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Ireland - US Relations

U.S. relations with Ireland have long been based on common ancestral ties and shared values. Besides regular dialogue on political and economic issues, the U.S. and Irish Governments have official exchanges in areas such as medical research and education. President Barack Obama's 2011 visit to Ireland highlighted the strong ties between the two countries.

With Ireland's membership in the European Union, discussions of EU trade and economic policies as well as other aspects of EU policy have also become key elements in the U.S.-Irish relationship. In recent years, Ireland has acted as a diplomatic bridge between the United States and European Union. During its 2004 EU presidency, Ireland worked to strengthen U.S.-EU ties that had been strained by the Iraq war.

Emigration, a foundation of the U.S.-Irish relationship, declined significantly with Ireland's economic boom in the 1990s. For the first time in its modern history, Ireland experienced high levels of inward migration, a phenomenon with political, economic, and social consequences. This trend has now reversed. As increasing numbers of unemployed Irish workers are emigrating for economic reasons, concerns have been raised by the government about a possible “brain drain” similar to what happened in the 1970s and 1980s.

Irish citizens have continued a common practice of taking temporary residence overseas for work or study, mainly in Australia, the U.S., Canada, U.K., and elsewhere in Europe. Along with the increased interest in long-term emigration, there has been a surge of interest in “mid-term” emigration for 3-5 years, which has been mirrored in Irish Government interest in a specialized extended-stay visa for mid-career professionals to live/work in the U.S. The U.S. J-1 visa program remains a popular means for Irish youths to work temporarily in the United States; a bilateral program expansion in 2008 that provides further opportunities for recent graduates to spend up to 1 year in the United States has been undersubscribed. The Irish Government continues to consider a high priority the need to find a legal remedy for those Irish living out of status in the United States.

In 2003, several Irish citizens opposed to the Iraq War damaged U.S. military assets at Shannon Airport. One of these citizens was convicted in an Irish court and given a suspended sentence. Since the issue of renditions broke in 2004, the Irish have accepted assurances they say they received from President Bush and Secretary Rice that no rendition prisoners had transited Ireland. Top Irish officials, including the Prime Minister, have declared that they would take the US at its word and not pursue inspections of U.S. aircraft transiting Shannon and Dublin Airports without sufficient probable cause. In late 2005, a group of opposition and independent Irish parliamentarians said publicly that they would not oppose further attacks on U.S. military aircraft transiting Ireland. In 2006, five other Irish citizens involved in the damage of U.S. military assets in 2003 were acquitted by a jury decision in an Irish court. The jury accepted arguments by the defendants, the so-called “Shannon Five,” that they had acted to prevent loss of life and property damage in Iraq.

In December 2007, then Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and then Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern categorically rejected Opposition and Irish Human Rights Commission calls for random inspections of U.S. aircraft. A US-registered aircraft was vandalized and spray-painted with “Peace U.S. Out” in December 2011. Nonetheless, these anti-military acts have not found expression in acts against U.S. firms and private interests in Ireland.

On 29 October 2008, the Government of Ireland established a Cabinet-level committee to review Ireland's human rights policies - including a mandate to approach the transition team of the incoming U.S. Administration to review Irish concerns about renditions, the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, and intensive interrogation techniques which are considered torture (such as waterboarding). The Committee will also review appropriate authorities to ensure that the national police force (Garda) and airport authorities have sufficient powers to search and inspect all aircraft transiting Ireland that are suspected of facilitating renditions, perhaps through strengthening the Air Navigation and Transport Acts.

Tighter U.S. visa restrictions and citizenship requirements introduced during the 1960s, as well as an improved economy in Ireland over the past decade, slowed the rate of Irish immigration from its 20th century peak. But the recent economic downturn has led to a new wave of Irish coming to America. Irish-Americans have made their mark in areas as diverse as labor unions, popular culture, law enforcement, journalism and finance. Famous Americans of Irish descent include John F. Kennedy and eight other U.S. presidents, the writers F. Scott Fitzgerald and Flannery O’Connor, industrialist Henry Ford, and boxing champions Jack Dempsey and Yankee Sullivan.

The Auld Sod

Today, 40 million Americans, or roughly 15 percent of the population, claim Irish ancestry. People of Irish heritage are so deeply entrenched in America that about half of all the U.S. presidents had some Irish ancestral origins. By comparison, African Americans comprise approximately 11 percent, Hispanics 8 percent and Italians 5 percent. ln the Northeast, the numbers are even more dramatic. Twelve million residents of the Northeast (24 percent) claim Irish ancestry.

The Irish were among the United States’s first great wave of immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These newcomers lived in extreme poverty at the lowest rungs of American society, often enduring fervent anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic discrimination.

About 4.5 million Irish people arrived in the United States between 1820 and 1930, according to the Library of Congress. By 1850, the Irish were the nation’s largest immigrant group, settling primarily on the East Coast and in Southern states. Today, more than 1 in 10 Americans claims Irish ancestry, far more than the experts who keep track of these things predicted. For example, during the 1980 U.S. Census — the first to contain subjective questions about ethnic identity — far more Americans than could be explained by immigration and birth patterns claimed Irish heritage.

Today’s Irish Americans are faring far better than the earliest Irish arrivals. The median income for households headed by an Irish American is $62,141, higher than the median household income of $53,657 for all U.S. households, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Forty-two percent of Irish Americans work in management, business, science and arts occupations, 24 percent are in sales or office occupations, while 15 percent are in service occupations.

In 1980, there should have been about 20 million descendants of these Irish immigrants in the United States and then they looked at the data from the 1980 census that first asked about ancestry and it turned out there were 40 million people claiming some Irish ancestry in the census. People of multiple backgrounds tended to report Irish more than other things maybe because it was more fun with St. Patrick’s day or for other reasons, they felt more attached to that, so they reported that. A 1994 paper in the American Sociological Review concluded, “an unexplained subjective “closeness” to Ireland contributed to the size of the Irish American population in 1980.”

The Irish influence in America is so keen that March has been designated as Irish-American Heritage Month and millions of Americans happily celebrate St. Patrick’s Day every March 17. There’s a saying in the United States that, on St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish.

U.S. President Donald Trump will not visit Ireland in October 2018 as planned, according to officials in Dublin. The visit has been postponed for “scheduling reasons,” the Irish government announced 11 September 2018. However, following the Irish government’s announcement, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement: “We are still finalizing whether Ireland will be a stop on that trip,” noting the president still is set to be in Paris on November 11 to participate in a ceremony commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Great War armistice.

The Ireland stop was intended “to renew the deep and historic ties between our two nations,” as the White House put it in an August 31 announcement about the trip. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar visited Trump at the White House in March. Speaking on RTE radio on September 2, Varadkar acknowledged being surprised the U.S. president was planning to visit in November, despite an open invitation to Trump to visit at any time, saying: “It came a little bit out of the blue.”

“The development will come as a massive relief” to the Irish government, according to the Independent newspaper, which termed Trump’s trip controversial with plans by the Labor and Green parties to protest the U.S. president’s visit. Prior to word of the cancelation, the leader of the centrist Fianna Fail party, Micheál Martin, said Trump’s visit would be “an opportunity to talk to him and articulate our position on a range of issues that we’re not currently happy with.”