A link on this site (www.patobrien.net) directs people to information about how they might apply for and acquire Irish citizenship. Another link contains my email address.
Not surprisingly, given world circumstances, an increasing number of people are sending me inquiries asking how they might leave where they live, mainly the United States, and take up residence here in Ireland.
The rules for that process are not difficult to follow. And discovering whether you’re qualified for automatic Irish — and European Union — citizenship is pretty simple really: In plain terms, if a person has a parent or grandparent who was born on this island, they’re likely to be able to procure an Irish passport and full Irish citizenship.
That’s something I did some years back. Initially, I thought it’d be fun having a second citizenship, something not prohibited under either American or Irish law. But it wasn’t until I saw the pernicious effects of increasing control of all levels of America’s government by fundamentalist Christian crazies that my second passport took on new and more special meaning.
That became even more biting when it began to look like the main political cheerleaders of the extremist American right, the George Bush gang, might gain access to the White House.
At that point I took the leap and emigrated to Ireland, beginning an odyssey that has and continues to prove unpredictable.
There have been many milestones from back ‘home’ in my path while here in Ireland. There was the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, something the Irish considered absurd. ‘He’s just a man. What does anyone expect?’ many critics of that action here asked.
Then there was what smelled much like a coup d’état in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election. ‘How can that happen in America?’ I was asked. ‘How can a state where Bush’s brother rules decide W is the new president?’ Damned if I knew the answers to those questions. I still don’t and it continues to look like a stolen election after all these years.
I sat with two mates and watched the horror of 9/11. One the neighbours in my building ran down the hall in his underwear to my door and screamed for me to follow back to his flat where two different televisions carried channels showing the worst carnage to occur in one instance in more than half a century. There were too many questions that day and afterwards to answer. They’ll never be fully explained.
The world watched the Bush gang plunge America toward war in Iraq. Irish people asked me if he was stupid enough to proceed on that ‘foolish’ course. I think I always knew the answer to that and I had a pretty good idea of how it would end up. I recalled the words of friends who were in the Vietnamese city of Hue in 1968 who described the horrors of urban combat. I related my opinion to Irish friends that nationwide city-based military action would result in mayhem beyond anyone’s expectations.
The Irish never condoned the American action in Iraq. They weren’t alone, of course. And they resented terribly the use of Shannon Airport for the transport of war materiel and troops to Middle East battle areas. And they stamped their feet in bitter prolonged frustration when it became known that supposed combatants were also being transported to uncertain fates in rendition planes refueling at Shannon.
Most recently we saw the conclusion of the 2008 presidential election with a Republican defeat pretty much universally applauded by Irish onlookers. The general opinion: enough is enough. The Bush era is about to end and no one here will mourn that change.
Oddly, now that the Bushmen are about to head for wherever those kind of people go after being disenfranchised I’m getting an increased number of questions from people interested in leaving America and living elsewhere. I wonder about the timing of that. Aren’t there better days possibly ahead now? I ask myself.
There are lots of easy answers, I guess, to their simple questions. But the real facts of life for those who would be American expatriates are harder to quantify and much more difficult to to answer. That’s doubly so in a world where economic security has become such a murky issue — another thing that can rightly be blamed on the regime of George Bush.
I suppose interest in life in other countries by Americans is growing, but by relatively miniscule numbers. Still, it’s good thing. It’s time that more from that side of the Atlantic looked beyond their shores and took a bigger interest on how the U.S. affects the world. And how the world reacts to and perceives America.
In the end, though, I have to wonder how transient that interest may turn out to be.
Updated 15.11.08
