Immigration and the “R Word”
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Google Image I like traditional Irish music, and one of my favorite songs is “The Rambling Irishman,” made popular in 1976 by a group called The Wolfe Tones. One of the reasons it appeals to me is that it is about an Irish emigrant from Ulster, the northern part of Ireland where many of my Irish ancestors lived. This is the song’s first verse. I am a rambling Irishman In Ulster I was born in And many the pleasant days I spent Round the shores of sweet Lough Erne But to be poor I could not endure Like others of my station To Americay I sailed away And left this Irish nation My own family members who emigrated to the U.S. could relate to the line, “but to be poor I could not endure.” From all that I know about them, they were at least as poor as many of the immigrants to the U.S. from Latin America, Africa and Asia. Owen McNulty When I first visited Ireland in 1960, I experienced that poverty first-hand. A cousin of my grandmother, Owen McNulty, had a 40-acre farm,...