Go east, young man

Part 4

by Ellen Barry

As more and more young people take chances, the stakes of emigration have gone down -- if America doesn't work out, there's always Sydney, or Dublin. At one time new arrivals were forced to make a break, as in the case of Owen O'Neill, circa 1906, an immigrant from County Kilkenny. When O'Neill left home, "a curtain fell upon his life," recalls his grandson, Kevin O'Neill, who now teaches Irish history at Boston College.

The break with Ireland was so painful for Kevin O'Neill's grandfather that he couldn't bear to look back. He became American. Late in his life, when he was twice offered free tickets to his hometown, Owen O'Neill flatly declined.

Compare O'Neill to Anthony Walsh, who left County Kerry in the early '90s, and became one of the cosmopolitan tribe who sometimes refer to themselves as "commuters." A year ago, when a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity arose back in Ireland, Walsh sat in his apartment in Brighton and flipped a coin.

The coin fell, and Walsh, now 27, is now settled in Killarney. The partial owner of a successful retail business, he still misses the close-knit community of his Boston life sometimes, but feels the decision was right from a financial standpoint. As he says, "the only reason I came back was business. There's no way in hell I'd make this kind of money in the States."

"It literally came down to a toss of the coin. The way I saw it, I could call home every week. I had great holidays, my [relatives] would come over for their own holidays, flights are quite cheap. I never once felt homesick. If I had stayed [in America] another year, I would have been there permanently," he says. "Both scenarios were good."

Whether it's the economy, or improved communications, or the $500 flight to Dublin, the meaning of immigration has itself been transformed. It was only five years ago that the historian Lawrence McCaffrey made this analysis of the Irish diaspora:

On sentimental occasions, new immigrants, like the old, shed tears for and sing sentimental songs about "that dear land across the sea," but for the Irish who have chosen to come to the United States, it always has been their land of opportunity and primary loyalty, and their journey to America has been a one-way trip. . . . Their lingering devotion to Ireland pales in comparison with their passionate love for America.

McCaffrey can be forgiven for judging by the past, when flag-waving Irish-Americans like the composer George M. Cohan took all comers in Yankee-Doodle-Dandy boosterism. But he's behind the curve. For many of the young immigrants who have headed back to Ireland in the last year or so, their time spent abroad was less a repatriation than a Grand Tour.

"Most people went for the American experience," says Deirdre Murphy. "I know a lot of people who have done the America thing and are now doing the Australia thing. But I think a lot of people see Ireland as the place they will go when they want to settle down."

And despite their unflinching intention to return, the new immigrants also sometimes keep their distance from Irish-American enclaves, and -- with the church's influence waning at home -- sometimes complain that Irish-American communities have lagged far behind on social issues. As one young returnee pointed out, gays and lesbians are free to march in the Dublin St. Patrick's Day parade -- just not in Southie.

"I thought that was so ironic. It kind of pissed me off," Garret Pearse says. "It's like a different kind of Irishness. [Irish-Americans] have to be more Irish than the Irish themselves."

And the entrenched Irish-American community -- which has built up a network of visa and job-counseling services and cultural programs -- is similarly ambivalent about the cosmopolitanism of the New Irish. Some find fault with the commuters for the nonpartisan ease with which they drift through Irish-American support system, and then move on to the next global hot spot.

"A lot of them haven't put enough back into the community, and the community has done a lot for them," says Paul Finnegan, the executive director of the Emerald Isle Relocation Center in New York. "I don't mean to say that the people who have come in the last few years are bad people. It's just an easy world to travel in."

But it is not -- as many returnees have found -- such an easy world to migrate in. People who leave America to return to Ireland still sometimes come back, licked by the weather or the water pressure or the emotional strain of straddling two countries. "It's nearly tougher leaving America than it was leaving Ireland," McElduff says. "One day before she left, my wife said to me, `It's not that I'm coming home. I'm leaving home.' We're going to miss America."

What can even be harder is returning to an Ireland that has become a slightly different place during the Mary Robinson era: less respectful of the church, more Westernized, faster-paced, richer, more expensive, and, some say, a bit more more sarcastic. Certainly different.

It's not always easy to adjust, some returnees say. Ireland's shrugging off of traditional influences has "taken the form of a kind of cynicism," says Pearse. "I never thought I'd say this," he adds wonderingly, "but I think the weakening of the Catholic church has caused some problems."

And if Pearse -- gone from Ireland for three years altogether-- was shocked, just think of the Carrickmore families, or others gone for longer.

"I had one of the worst plane rides of my life on a flight to Ireland where I happened to sit next to a woman going back to Ireland," says Kevin O'Neill, the history professor. "When I say it was the worst plane ride, I mean it was so moving and sad and terrible."

She hadn't been back to Ireland since she left as a 20-year-old, 40 years ago, O'Neill recalls. He spent the whole flight worrying, he says. "I was terrified for her."

Back to part 3

Ellen Barry can be reached at ebarry[a]phx.com.