Greg DalyClare priest celebrates president elect’s ‘pro-life’ values
America’s illegal Irish immigrants are worried and frightened by what a Trump presidency might hold in store for them, their chaplains have said.
Hardly had it become clear that billionaire Donald Trump would be the 45th President of the US when he announced plans to deport or imprison up to three million illegal immigrants with criminal records, before securing America’s borders and making a “determination” about the country’s remaining undocumented immigrants.
This, according to Limerick-born Fr Michael Madigan, chaplain to Chicago’s Irish immigrant community, is causing huge uncertainty.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty and fear created by the whole electoral process and things that he said,” Fr Madigan told The Irish Catholic.
Admitting that it is difficult to tell what will happen now that the time for vote-winning rhetoric has passed, Fr Madigan said: “There is a lot of anxiety and uncertainty as to what it might mean in practical terms for people who are undocumented. Will they be chased down and herded out?”
Fr Madigan pointed out that that was but one possibility, noting that with a Republican majority in both houses of Congress there was now a chance for the matter to be discussed properly, something that had not happened during the legislative stalemate of the Obama years.
“There is a lot of fear, as regards to emigrants, and in particular among the Muslim community because of his rhetoric – they’re feeling afraid and uncertain,” he said.
Michael Collins, Executive Director of the Chicago Irish Immigrant Support Centre, agreed that, “there is fear in the community”. Predicting that undocumented immigrants would seek counselling and other support, he stressed: “The Catholic Church has always been on the side of immigrants.”
Sr Christine Hennessy, a Sister of Mercy who works with New York’s Irish immigrant community, echoed these concerns.
Upsetting
“People are fearful and nobody knows what’s going to happen with the undocumented, so it’s very upsetting,” she told this newspaper, continuing, “it’s shocking and upsetting and disheartening.”
Expressing concerns about Mr Trump’s “whole way of bullying people”, and his disparaging campaign comments about disabled people and Muslims, Sr Christine said it wasn’t even clear in New York whether the city’s estimated 10,000 illegal Irish were on the president-elect’s radar.
“We don’t know about the undocumented Irish – we haven’t heard anything,” she said, “I don’t even know if he knows there are such. He’s more into the Mexicans and Hispanics, who are so wonderful.”
It is understood that in a November 9 phone conversation with Mr Trump, Taoiseach Enda Kenny raised the issue of the estimated 50,000 undocumented Irish in the USA, while Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald has told the Dáil that seeking an amnesty for America’s undocumented Irish remains an “absolute priority” for the Government.
Meanwhile, in Doonbeg, Co. Clare, where Mr Trump owns a golf resort, local priest Fr Joe Haugh who met the president-elect two years ago has expressed delight at the election outcome, describing Mr Trump as “a good Christian” who is “pro-life, pro-family”.