Irish leaving Boston
Boom times, crackdown slow emerald wave
By Kevin Cullen, Globe Staff | March 18, 2007
A couple of months ago, David Knox and his girlfriend, Elaine, threw in the towel. After seven years in the Boston area, they were tired of looking over their shoulders, tired of being told there was no way they could become legal residents, and so they decided to move back to Ireland.
About 100 of their friends gathered at Bad Abbots, a Quincy pub, to bid the couple farewell. A band, Tara Hill, serenaded them with the appropriately titled "Leaving on a Jet Plane." Knox hugged his teammates on the pub's soccer team. Elaine's eyes watered.
The bittersweet celebration, full of laughs, heartfelt toasts and not a few tears, was reminiscent of the "wakes" the Irish held for those sailing off to America a century ago, never to return. But these days, the wakes are held in pubs in Dorchester and Brighton, or in apartments in Quincy and South Boston, for those heading home.
Ireland's booming economy and the crackdown on illegal immigration that followed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have combined to produce a reversal of migration patterns for those who have long made up the biggest, and most influential, ethnic group in Boston.
Put simply, more people are returning to Ireland, and fewer are replacing them, reversing a pattern of immigration that was established in the late 1840s, when Ireland's potato blight killed 1 million people and sent 2 million others scurrying for the ships.
In one generation, Boston was transformed from an overwhelmingly Protestant city in which most of the inhabitants traced their ancestry to England, to a largely Roman Catholic city in which thousands had roots in Ireland. The Irish came to dominate Boston and the metropolitan area -- first its politics, then its commerce -- like no other ethnic group, putting their stamp on a place that is universally regarded as the most Irish city in America.
But today it is a paler shade of green; the city is fast losing its distinctive Irishness. Some will mourn the change, and some will not.
There are many immigrant stories in the new Boston. The Irish experience is one of them.
The successive waves that made Boston a famous outpost of Irish culture, from traditional music to Gaelic games, have suddenly ebbed. According to FAS, Ireland's training and employment authority, only 1,700 Irish went to the United States last year looking for work, many of them headed for Boston. That compares to 23,000 in 1990.
Trades once dominated by the Irish worker -- often undocumented, but who was checking? -- are increasingly the domain of other ethnic groups. The painters, roofers, house cleaners, and elder care workers who so often were Irish are now more likely to be Brazilian. And the number of Irish brogues that once greeted people at restaurants in the Boston area, and especially on Cape Cod during the summer, have dwindled, as the number of Irish college students taking summer jobs here has been halved since 9/11.
By Kevin Cullen, Globe Staff | March 18, 2007
A couple of months ago, David Knox and his girlfriend, Elaine, threw in the towel. After seven years in the Boston area, they were tired of looking over their shoulders, tired of being told there was no way they could become legal residents, and so they decided to move back to Ireland.
About 100 of their friends gathered at Bad Abbots, a Quincy pub, to bid the couple farewell. A band, Tara Hill, serenaded them with the appropriately titled "Leaving on a Jet Plane." Knox hugged his teammates on the pub's soccer team. Elaine's eyes watered.
The bittersweet celebration, full of laughs, heartfelt toasts and not a few tears, was reminiscent of the "wakes" the Irish held for those sailing off to America a century ago, never to return. But these days, the wakes are held in pubs in Dorchester and Brighton, or in apartments in Quincy and South Boston, for those heading home.
Ireland's booming economy and the crackdown on illegal immigration that followed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have combined to produce a reversal of migration patterns for those who have long made up the biggest, and most influential, ethnic group in Boston.
Put simply, more people are returning to Ireland, and fewer are replacing them, reversing a pattern of immigration that was established in the late 1840s, when Ireland's potato blight killed 1 million people and sent 2 million others scurrying for the ships.
In one generation, Boston was transformed from an overwhelmingly Protestant city in which most of the inhabitants traced their ancestry to England, to a largely Roman Catholic city in which thousands had roots in Ireland. The Irish came to dominate Boston and the metropolitan area -- first its politics, then its commerce -- like no other ethnic group, putting their stamp on a place that is universally regarded as the most Irish city in America.
But today it is a paler shade of green; the city is fast losing its distinctive Irishness. Some will mourn the change, and some will not.
There are many immigrant stories in the new Boston. The Irish experience is one of them.
The successive waves that made Boston a famous outpost of Irish culture, from traditional music to Gaelic games, have suddenly ebbed. According to FAS, Ireland's training and employment authority, only 1,700 Irish went to the United States last year looking for work, many of them headed for Boston. That compares to 23,000 in 1990.
Trades once dominated by the Irish worker -- often undocumented, but who was checking? -- are increasingly the domain of other ethnic groups. The painters, roofers, house cleaners, and elder care workers who so often were Irish are now more likely to be Brazilian. And the number of Irish brogues that once greeted people at restaurants in the Boston area, and especially on Cape Cod during the summer, have dwindled, as the number of Irish college students taking summer jobs here has been halved since 9/11.
posted by CW at 10:16 AM
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