Lethe200
Senior Member
- Location
- San Francisco Bay Area
A bit of irony in unintended consequences:
This immigrant group used to fill S.F.’s bars, fire houses with workers. The pipeline has gone dry
SF Chronicle March 17, 2024
Back in 2008, when bar owner Brian Sheehy had just three San Francisco drinking establishments, nearly half of his 30 workers were immigrants from Ireland — transplants from counties ranging from Derry to Limerick, Cork to Carlow. Now, the company, Future Bars Group, owns 13 bars with 220 employees. None but Sheehy, who grew up on a farm in County Kerry, speaks with a brogue. “When we started we had no shortage of Irish people here legally and over time that has entirely changed,” Sheehy said. “I am now the sole Irish person in the company.”
And it’s not just the bar business. From building sites to hospitals to fire houses, San Francisco — like Boston and New York and Chicago — is losing its Irish accent. For more than 150 years there was always another wave of Irish newcomers to build high-rises, police streets, fight fires, mind children, nurse the sick and fill pubs and community centers with song and dance.
Now, there is not. It’s the end of the road for a city that long welcomed generation after generation of Irish carpenters, electricians, nurses, nannies, police officers and bartenders. “The Irish immigration pipeline has largely dried up because the U.S. immigration policy is so restrictive,” said Irish Ambassador to the United States Geraldine Byrne Nason, who visited San Francisco last week. “It’s a real challenge and something that I deal with every day, particularly politically on Capitol Hill.”
While this weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day is a cause for celebration for the 31.5 million people in the United States of Irish descent — 2.3 million of those in California, more than any other state — the number of Irish-born residents is dwindling. Since the 1980s, the number of Irish-born residents living legally in the United States has plummeted from about 250,000 to 118,000 today, according to census figures.
The drop in Irish immigration is driven by both the United States’ anti-immigrant policies — escalated during the Trump administration — as well as Ireland’s remarkable transformation from one of Europe’s poorest countries to one of its most economically vibrant and inclusive. A country once famous for its young people leaving now boasts the youngest population in Europe. A country once ruled by a church that banned abortion and divorce, and criminalized homosexuality, elected its first female president in 1990 and now has a gay prime minister, — known as a Taoiseach in Ireland — of half Indian descent.
And a nation that has always been an exporter of workers is now an importer. Ireland’s population has grown from 5 million in 1980 to 7 million today — with nearly 15% of the population born in another country. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, Ireland has welcomed 110,000 Ukrainians, who now make up 2% of the population.
With the exception of students, who can stay in the United States for 90 days in the summer under the “J1” visa program, the only avenue for Irish to work in the United States is with a much harder to obtain H1B work visa. That requires an advanced degree — a master’s or higher. It also requires having a job lined up paying at least $60,000, although many H-1B visa recipients are paid at least three times that amount.
In the 1990s and into the first decades of the 2000s, some 75,000 Irish people obtained green cards through special programs — known as the Donnelly and Morrison visas — meant to grant legal status to thousands here illegally and make up for the fact that the Irish were largely excluded from the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.
Those visas transformed San Francisco’s skyline, as Irish people flooded the city’s building trades. In the 1990s and the early 2000s, Irish-born residential builders likely produced more housing than any other group, with high-profile developers including Joe Cassidy and Joe O’Donoghue putting up live/work lofts across SoMa and the Mission. The organization they formed, the Residential Builders Association, known as the RBA, not only advocated for development-friendly policies, but also served as a network for hundreds of Irish construction workers coming by the planeload.
In those days, the anxieties of being a working-class immigrant trying to make it in foreign city like San Francisco forced Irish newcomers to forge close bonds and a tight-knit community, according to RBA President Sean Keighran.
Now the Irish coming to San Francisco on H-1B visas are more likely to bond with their fellow engineers or researchers, who are as likely to come from Delhi as Dublin. Ireland has some of the greatest engineering programs in Europe and produces “workers who seek the best paying jobs in the world,” Keighran said. “The best-paying jobs in the world are not in construction,” he said. “The Irish still make great workhorses; in today’s world they are just drawn to greener pastures.”
And even those tech workers are likely here in smaller numbers than they were before the pandemic. Workers on H-1B visas were told not to leave the U.S. during the pandemic because their employers could not not guarantee that they would be let back in, according to Regina O’Connor, board member of the Irish Network Bay Area. Some quit their jobs and went home. “People had weddings, funerals and baptisms that went on in Ireland and people couldn’t go back,” she said. “It was desperate.”
Ambassador Nason blames the U.S. government’s immigration squeeze on the political standoff over the southern border problem. She believes there is bipartisan support for opening up more to Irish immigrants, but those who oppose current proposals for immigration reform, “particularly the Republican Party, are of the view that until the southern border is fixed, there won’t be movement.”
O’Connor, who is raising her family in the East Bay, said the anti-immigrant rhetoric prevalent in American politics is unsettling. “It’s a little hostile at the moment to immigrants — the narrative in the news is all about the problems with the borders,” she said. “Even for me. I married an American and I have a visa and I have a good job and two kids and am established. But I am also an immigrant and if you are to believe what they are talking about, we’re not really welcome.”
While Ireland, today, produces some of the most sought after engineers and scientists in the world, there are still plenty of builders and bartenders who would come to San Francisco given the chance, according to Sheehy, who also has a contracting firm that builds bars. Sheehy said there would be no shortage of workers who would come here if they could get visas — especially in management roles that he has had trouble filling. The pipe fitters and electricians and carpenters who built out his early bars were largely from Ireland.
“The chance of getting an H-1B visa for a job in hospitality or construction is close to zero,” said Sheehy. “There is no pathway for us to be able to hire those people.
Instead, workers who would otherwise flock to San Francisco or Boston are going to Canada and Australia. “If you go to Toronto or Montreal those pubs are packed with young Irish people,” Sheehy said.
This immigrant group used to fill S.F.’s bars, fire houses with workers. The pipeline has gone dry
SF Chronicle March 17, 2024
Back in 2008, when bar owner Brian Sheehy had just three San Francisco drinking establishments, nearly half of his 30 workers were immigrants from Ireland — transplants from counties ranging from Derry to Limerick, Cork to Carlow. Now, the company, Future Bars Group, owns 13 bars with 220 employees. None but Sheehy, who grew up on a farm in County Kerry, speaks with a brogue. “When we started we had no shortage of Irish people here legally and over time that has entirely changed,” Sheehy said. “I am now the sole Irish person in the company.”
And it’s not just the bar business. From building sites to hospitals to fire houses, San Francisco — like Boston and New York and Chicago — is losing its Irish accent. For more than 150 years there was always another wave of Irish newcomers to build high-rises, police streets, fight fires, mind children, nurse the sick and fill pubs and community centers with song and dance.
Now, there is not. It’s the end of the road for a city that long welcomed generation after generation of Irish carpenters, electricians, nurses, nannies, police officers and bartenders. “The Irish immigration pipeline has largely dried up because the U.S. immigration policy is so restrictive,” said Irish Ambassador to the United States Geraldine Byrne Nason, who visited San Francisco last week. “It’s a real challenge and something that I deal with every day, particularly politically on Capitol Hill.”
While this weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day is a cause for celebration for the 31.5 million people in the United States of Irish descent — 2.3 million of those in California, more than any other state — the number of Irish-born residents is dwindling. Since the 1980s, the number of Irish-born residents living legally in the United States has plummeted from about 250,000 to 118,000 today, according to census figures.
The drop in Irish immigration is driven by both the United States’ anti-immigrant policies — escalated during the Trump administration — as well as Ireland’s remarkable transformation from one of Europe’s poorest countries to one of its most economically vibrant and inclusive. A country once famous for its young people leaving now boasts the youngest population in Europe. A country once ruled by a church that banned abortion and divorce, and criminalized homosexuality, elected its first female president in 1990 and now has a gay prime minister, — known as a Taoiseach in Ireland — of half Indian descent.
And a nation that has always been an exporter of workers is now an importer. Ireland’s population has grown from 5 million in 1980 to 7 million today — with nearly 15% of the population born in another country. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, Ireland has welcomed 110,000 Ukrainians, who now make up 2% of the population.
With the exception of students, who can stay in the United States for 90 days in the summer under the “J1” visa program, the only avenue for Irish to work in the United States is with a much harder to obtain H1B work visa. That requires an advanced degree — a master’s or higher. It also requires having a job lined up paying at least $60,000, although many H-1B visa recipients are paid at least three times that amount.
In the 1990s and into the first decades of the 2000s, some 75,000 Irish people obtained green cards through special programs — known as the Donnelly and Morrison visas — meant to grant legal status to thousands here illegally and make up for the fact that the Irish were largely excluded from the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.
Those visas transformed San Francisco’s skyline, as Irish people flooded the city’s building trades. In the 1990s and the early 2000s, Irish-born residential builders likely produced more housing than any other group, with high-profile developers including Joe Cassidy and Joe O’Donoghue putting up live/work lofts across SoMa and the Mission. The organization they formed, the Residential Builders Association, known as the RBA, not only advocated for development-friendly policies, but also served as a network for hundreds of Irish construction workers coming by the planeload.
In those days, the anxieties of being a working-class immigrant trying to make it in foreign city like San Francisco forced Irish newcomers to forge close bonds and a tight-knit community, according to RBA President Sean Keighran.
Now the Irish coming to San Francisco on H-1B visas are more likely to bond with their fellow engineers or researchers, who are as likely to come from Delhi as Dublin. Ireland has some of the greatest engineering programs in Europe and produces “workers who seek the best paying jobs in the world,” Keighran said. “The best-paying jobs in the world are not in construction,” he said. “The Irish still make great workhorses; in today’s world they are just drawn to greener pastures.”
And even those tech workers are likely here in smaller numbers than they were before the pandemic. Workers on H-1B visas were told not to leave the U.S. during the pandemic because their employers could not not guarantee that they would be let back in, according to Regina O’Connor, board member of the Irish Network Bay Area. Some quit their jobs and went home. “People had weddings, funerals and baptisms that went on in Ireland and people couldn’t go back,” she said. “It was desperate.”
Ambassador Nason blames the U.S. government’s immigration squeeze on the political standoff over the southern border problem. She believes there is bipartisan support for opening up more to Irish immigrants, but those who oppose current proposals for immigration reform, “particularly the Republican Party, are of the view that until the southern border is fixed, there won’t be movement.”
O’Connor, who is raising her family in the East Bay, said the anti-immigrant rhetoric prevalent in American politics is unsettling. “It’s a little hostile at the moment to immigrants — the narrative in the news is all about the problems with the borders,” she said. “Even for me. I married an American and I have a visa and I have a good job and two kids and am established. But I am also an immigrant and if you are to believe what they are talking about, we’re not really welcome.”
While Ireland, today, produces some of the most sought after engineers and scientists in the world, there are still plenty of builders and bartenders who would come to San Francisco given the chance, according to Sheehy, who also has a contracting firm that builds bars. Sheehy said there would be no shortage of workers who would come here if they could get visas — especially in management roles that he has had trouble filling. The pipe fitters and electricians and carpenters who built out his early bars were largely from Ireland.
“The chance of getting an H-1B visa for a job in hospitality or construction is close to zero,” said Sheehy. “There is no pathway for us to be able to hire those people.
Instead, workers who would otherwise flock to San Francisco or Boston are going to Canada and Australia. “If you go to Toronto or Montreal those pubs are packed with young Irish people,” Sheehy said.
