Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I congratulate my constituency colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Treacy, who has been given responsibility for emigrant matters, and I congratulate Deputy Mary Wallace on her appointment to the position of Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture and Food. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me raise this important matter which concerns the 50,000 Irish citizens trapped as illegals in the United States.

No week goes by in which some parent, brother or sister does not contact me regarding the proposed legislation concerning emigrants to the United States. The problems confronting Irish citizens in the Untied States are well known. The affected citizens are afraid to return to Ireland for family weddings and funerals. Families are split and many are now beginning to feel the force of the new driving licence legislation passed recently in the United States which will more or less prevent the undocumented from working in a country they love.

In a State of the Union address, President Bush did not seem to stress the immigration issue which must be tackled in the United States. I believed he would give the nudge to the Kennedy-McCain proposals, which appear to be humane, sensible and, above all, administratively possible. They are in the best interests of the United States.

I call on the Taoiseach to instruct his Ministers to discuss, while reviewing St. Patrick's Day parades throughout the United States, the unique problems that beset our 50,000 undocumented Irish citizens in that country and to garner support for the Kennedy-McCain proposals, which will be debated at a meeting of the justice committee at Capitol Hill at the end of March. When the bowl of shamrock is changing hands in the White House on St. Patrick's Day, will the Taoiseach make a special appeal on behalf of undocumented Irish citizens, many of whom want to work and live in the United States but also want to be able to come home to the places of their birth? I ask him to attach great importance to this issue on St. Patrick's Day.

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