I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump and his immigration assistant Stephen Miller ok Ryan’s request….(This while the two want to begin deporting Vietnamese refugee’s)
Oh, wait?
Breitbart, the conservative website is expressing opposition to this?
A single US Senator is now holding this up….
House Speaker Paul Ryan is leaving Congress with a grateful nod to his Irish ancestors.
A bill pushed by Ryan, whose family fled famine-ravaged Ireland in 1851, could provide Irish nationals with thousands of additional U.S. work visas each year.
The legislation cleared the House Nov. 28 on an uncontested voice vote and is increasingly likely to clear the Senate next week, a GOP aide told POLITICO.
But the measure has stirred opposition from the alt-right publication Breitbart, which dubbed the visa program “amnesty for Irish lobbies“ and said it would take jobs away from U.S. college graduates.
The bill would give the Irish access to unused E-3 visas, which currently are available only to Australians in “specialty occupations” that require a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent. In return, Ireland would offer additional work visas to Americans, among other concessions.
“The idea here is that this is going to be reciprocal,” said John Deasy, an Irish special envoy to the U.S. “We think it’s important that the flows in the workplace continue between the two countries.”
A single GOP senator is blocking the legislation, the GOP aide said. That represents apparent progress from earlier this month, when six Republicans had put a hold on the bill, according to an Irish-American news website….
Today’s G.O.P. is so far removed from the historic Republican Party (both for better and for worse) that it’s unfair and misleading to make too close comparisons. But the G.O.P. — some of whose earliest supporters came from the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic and anti-Irish Know Nothings (the American Party, earlier the Native American Party) — historically had a highly-toxic hostility towards Catholics and especially against Irish Catholic immigrants (cordially reciprocated) from agitating against “Rum, Romanism & Rebellion” in the 19th century to wooing anti-Catholic, anti-metropolitan, dry Southern voters in the 1928 campaign against New York Gov. Al Smith in 1928 to a whispering campaign against JFK in 1960.
This changed over time, especially with the rise of Ronald Reagan, the disaffection of urban white ethnic voters from the Democrats, and the pro-life coalitions of urban Catholics with rural Protestants in the Christian Coalition and Moral Majority.
But I sense that perhaps this resistance to Irish visas may be a distant echo of earlier patterns.
Discrimination in this country has NOT be limited to Blacks, Browns and Yellows….