Driver's licenses for undocumented and new immigration reform bill shows sea of change in US views

Senator Marco Rubio

The recent decision by Illinois to grant driver's licenses to the undocumented is an indication of how dramatically the immigration issue is changing in the U.S.

Now there is a bill before the Massachusetts legislature on granting licenses, with hopes that New York will follow suit.

Just a few years back such bills would have been heavily defeated; indeed, attempts to process legislation in seven states failed.

The driver’s license issue is just the tip of the iceberg, though. There has been a massive change almost overnight on the issue of immigration to United States.

It is the best example yet that elections have consequences. President Obama’s victory certainly has shown that.

Whatever else about politicians, they can always read the results of elections. Put simply, the GOP can never win another presidential election unless they win a larger share of the Hispanic and minority turnout.

The old days of a white majority are gone forever, and Republicans have suddenly woken up in a different universe as the party of old men.

This is no country for old men only. Arguably the greatest catalyst for change in America in the past century was the 1965 Immigration Act which ensured that Hispanics would quickly grow to become the largest ethnic group in the U.S.

Hispanics now get to decide elections in key swing states such as Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado. Soon they will begin to impact heavily in Texas and Arizona too.

Republicans are looking at their ultimate nightmare, an electoral lock across the U.S. by Democrats who are already guaranteed about 240 electoral votes before they start if the current support they enjoy lasts.

California is a lesson in Republican overreaching if ever there was one. The state was always competitive until a Republican governor, Pete Wilson, decided it was time to crack down on undocumented and took aim at the Hispanic community with Proposition 187 in the 1990s which sought to exclude the undocumented from state services such as schooling and health care. The party has not won a presidential election there since and only one gubernatorial race since 1994.

The California-zation of many other states will proceed quickly unless the GOP does something quickly.

This is why we are witnessing a sea change among Republicans who have realized late in the day that insulting, deporting and generally slamming Hispanics is not the way to win elections.

There have been voices of moderation such as Jeb Bush and indeed his brother, former President George W. Bush, but they were crying in the wilderness as the anti-immigrant lobby held sway.

Now all has changed. Senator John McCain, for long a principled advocate of reform, has found his voice again on this issue, and more importantly he has been joined by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the two rising stars in the GOP who see their future prospects dim unless this issue is dealt with.

In the overall scheme the Irish are bit players, but a bill that passes and legalizes our estimated 50,000 undocumented and helps more future flow come to America would have a profound impact on the community.

Amazingly that now seems in sight after a dark period where anti-immigrant legislation was the norm. This time it looks for real.

Sully Sullenberger’s latest miracle - Rory Staunton’s hero lends name to fight for more stringent hospital checks

Sully Sullenberger and his wife Lorraine with Orlaith, Kathleen and Ciaran Staunton
last week in O’Neill’s. (Photo by Sean McPhail)

They say you should never meet your heroes in case you are disappointed, but in the case of Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the opposite is true.

I had the great pleasure of meeting the man responsible for the “Miracle on the Hudson,” when he saved the lives of the crew and 155 passengers on a US Airways flight en route to North Carolina by executing a perfect landing on the Hudson River on January 15, 2009.

Earlier last week Sully, who has Swiss and Irish heritage, had appeared on Katie Couric’s talk show where he met 10 little babies born to passengers since that miracle day, and to recount the story of the incredible landing.

Sully’s bravery that day was one of the greatest feel good stories of its time, but his heroism does not end there.

Since that day he has resolved to continue his efforts to make air travel safer and also to ensure, based on pre-flight check lists, that hospital procedures, especially in emergency rooms, are greatly improved.

On January 15 Sully met with my family, my sister Orlaith and brother-in-law Ciaran Staunton, who lost their son Rory, a dedicated flier in the making who considered Sully his hero.

Rory died from sepsis last April after catastrophic medical mistakes were made in his care at NYU Langone Hospital in New York after he suffered a scrape in a basketball game at his school.

Rory’s battle for life was featured in The New York Times, and the coverage included his admiration and hero worship for Sully.

Sully read the article and contacted Ciaran and Orlaith, so a meeting was finally set up for last week.

It turned out to be a wonderful dinner at O’Neill’s, which the Stauntons own, in Midtown Manhattan as relatives and friends of Orlaith and Ciaran gathered. Sully, his charming wife Lorraine, and daughter Kelly also attended.

Sully sat down and read Rory’s term paper on him in its entirety, asked every question about Rory and his love of flying and what kind of child he was.

Sully was the polar opposite of so many self-obsessed “celebrities,” a title that does not fit easily on this former Air Force fighter pilot.

There was self–deprecating humor too, when discussing that fateful day and when he finally got off the plane after the most traumatic experience imaginable.

He called US Airways and introduced himself, and the official told him he’d have to call back as one of their planes had just gone down in the Hudson. “I am the pilot,” Sullenberger told him, followed by a stunned silence.

His wife at home was on a long call to a close relative and did not immediately pick up when Sully called, and when she did she was quietly annoyed. Why was he so anxious to speak to her?

“Turn on the TV,” he told her.

Sully unselfishly gives much of the credit to his co-pilot Jeff Skiles that day, who kept his cool and calmly told him his altitude, speed and likely landing trajectory as the water rushed up to meet them and alarms were going off all over the cockpit.

Sully believes that the extraordinary safety record of major US airlines (excluding commuter flights) since the last major airline crash back in 2001 is due in large part to improved communication procedures between pilots, and check lists that ensure flying is made as safe as possible.

He believes the same system should apply in hospitals all over the world, and that it would make a profound difference in the death rate for patients killed by medical errors.

My family’s loss is the living nightmare of the consequences of such errors. Blood tests that revealed Rory’s worsening condition were never even checked.

Having someone like Sully onboard is a tremendous boost to the chances that such a checklist system will son be implemented coast to coast.

Meeting Sully would have been a huge deal for Rory, and his hero would not have disappointed him. The wild blue yonder is where they were both most at home.

So fly straight Sully, and keep up the marvelous work. You made us all so proud to meet you.

Why I think Hillary Clinton will run in 2016 -- Best qualified person in US to be President

Hillary Clinton meets Irish Foreign Minister Eamonn Gilmore in Dublin

DUBLIN -- Yes, Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2016. That is the only conclusion I can come to after spending two days in Northern Ireland with the former first lady, U.S. senator, and soon to be former Secretary of State.

She is the best-qualified person in America to be president given that resume. You would have to go back to the time of Jefferson to find anyone with such qualifications.

And there is still fire in her belly and steel in the heart.

Though she will be 69 when the next election comes around, Hillary looks as fit and as ready for the fight as I have ever seen her.

Sure she is tired -- after one million miles and 115 countries who would not be? -- and yes, that hairstyle in recent months, or lack of one, has drawn lots of comments.

But all that is temporary, the closing act on one part of her career.

Don’t doubt the ambition or the desire. There has never been such a fiercely competitive couple as Bill and Hillary Clinton and they still have unfinished business.

An illustration in The Sunday Business Post in Dublin said it best, with Hillary as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz closing in on the White House seen at the end of the Yellow Brick Road, and Bill beside her as the Tin Man helping lead the way.

Last night in a small private dinner setting in a restaurant in Stephen’s Green in Dublin, surrounded by a dozen or so Irish Americans who have been with her on many campaigns, she made clear that the fire still burns.

She went around the table asking each of us for our memories from our Clinton campaign involvements.

I told her I remembered best that day in 1995 when she and her husband, as the president and first lady, came to Belfast for the Christmas tree lighting and to support the peace process, and the world in Northern Ireland was never the same afterwards.

When she spoke she remembered the Gerry Adams U.S. visa as the first major battle on Irish policy and how that was won. She remembered the many wonderful women who had inspired her in Northern Ireland, and how she has used the message of Northern Ireland to different groups learning to live together many times since in her job as secretary of state.

At the American Ireland Fund event in Belfast last Friday she made an astonishing offer to the group, essentially saying, put me to work on your behalf and on behalf of Ireland. It was a massive gesture and one that showed the depth of her commitment to Ireland.

One can only imagine how many offers she will get in the coming months to become involved in various causes. For her to choose and highlight the Irish one unbidden was a remarkable moment.

This Irish trip was not some one-day trip to Moneygall and a pleasant interlude as President Obama had in 2011, but another sign of the deep conviction and desire to help on Hillary’s part going all the way back to that first presidential trip to Ireland.

And yes, there were politics included. At one point she referred to her “current job.” We can surely guess what she wants her next job to be.

Four years is a lifetime in politics and much can happen in between.

But leaving Dublin I was in no doubt what Hillary wants to do come 2014 or so – and that is to announce she is running for president of the United States.

Boston College Irish tapes - the truth about Ed Moloney’s book and letting the cat out of the bag

Ed Moloney

Journalist Ed Moloney has been busy convincing everyone he is the victim in the Boston College tapes fiasco. The reality is different.

Put frankly, if he hadn’t decided to make some money for himself from his book on the tapes, Voices from the Grave, none of the issues that have now arisen around the tapes would have happened. The tapes by now would have quietly become the preserve of academics and historians.

Moloney’s intent was clear from the beginning. He hired anti-Gerry Adams researcher and dissident spokesman Anthony McIntyre and only interviewed IRA figures who hated Adams for various reasons -- hardly the mark of a dispassionate researcher/historian.

I have long maintained that Moloney was out to get Adams when he decided to do the tapes, and persuaded Boston College to underwrite the project and give it academic recognition – something the college now deeply regrets.

Moloney has denied all of this, but in a recent reply to a Unionist writer, Water Ellis, on his own blog site, he seems to admit it.

Here is the exchange in which Ellis congratulates Moloney for getting an extension from the Supreme Court on the tapes issue.

(Moloney erroneously presents this as a great victory. It is not, and merely a procedural issue. I do not believe there is a hope in hell the Supreme Court will hear the case.)

MOLONEY: “Ah Walter! I had thought you dead and gone. Never a losing cause, just keeping my promise to people. If I do have an obsession it is with outing liars, which is why I write about Lance Armstrong! There is another outrageous liar with whom we are both familiar, me perhaps more than you. Wears a beard and used to puff on a pipe a lot. Write about him too.”

ELLIS: “I hope you’re not suggesting that a certain one-time barkeep, for whom power was the ultimate performance-enhancing drug, will one day soon be stripped of his many titles.”

MOLONEY:  “A former barkeep with a power complex? Whom could you possibly be talking about?”

It is an interesting exchange, revealing as Belfast Republican writer Danny Morrison says, Moloney’s true mindset on this issue. It has been a “Get Adams” undertaking all the time.

Morrison writes, “Moloney, unthinkingly, in an email to Walter Ellis... reveals the whole purpose of his sham historic project!”

I have to agree with Morrison. Irish America has been taken for a ride by an individual whose main objective is to destroy Adams.

"Outing liars" by his very own words, meaning Adams, was Moloney’s main intent all along. He hid it well under a cloak of academic respectability unwittingly given to him by Boston College.

Now Irish America needs to make clear that it is against the handing over of the tapes to the British government, but also that they are not blinkered by what was actually being attempted here – nothing less than setting up Adams and endangering the peace process. Irish America should not be fooled to believe anything else.

Moloney is a strange character. He recently recounted two utterly fictional conversations he had with me from the 1990s on his blog in which I was allegedly taken to task for using his columns without attribution.

It never happened, I can say with every ounce of conviction I have. But like the Boston tapes saga, Moloney appears to ignore inconvenient truths when it suits him.

Let’s get real about Kate Middleton’s topless shots and Muslim’s protests over “Innocence of Muhammad”

Kate Middleton sprays a dancer with perfume on Tuvalu on Tuesday. (Arthur Edwards)

The suspension of the editor of the Irish Daily Star for publishing topless photographs of Kate Middleton and the outraged reaction in the Middle East to the Innocence of Muhammad film are both connected.

Kate flashing her boobs while thinking she was in a private setting, and a lunatic filmmaker making a perfectly appalling film about the prophet, fanned flames and crises across the globe that no sane person could even remotely have expected.

But there they were, rioting and killing in Arab countries and furious reacting in media all over the world to Kate’s topless shots.

In both cases the overreaction was so intense, the global hue and cry so startling that it defied all logic.
I watched the Innocence of Muhammad film on You Tube, and it is quite possibly the worst piece of filmmaking I have ever seen.

It is incoherent, lacking in plot and laughable.  It makes The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes look like Oscar material.

Except no one was laughing when millions took to Arab streets all across the Middle East and proclaimed death to America.

God knows we get blamed for enough in that part of the world, but pretending we had anything to do with the film or that it was part of some master plan to make Muslims look bad is ridiculous.

I’d have nominated the film for the Raspberries, the anti-Oscar ceremony, as worst film ever made and moved on.

Equally, Kate’s topless shots have brought down a wave of hysterical outrage that is hard to fathom.
It was a case of “off with their heads” from Buckingham Palace on down.

Porn king Richard Desmond, who owned multiple porn sites and magazines, was the most hypocritical of all.

He wanted the Irish Daily Star, which he half owns, closed down after they published the pictures – which by the way are almost impossible to decipher because they are shot from so far away.

There is nothing worse than a pornographer and a royal family in a fit of righteous indignation, but two points come to mind.

Kate must surely know that she is scrutinized everywhere at all times – that is what she bought into when she married the future king. Stripping off outside was not a great idea to begin with.

Secondly, why is she not fair game when every other young woman of note or big boobs, from Page 3 girls on down, is wide open for tabloid exploitation?

Rest assured if it was Rihanna – and remember her in the cornfield in Northern Ireland? -- the coverage would be massive and utterly intrusive.

One law for the royals and one law for every other woman it seems.

In both the responses to the Muslim film and the royal boob shots, we have had a massive overreaction that speaks ill for reasonable debate on issues such as cultural and sexual stereotypes.

We all need to take a bottle of chill pills and relax when such issues become so inflamed.  The tragic consequences when we don’t are all too plain to see.

Thanks for the memories - 25-years of the Irish Voice

Where did the 25 years go? Is there a thief of time who has accordioned all the years together so that 25 years ago really seems like five?

Is it really 25 years ago that the pressmen at the Evergreen Printing plant in Belmar, New Jersey pressed the button and started the presses on Volume 1 Number 1 of the Irish Voice?

I remember my mother and brother were there, and my best friend Eddie Holt and a bottle of champagne and a very late night....

I remember the first issue with its bold headline "We’ll Never Return” based on a survey of young Irish undocumented who had washed up on America’s shores.

Some things never change, even after 25 years.

In that issue we featured little Kathleen Flannelly, daughter of a great friend, Adrian Flannelly, sitting in the Sam Maguire Cup, the trophy for the All-Ireland football champions.

Now she’s an accomplished lawyer, a woman of the world. Was that really 25 years ago?

There was John Spain and Cormac MacConnell, and they are still there all these years later charting the goings on in Ireland, urban and rural, and they too must feel that déjà vu moment with Ireland in bad shape again and the political class failing the people.

A strange memory, shortly before our first issue when a new fangled machine arrived in the office. It was a fax machine, and we all gaped in wonderment as the front page of The Irish Times came crackling over the wires. The Internet was still a pipedream.

Good and bad moments crowd in. The day Debbie McGoldrick, an Irish Echo refugee, took over as editor of Irish Voice and whipped the paper into shape for once and for all is among the best.

Among the worst, the suicide of a young Irish construction worker in the Bronx who hung himself after being mercilessly exploited by his own.

The best -- Merrifield Madness, when thousands of Irish descended on a Virginia post office in October of 1991 to mail their Morrison visa applications in a night to remember.

Best again -- sitting in the stands at Giants Stadium as Ireland beat Italy in a World Cup shocker in 1994.

Worst -- the news story that someone had placed an innocuous classified ad with us looking for a few strong men. It turned out he wanted them in order to murder his wife. Incredible but true.

Best -- waking up on a freezing morning one January to learn that the Clinton White House, over the objections of the British State Department, CIA, FBI, etc. had given a visa to the U.S. for Gerry Adams.

Best -- standing in the center of Belfast as hundreds of thousands chanted the name of Bill Clinton as the American president, unbelievably, visited the city.

Worst -- reading of the incredible tragedy of Phoebe Prince, a little Irish girl bullied to death when she moved to Massachusetts.  She took her own life in 2010.

Best -- President Clinton attending our event at the Plaza Hotel as Irish American of the Year. Standing at the traveling White House podium introducing him was a surreal experience. At times like that you really do feel you have made it in America.

Worst -- writing my toughest ever column on the tragic death of my beautiful nephew Rory Staunton, who died needlessly of a bacterial infection at age 12 in April. It does not come tougher than that.

Best -- getting to meet you, the Irish Voice readers in so many places over so many years and hearing your feedback, good and bad, on what we do.

And to all those advertisers who have supported us over the years – thanks again. You made this Irish emigrant’s dreams come true.