Thread: Raising the roof on 'McCain' Avenue

http://www.irishecho.com/newspaper/story.cfm?id=17872

Raising the roof on 'McCain' Avenue


By Ray O'Hanlon
rohanlon@irishecho.com

Borders are on John McCain's mind a lot these quarrelsome times. He straddled one last Friday night.

Speaking from a stage in the St. Barnabas church auditorium, the Republican senator's gaze took him over the heads of a large and enthusiastic Irish crowd and out the front door onto McLean Avenue.

Or was it, for a couple of rip-roaring hours, a thoroughfare called McCain?

It might as well have been because the rally organized by the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform was the biggest draw on the avenue at the end of another uncertain working week for the undocumented Irish of the Bronx, Yonkers and beyond.

And it was to the line straddling the New York borough and the Westchester city that McCain fought another verbal round in the fight for the kind of immigration law reform envisaged in the bill crafted by himself and an unlikely partner in Senator Edward Kennedy.

During his address to a crowd that, wisely, waved as many American flags as Irish tricolors, McCain referred to his normally Democratic opponent as "a lion in winter."

All listening were hoping that McCain would be of a kind: a tiger in spring perhaps.

It was, for sure, a spring evening.

It had been balmy in the line of people waiting patiently outside the auditorium and warmer still in the hall that was rapidly filled to its corners by a crowd primed and ready for a champion to step forward at what is, for thousands of undocumented Irish, the closing minutes of the eleventh hour.

Last Friday evening, that champion was John Sidney McCain, a battle hardened veteran in more ways than one from another world called Arizona.

For an hour before McCain's 6.30 arrival the crowd revved itself for what would be a roof-raising welcome for a man whose ancestors came to America from Ireland and Scotland in a time when the Bronx and Yonkers were not much more than names on maps drawn up by the Dutch.

But McLean Avenue is a border between retreat and advance these days, every bit as much as the frontier that snakes across the arid terrain of McCain's home state.

Advance means simply staying here. Retreat means being gone from here.

Judging from the energy released by the St. Barnabas crowd, few among them, legal or otherwise, were planning on being easily gone.

And by no means all present were undocumented. The effort to secure legal footing in America for an estimated 40,000 Irish has drawn the legal and undocumented wings of the Irish community together a good deal more rapidly than was the case with the IIRM campaign fifteen years ago.

This is in large part because not a few of the legal Irish community won their visas because of a IIRM effort that started from scratch.

The ILIR campaign, by contrast, has the benefit of hindsight, recent experience and, not least, the internet.

And it shows.

The ability to instantaneously reach out to a capacity crowd while turning a room generally used for religious gatherings into what looked like a presidential campaign forum is a vital asset to any group hoping to sway the agitated mind of Congress.

McCain could not have been but impressed when he walked into a sea of smiling faces, ILIR t-shirts, placards and flags, not to mention a wall of sound that included, perhaps a little confusingly for the man, chants of "Olé" and a good belting of the "Fields of Athenry."

In the hour preceding McCain's entry, the crowd had been reminded why they were in the room in the first place.

An undocumented young woman named Samantha spoke of a rising sense of pride as her despair turned to hope during the past three months of ILIR's existence.

To cheers and applause she extended "a formal thank you" to all the Irish and Irish Americans who were now supporting people in her situation and helping to "keep the Irish in America."

The mood of the moment was well stoked by ILIR's Ciaran Staunton and Kelly Fincham but politicians other than McCain were also allowed time to pledge their support for ILIR's campaign to legalize the Irish and, indeed, people of many other nationalities through the Senate's McCain/Kennedy bill.

New York State Senator Jeff Klein pegged his success story in America to his immigrant grandfathers.

Congressman Eliot Engel said he was in the room because he loved the Irish. He was also clearly in love with his "Legalize the Irish" t-shirt because he all but pledged to wear it for the rest of his days.

"We will not allow the Irish to be kept out of this country," Engel bellowed as the crowd roared back.

"I voted against that terrible House bill," he said in reference to the Sensenbrenner/King immigration bill that passed the House of Representatives in the waning days of last year.

ILIR founder, Niall O'Dowd, said that no special deal was being sought for the Irish, just fairness in the allocation of greencards.

"We're going to have our greencards, I promise you," O'Dowd said to more loud cheers.

ILIR president, Grant Lally, said that the group had made history when it drew 3,000 people to a recent rally on Capitol Hill.

"We proved the pundits wrong," he said.

It was left to Lally to introduce McCain.

Lally's words were interrupted by thunderous applause at the point where he recounted McCain's refusal to be released from a North Vietnamese prison in advance of other American prisoners - this because his father was a four star admiral.

The stage was set. The room was now well and truly in the hands of the senior senator from the Grand Canyon State.

In the hour or so that followed, McCain worked his way through a this-is-me speech, a focused pep talk and a series of answers to questions from the floor - one of them from boxer John Duddy who almost brought the roof down when he introduced himself to McCain, himself a onetime Naval Academy pug.

McCain's address contained hints of possible broad electoral things to come, but at no time did he stray too far from the fact that he was addressing a specific issue, one that, he believed, was critical to the American Irish of today even as it was additionally vital for the preservation of a future Irish heritage on American shores.

It was important, McCain said, that those in the room had taken the time and effort to support the cause of immigration reform.

He spoke movingly of his years as a prisoner of war when he had held fast to America's ideals while cherishing the honor of being a citizen of a country that was the last best hope of mankind.

Irish immigrants in former times had suffered cruelty and injustice, a cold welcome. But they had risen above these challenges, he said.

Speaking to the issue of illegal and undocumented immigrants beyond the Irish community, McCain said he did know how an estimated eleven million people could be rounded up and sent back to their native countries.

"And I don't know why you would want to," he said.

Instead, McCain outlined a vision in which those illegals and undocumented could earn their legalization by meeting conditions set forth in the bill he co-authored with Sen. Kennedy.

With regard to the prospects for a bill that would rescue many in the room from their lives in the shadows, McCain said he though there would be a bill "for the president to sign soon."

At the same time, he was concerned over the House/Senate conference process, a matter alluded to in John Duddy's question.

"Senator Kennedy and I worry that strange things can happen at conference so we want it to be open and bipartisan," McCain said.

Getting an agreed bill through the Senate before the upcoming recess was critical, he emphasized

President Bush, meanwhile, was standing up for reform and deserved some credit for doing so, McCain added.

"Sooner or late we will prevail. But in the meantime, how many people will suffer in the shadows?" he asked.

The shadows had lengthened to darkness by 7.45 and the conclusion of what had been a warm encounter between immigrants from a temperate land and a legislator from a hot state.

But all were agreed that something important had been forged on the border between two cities with Dutch names, but now home to just about every kind of name.

McCain, McLean and all the rest.


This story appeared in the issue of April 5 - 11, 2006

But all were agreed that something important had been forged on the border between two cities with Dutch names, but now home to just about every kind of name.

You have got to be kidding me. THIS is what this is all about for McCain and Kennedy? Letting some illegal Irish folks remain in the United States? THIS is what they would allow 20,000,000 OR MORE others to remain here to accomplish?

The only "something important that had been forged on the border" this night by McCain and Kennedy was TREASON!

EERRGG ! If you ask me they all sound like they'd be a lot happier back in Ireland with the real thing. If they want to take McCain with them, well, we won't object. Maybe he'll be happier over there because he sure seems to hate a lot of things about the USA, like laws, the foundation, principles and values, and I hate to say it, but a lot of the American people.

And another thing, Ireland is doing great economically and has a VERY high standard of living. Get out, go home !.