Gravy train has ground to a halt

News drifts towards the province that Irish people in America are scrambling like lemmings to return home. This is happening because the United States is no longer the happy-go-lucky country it was before 9/11.

The American authorities used to turn a blind eye when Irish people outstayed their official welcome before melting quietly into the general population. No longer.

These days, Irish people found to be without work visas are being thrown in jail for minor traffic violations or for throwing cigarette butts onto the sidewalk. They are then deported forthwith. The gravy train has ground to a firm halt .

I’m relieved, in a way, because this makes life easier for the rest of us. There is nothing worse than going to America and being trapped in a bar by a man from Belfast who’s afraid to go home in case he won’t be allowed back into the States again.

I used to come across them all the time. After a while I tended to avoid these tortured souls, especially the Northern Irelanders. It’s not that they were dislikeable. It’s more complicated than that. Maybe I was too easily exhausted.

These were good people who were marked in a unique way. They loved Northern Ireland, but couldn’t hack it on a permanent basis. Despite themselves, they missed home.

I have been quizzed endlessly in New York watering holes about obscure relatives of mine, long razed streets, expired school teachers, barely-breathing Christian Brothers and demolished corner-shops where, for a tanner, a boy could buy Peggy’s Leg, Everlasting Strip, half a dozen asphyxiating gobstoppers and two upside-down toffee apples that would have to be prised forcibly from a tray, and still have a penny left over to back a horse.

I have wept inwardly with boredom when forced to recall the name of the man with the withered hand who tore up the ticket stubs on our way into the movies and remember still bravely attempting to name all the householders in a small back-street that had long since seen the business end of a wrecking ball.

The worst thing about people who have been in America for a long time is that their image of home remains a snapshot of the way the place was the day they left. The mind freezes.

After a while, the emigrant vividly recalls a world that has moved on.

Also, the need to impress is strong. Older, single men are the worst. I remember being befriended by a man in Boston who insisted on calling for me at 8 o’clock in the morning in order to show me the sights of the immediate area. This included the proud viewing of a local oil refinery where he once worked, a series of elaborate floodgates, local irrigation schemes, a fish factory (where he was currently employed), a canning plant and a number of half-constructed highway flyovers which apparently provided employment for a number of men from Magherafelt.

Also, I remember being hounded by a building worker from Belfast who insisted on showing me how to mix concrete the modern way. I hadn’t the heart or courage to tell him to go away, but was forced in the end to alienate him by the foul and desperate means of openly and lewdly propositioning his none-too-attractive American girlfriend. I feel a twinge of guilt still.

And now many of these people are being driven home by a world that has overtaken them on the inside lane.

What will they make of the lusty bellow of the Celtic Tiger? What will they make of our tiny-minded politicians who still dismiss the not-backward-anymore Dublin, ignoring the roar of brand new Mercedes-Benz’s roaring across the border laden with southern men in sharp suits snapping up apartments in Belfast with their petty cash on the off-chance that we primitives might eventually get our act together and make them a fortune?

Things have changed all right. The gob-stoppers are getting smaller.

Originally published in The Belfast Telegraph.