The Immigrant's Lament

 

"Waiting On Shore," Sligo, Ireland

“Lost at Sea, Lost at Sea

  Or in the Evening Tide

  We Loved You, We Miss You

  May God With You Abide.”

These words are engraved on a plaque adorning a bronze statue on the headlands of Rosses Point, Sligo, Republic of Ireland. The “Waiting On Shore” sculpture depicts a young woman, arms outstretched, perhaps in prayer, skirts blown back by a stiff sea breeze. The statue commemorates those who watch and wait for the return of loved ones from an often furious sea, and mourn those who do not.

Perhaps, unwittingly, a perfect counterpoint to another statue, 2,858 miles to the west. The “Man at the Wheel” statue in Gloucester, Massachusetts, memorializes the hundreds of fishermen who have lost their lives in the stormy Atlantic while plying Gloucester’s thriving fishing trade. A rough, oilskin-clad fisherman is poised grasping a ship’s wheel with tensed muscles, fighting swells and breakers, struggling  to avoid dangerous rocks.

It is uncanny that these two statues, one on the northwest coast of Ireland, the other on the northeast coast of America, seem to be facing one another across a steely grey ocean. One fighting for survival, the other hoping against hope.

But America and Ireland have many connections. According to the website UShistory.org, “In the middle half of the nineteenth century, more than one-half of the population of Ireland emigrated to the United States.” To put that in perspective, “From 1820 to 1870, over seven and a half million immigrants came to the United States — more than the entire population of the country in 1810. Nearly all of them came from northern and western Europe — about a third from Ireland and almost a third from Germany.”

Immigrants in the nineteenth century from northern and western Europe built the American infrastructure. Canals, bridges, railroads – the hard labor was largely supplied by these immigrants. It is almost a given that the cops in Boston and New York were mostly Irish.

But this was not accomplished without struggle. The mythos of “Irish Need Not Apply” is not myth at all, but true. Posters advertising professional jobs in the nineteenth and early twentieth century did indeed disclaim that Irish were not welcome to apply.

This prejudice, fear-based, was slowly overcome, and Irish immigrants began to contribute to all aspects of American commerce, academia, and politics. Culminating, perhaps, with the 35^th president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

It is not a stretch to venture that any sizable group of immigrants will initially be viewed with fear, but will eventually acclimate, assimilate, and contribute mightily. Italians, Germans, and Asians are just a few examples, with many other immigrant populations in the milieu.

The opposite may well be true, that is, that failure to assimilate will result in failure to flourish. America has a tangible culture based on individual liberty, personal responsibility, and  a strong work ethic. These cultural values are a recipe for nearly guaranteed success. Those who do not embrace these values as their own are not likely to share in the American dream.

But the Irish did, and they succeeded. Handsomely.

According to the Washington Post, over 34.5 million Americans claim Irish heritage. “That number is, incidentally, seven times larger than the population of Ireland itself (4.68 million).”

Which explains why Ireland is a wildly popular destination for Americans investigating their ancestry.

Which reveals why we, in the interest of my half-Irish wife, are in Sligo, contemplating the mournful beauty of “Waiting On Shore.”  And contemplating the connections to America, as the bronze beauty gazes across the sea to her counterpart in Gloucester.

It is a small world indeed.