Irish Illegal immigrants cause embarrassment for the GAA

international | miscellaneous | news report

Tuesday May 23, 2006 21:41

by Masters Voice

Apparently New York Hurlers are unwilling to travel to the Ulster final in Belfast as a number of their players may have difficulties obtaining visas. This situation has arose due to the fact that a number of the New York team are illegal immigrants to the good old USA.

I wonder where this came from....

The New York GAA Board is expected to formally request a postponement of the Antrim and New York Ulster hurling final scheduled for June 4 in Casement Park.

Apparently New York are unwilling to travel as a number of their players may have difficulties obtaining visas. This situation has arose due to the fact that a number of the New York team are illegal immigrants to the good old USA.

This leaves the Ulster Council in a difficult situation as Antrim are naturally reluctant to travel because of the huge costs involved.

Ulster Council Secretary Danny Murphy said: "When New York entered the Ulster hurling championship it was initially accepted they would come to Ireland every year and they actually came the first year. Mr. Murphy may not be aware of the fact that a considerable number of Irish people reside in America illegally.

"They asked and the Ulster Council agreed to playing the semi-final in New York, but we never consented to playing the final in any place other than Casement Park"

Pat Connolly, Chairman of the Antrim Hurling Board, endorses those sentiments. "I asked the question over a month ago if New York beat Derry what would happen and I was told everything had been sorted out and that New York would be coming here providing they beat Derry.

"I've also heard on the grapevine that New York claim that they wouldn't be able to come over here on June 4 and that they would need more time to make all the necessary preparations." he said.

One can understand Antrim's reluctance to travel to the Big Apple, but if Croke Park were to agree to foot the bill as a goodwill gesture to the GAA in New York who knows what might happen. Alleged supporters of the Antrim team may seek refuge in America and claim asylum. The last thing that the Irish Nation needs right now is to be associated with illegal acts of residing in a country uninvited.

Michael McDowell was unavailable for comment as this indymedia reporter was filing this story, perhaps, he was busy negotiating a satisfactory conclusion to the illegal contravention of planning laws for his holiday home.

BTW: It was small consolation for Derry hurlers for the embarrassment they suffered in the Gaelic Park, New York, that a Dungiven man Cathal McKeever, brother of Derry full back Emmet, was hugely instrumental in inflicting defeat on his native county.

ah well.......

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where as I'm glad ( & I hope we all as a 90 year old nation are glad) for the historic illustrations

by hmmmmmmmmmm

Tue May 23, 2006 23:10

I wonder at (what to foreign eyes at least) might seem a deeply engrained complacent hypocrisy.

Ireland is now by some accounts one amongst the top 15 states of the world for wealth. That by no means signifies we sell our potatoes or children for higher prices these last years, or have discovered a wealth of new national resources. It simply means that since joining the EU, most of our approximate 41 billion a year state budget, enviously high GDP and GNP is based on handling financial services related to the € Euro, $ dollar and Sterling inter-exchange. The wealth we tinker with in the Dublin financial district is based on the continued exploitation of mostly 3rd world resources.

We are the money launderers of the XXI century.
Yeah verily we are the Magdalenes.

These last 7 days, the USA decided to build a wall to stop Mexican migrants crossing its borders.
This last month after the average weekly detention figures of Africans attempting to enter the EU by raft to the Canary island archipelago topped 1000, and the cheeky African nations who are exporting all this unwanted slave labour demanded basic investment in infrastructure as condition for repatriation - they decided to blockade the Northern Atlantic Ocean with the Spanish navy. = The 5th best equiped / expensive marine force in the world has been deployed to stop unemployed people on rafts reaching the beach.

We have perhaps 10 years till we live in a West "behind walls". By then Ryanair will fly to global destinations and the cabin hospitality staff will ask us as we enter African, South American or Asia airspace to don a sympathetic expression & fasten our seatbelts...

The desperate, the huddled masses, the dispossessed, the poor of this earth today really have very little in common with the Irish men & women who were rejected in England in the 1960's. Sorry but they don't. And the desperate, huddled masses, dispossessed, poor of this earth don't have time to practise sports and represent their people at international fixtures.

They are ignored.
When Amnesty International today slammed the "richest financial service states" of the Capitalist west - it didn't even make the news.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0523/asylum.html
http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/front/detail/Amnesty_slams...92000

get it into your heads.
Not a single Irish migrant to the USA has it as bad as a single African, South or Central American, or Asian migrant.

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Irish Illegal immigrants cause embarrassment for the GAA

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