Atop Rockefeller, a celebration of luck, labor and the long arc of migration
On a glittering evening at the top of Rockefeller Center, with the Manhattan skyline folding into dusk, about 40 recipients of what they still call the Morrison Visa gathered to trade stories and to measure a particular kind of success: the steady, ordinary achievement that accumulates into a life remade.
- Advertisement -
The event — a gala that could have been any high‑end New York fundraiser except for the unmistakable Irish cadence in the room — was less about nostalgia than about the arc from precarious arrival to stable contribution. Among the attendees were entrepreneurs, health‑care executives and everyday citizens whose presence here traces back to a narrow window in U.S. policy that changed their families’ trajectories.
“A beacon of light”
“Many people were just hanging on by the fingertips when this came along,” said former congressman Bruce Morrison, who won passage of the provision in the 1990 Immigration Act that opened the door for tens of thousands of people from Ireland. “They were here, they weren’t supposed to be here, they couldn’t work legally here, and this was a beacon of light.”
For recipients such as Orla Maguire, founder of beauty brand Lash Star, the visa was the difference between a life circumscribed and one that could scale. “I came to New York knowing that it was the melting pot of letting and helping our dreams come true,” she told the gathering, adding that the breadth of opportunity in the city then felt unmatched.
Elaine Brennan, now an executive director at Northwell Health, described the experience less as immigration than as exploration. “We were in our early 20s, and the world is our oyster, and we happened to have won the lotto — which was the Morrison visa,” she said, capturing the randomness that many remembered.
From a lottery to livelihoods
Between 1992 and 1995, some 45,000 people from all 32 counties of Ireland came to the United States under the Morrison program, a concentrated chapter in the Irish diaspora. For many attendees on the rooftop that evening, the memory of arriving with little more than hope is still raw; so too is the gratitude for the second chance the program represented.
“It wasn’t even that I was selected for my degree or some sort of IQ test or any metric at all,” said Fergal O’Sullivan from Dublin. “It was a complete lottery.” He argued that the policy — and others like it — has produced a long shadow of benefits. “America did that for over a million people over the past 25 years, and it’s led to events like this, where you see the success that people have gotten out of it and what they’ve contributed back into the country.”
The applause that greeted such recollections was not simply celebratory. It was recognition that migration can be both a personal gamble and a civic investment: entrepreneurs who create jobs, health‑workers who staff hospitals, cultural brokers who knit communities together.
Small stories, big patterns
At one table, a retired schoolteacher from County Cork explained how her neighbor’s child, once unable to find legal work in Ireland, grew into a manager at a New York firm and now sends college money home. At another, a young tech entrepreneur spoke of securing seed funding after his early years here taught him how to hustle and network in a way that would have been impossible in his hometown.
These are not blockbuster headlines; they are quotidian accounts of upward mobility that, stitched together, form a recognizable pattern across advanced economies: migrants often fill the gaps in labor markets, start businesses at higher rates than natives and contribute disproportionately to cultural and civic life.
Celebration shadowed by changing politics
Even as the party celebrated what had been won, officials and attendees were candid about how different the climate is today. “It’s certainly a difficult environment right now for immigration, that’s just a fact,” said Geraldine Byrne Nason, Ireland’s ambassador to the United States, as the sun slid behind the towers. “At the moment, the politics of this moment clearly don’t allow that and so I think we need a second coming of a Bruce Morrison.”
Her observation reached beyond sentiment. In capitals from Dublin to Washington, debates over migration have hardened in the past decade — driven by political polarization, economic uncertainty, and the strains of global displacement. Policies once viewed as pragmatic tools to rebalance labor and family ties are now often subsumed into culture wars.
For the former congressman, the Morrison provision was born of both compassion and calculation: a way to regularize undocumented residents and give them permits to work, thereby allowing them to contribute openly to the economy. “Optimism and success,” he said when asked what Irish immigrants brought to America. “Believing in the American dream, believing that they could make a life here for themselves and their families.”
What do we want migration to be?
The rooftop conversations in New York raise questions that reverberate well beyond Irish‑American circles. As countries age and labor shortages bite, who will fill those roles? When policy becomes gridlocked by short‑term politics, what are the long‑term costs to growth and innovation? And how do political leaders balance security and sovereignty with openness and renewal?
There was a pragmatic air in the room: gratitude for the past, a recognition of present constraints, and a wistful plea for policymaking that sees migration not as a problem to be solved but as a resource to be leveraged. The Irish experience — from a lottery to livelihoods — offers a living case study in what migration can deliver when opportunity and legality intersect.
As plates were cleared and the lights of Manhattan blinked on, the guests lingered not just to savor the view but to measure the scale of what happens when policy meets people. For many, the Morrison Visa was more than paperwork: it was a ticket to possibility. The question now is whether future policies will give similar chances to others — and whether societies will remember the quiet returns that follow.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
