R. Law...just what I'm asking. Egan's great column could also get to some cause/effect factors.
So how does Ireland finance their HC and college tuition, Mr. Egan?
What are their tax rates for various income levels?
Do they do voter suppression and party gerrymandering like the US?
Crucially---who finances their elections? Do they ban paid campaign ads on media like other countries do, thus not needing billionaire funding, which US politics is tethered to?
Is this comparison banned in US media? Why else have we never heard of it? Does this interest Egan to write about, or any other Times columnist?
See Wikipedia on Campaign Advertising--- paid media ads are actually banned in many democacies. Yet their voters still find out their candidates platforms.
Shocking? What are the ultimate ripple effects on their politics and their citizens' lives?
17
Ah, the Grand Old Party.
What's grand about 'Send Her Back'? If that's grand, then send me back to my roots in Ireland three generations ago. I'd like to go first class, please.
If that's what the GOP thinks making America great again is, the GOP should take their MAGA beliefs and hats and return to the make believe world from where the GOP believes America has risen from.
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@Ed
"I'd like to go first class, please. "
You say that, but you don't really mean it. Maybe it feels good to vent, to pile on Trump. Yet here you are, and here you stay.
2
I’ve visited Ireland multiple times since the early 1980s and loved each trip - some for months at a time, doing research. I absolutely love it - the people are lovely, as is the landscape, the beautiful roadside fuchsias and the history. Note, though, that the Ireland of today has benefited immensely by investment from the EU. Another great innovation that has helped so many - that Trump and his ilk also detest.
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@Rjk I love Ireland as well. Agree about the lovely people, landscape, fuchsias - not so much lovely history!
7
@Terri McFadden. The hillsides full of rhododendrons in spring! (I know they are kudzu to Ireland but gorgeous nonetheless)
1
While I largely agree with this premise, (I too am Irish and remember what life was like in old Ireland) what we need to start addressing is the multi faceted reasons people from poor Latin American countries, or Africa or the Middle East are pouring into Europe and the USA.
It’s not always war that drives them from their homes it is often other oppressive systems like religious institutions that force poorer families into poverty by lack of decent contraception and family planning due to religious dogmas. I recall how most large Irish families would depend on emigration for survival because there simply wasn’t enough jobs for their children. It was a given that they’d leave to go to England, The US or Australia.
I don’t see the world calling the Roman Catholic Church to task, like it does The United States to help house, feed and give asylum to Central Americans migrants even though the Roman Catholic Church has been part of the problem. They have had a strangle hold in government policy in Central and South Americans for centuries.
They were the problem in the old Ireland too. Once the new Ireland unchained the shackles the Roman Catholic Church held over schools, government hospitals, and moved towards a more liberal European value system the country was finally able to create itself as a free people.
There are similarities in the wave of Irish immigrants coming to the US during the last century and what is happening today. Poverty, no jobs too many children etc etc.
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@Fire
You might want to take a closer look at history books before making such sweeping generalizations about the Catholic Church's "stranglehold" on government policy in Central and South America. Did Archbishop Romero have a stranglehold over government policy in El Salvador? The government had him assassinated. Did the Catholic Church have a stranglehold over the Mexican government in the 1850's when it fought a civil war to establish public education, a civil registry, and to expropriate Church property? Did it have a stranglehold over the Constituent Assembly that promulgated the anti-clerical Constitution of 1917, still valid in Mexico today? Do you see a Church stranglehold over government policy in Venezuela today? When in recent history has the Catholic Church had a stranglehold over the government of Brazil?
6
@Fire The Climate Crisis is also driving migrants from Central America because of increased drought and crop failures.
13
@Fire
Well said.
6
All of my great grandparents from Ireland,emigrated from Galway and Fermanagh.Have visited 3 times.My father's cousin and all of their extended families gathered to greet our family.Wherever we went on our 3 visits everyone greeted us with warmth,welcoming us back,as the previous generations mourned all who had to emigrate.
I try to be optimistic that our country will regain it's soul back.I feel more connected to Ireland, that has evolved into a more just,humane society than ours.
45
to eire is human... :)
seriously, universal health care is one element of a society that fairly distributes taxes and other resources, not the kind of massive redistribution of wealth we've seen over the past few decades w trickle down econ, deregulation, LBOs that destroyed companies to benefit a few vulture capitalists, on and on...
we decry "socialism" here -- why? -- but allow companies like Amazon to benefit from roads and bridges and schools yet pay no taxes, while its warehouse workers pay more in taxes than the entire co and can't earn a living wage, sometimes literally worked to death... somehow there's always gov funding for tax cuts and bombs but not for food and education?
they have us fighting each other -- by race, gender, religion, on and on -- the classic divide and conquer con... when instead we should be standing together...
419
Forget free universities. Instead, fund each and every American voter an all expenses trip overseas to learn the truth about where America sits with respect to the rest of the world. When I was sick in England I was (and still am) ever so grateful for the medical care I was given “For Free!”. I have learned so much and have been quite humbled to see many examples of how the rest of the world often (not always) can do many things better.
534
@Carl
That is a great idea! I have learned more about people and the world from my travels than any course in college. It helps to learn that people are basically the same everywhere. Travel does wonders to break down myopia.
54
"Travel does wonders to break down myopia." Well, maybe for some. In my travels I've met or observed not a few Americans who never stopped denigrating the country where they were traveling--or its people. There's a pervasive defensiveness to the "we're number one!" attitude in the US that prevents far too many Americans from being able to open up and learn some things about alternate ways of living overseas. Many Americans are too busy finding fault with anything different from what they're used to "back home." I really wish more American's myopia would actually break down when they travel abroad.
32
"Travel does wonders to break down myopia." Well, maybe for some. In my travels I've met or observed not a few Americans who never stopped denigrating the country where they were traveling--or its people. There's a pervasive defensiveness to the "we're number one!" attitude in the US that prevents far too many Americans from being able to open up and learn some things about alternate ways of living overseas. Many Americans are too busy finding fault with anything different from what they're used to "back home." I really wish more American's myopia would actually break down when they travel abroad.
3
T'is true. Our daughter is preparing to "return" to Ireland at the end of this month to study for a masters degree at University College of Dublin. She has already paid in 200 euros full coverage in their universal health care coverage. That's it and she has better coverage than here. It can be done.
My one visit last year was the same experience, a welcoming people. The two immigrant taxi drivers we had told us it was the best place they had ever been.
I do agree with your assessment of the 4 congresspersons. Before I was outraged at Trump I was outraged at the attack on native American congresswoman Sharice Davis by AOC's staff. I hope they have learned a valuable lesson about alliances and that perhaps they are not the only ones who can be right. Still Trump jumped in and stoled the show to remind us he is the real enemy and a fascist. Michele Goldberg's piece on using the Jewish community as a shield is excellent.
For those of us of Irish heritage it is a betrayal. All of my Irish side ancestors came here during the Famine, no stories remembered but history tells us it was awful much like today's Honduras or Guatemala. A coffin ship is much like a detention center with 400 men crammed together.
Trump's tweets and his rally were the most honest thing he has done. He has told us where we are and where he wants to take us. I say no.
801
@Duffy,I didnt know about sharice Davis and aoc,but i do wonder what Omar has done for native americans in Minnesota. many tribes live there and many of their problems are not addressed. perhaps Omar should concentrate on her state and seek to resolve problems there.
10
@sue As far as the issue of Native Americans I would ask what have the others 434 members of Congress done. Not much, I don't see that issue as uniquely Rep. Omar's responsibility. The so called squad has no greater responsibility toward other Americans than other representatives. I did see that Rep. Omar voted in favor of funds for 9/11 first responders while many republicans do not support that and Sen Rand Paul actively blocked the legislation. Rep. Omar has sought to resolve problems in your area, good for her.
62
I would go back to any one of the countries my ancestors came from but they actually have functioning immigration laws and care about the well being of their country people and workers.
Imagine living in a country where the leaders act in the best interest of the people who elected them. Where they care about living standards and protect the social cohesion that allows for a strong social system?
I would be a peaceful productive citizen but I would have to prove that and go through the process legally. Imagine that.
29
@CNNNNC
Which countries would those be? I will hazard a guess that you are non-Hispanic white and, therefore, there is a 26% chance that some of your ancestors came from what is now Germany, a country with a very high standard of living, affordable health insurance for all, free higher education and a strong social system.
Even if you are not white and have no German ancestry, you might want to consider the fact that in 2015 and 2016 Germany took in nearly 900,000 and 280,000 refuges, respectively. Most of the refugees were from Syria, followed by Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries. They came by boat, foot, bus, train… by any means possible. And once they reached the German border, they were allowed in and could legally apply for asylum.
Imagine living in a WORLD where the leaders act in the best interest of HUMANITY. Where they care about living standards and protect the social cohesion that allows for a strong GLOBAL social system.
5
My grandparents were born in Ireland. I heard all the stories of life then when I was growing up. Ireland only started to become more modern, more like a republic once the Catholic Church got thrown off its pedestal. The last time I was in Ireland was 2005. People asked me in several different places "What is wrong with your country?" (Iraq invasion era). I will be back in 2020 and expect even more of an earful.
391
@Thomas, My grandmother came from Ireland when she was 13 and her sister was 12. They came from the west coast, County Mayo, The village they were born in is now rubble in a field near some crossroad. Times were hard. They were poorer than dirt poor. If you think it was romantic and you want to go back, good luck to you.
14
I've gone back numerous times and met relatives who grew up with no indoor plumbing but are living now in beautiful homes. I visited my great aunt's thatched cottage, which was in ruins. Her family were modest farmers, her grandchildren successful entrepreneurs, artists. Some emigrated to earn a living but have since returned. The country of your ancestors has transcended its impoverished, insular, shackled self. Your grandmother's ancestral hometown may be in ruins just like abandoned towns in the US. I am not sure what your point is.
66
My mother was born in Ireland as well and emigrated here as a young woman with her family in the 1950s. Ireland has changed quite a bit since then. If all you have are sad and depressing memories of Ireland, I would encourage you to visit, drive around the country and meet the people of Ireland. The country is diverse, welcoming and flourishing. Multinational companies are setting up offices there. Music and culture abound. I have my Irish citizenship and all my children are in the process of their Irish citizenship, thanks to my mother. I don’t know where this country is heading, but if the past week is any indication, County Kerry is looking pretty good to me.
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To be fair Ireland wasn’t immediately like this portrayal after gaining its rightful independence (aided by the idiocies of the U.K. government of the time). The governments headed by DeValera were narrow minded socially constricting theocracies whose fundamentals have only recently been overturned. Sadly it seems to take time to create modern democracies that are inclusive and take heed of minorities. But as Ireland has shown it’s possible. And the E.U. must take some of the credit also.
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@Michael
And the E.U. must take some of the credit also.
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Lol, but of course, Michael in London UK reading the NYT online... How far some have come, eh?
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Send me back to the country I came from: the United States of the 1960s and 1970s, before Ronald Reagan steered the GOP to the right, Bill Clinton steered the Democratic Party to the center, and inequality began growing until it reached pre-1929 levels.
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@Chris Rasmussen T
hat was not a great time for many in America, as the less-connected were being drafted to fight in a pointless war and the gains of the Civil Rights Act were being fought tooth-and-nail.
On the other hand, the President wasn't playing footsie with fascism.
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Nixon's policies were to the left of Bill Clinton. That makes Clinton an extreme right neocon, not center. Different talk, same trickle down ideas. MAGA?
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@Chris Rasmussen I take your point, but the USA of the 60s was hardly so hotsy totsy, especially if you were Black.
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Actually, in American history there were many decades during which thousands of US citizens decided to “go back” because they did not want to stay in the US, choosing instead to improve their lives and the lives of their fellows by returning to their homelands.
Between 1822 and the Civil War about 15,000 African Americans, most of them freed slaves, chose to be repatriated to Liberia, which ultimately became the first independent democratic republic in African history. The travel cost of the repatriation was paid by the US government, religious organizations and private donors.
After the Civil War freed slaves were also eligible to receive $100 from the US government if they wished to emigrate to Haiti or Liberia or "...such other country beyond the limits of the United States as the President may determine." Thousands of liberated slaves took advantage of this offer.
In more recent decades, thousands of Peace Corps Volunteers of color and other Americans of color have returned to their ancestral lands to help improve conditions in those nations.
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@Mon Ray
While this is true, I’m not sure what you’re suggesting: that the congresswomen go back or that it is justifiable for Trump to have told them to?
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@Ro
I am suggesting that many people believe it is not such a bad idea to return to one’s ancestral homeland to find a better place to live and/or make it a better place to live.
Of course any such steps should be voluntary, not forced.
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@Mon Ray
And how do you propose the NON CITIZENS go "back" to countries they are not citizens of? Canada looks pretty tempting right now but since I'm a couple generations removed I'm not considered a Canadian citizen. I'd love to hear how you propose to work out this sticky little detail.
Should AOC return to Spain? South America? She's an American citizen, coming from an American possession, Puerto Rico. Ayanna Presley has been in America for generations, far longer than trump's family has been here.
Maybe a better solution would be to send trump back, if not to Germany, (which has stated they won't take him back), maybe we can send him back to New York, (oops they don't want him back either), or Florida since they seem to still like him there, or better yet to JAIL. My "country" of choice.
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