IAUC President Responds to St Louis Dispatch Article

To the Editor:

Bill McClellan’s June 12 article, “St. Louisan’s Troubles Linger Despite Irish Peace,” takes a deft and well deserved jab at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (CIS) refusal to act on Matthew Morrison’s request to visit Northern Ireland. Morrison wants only to visit the land where he was born, long after the British rulers of Northern Ireland and Irish Republicans concluded a settlement of their 30-year war.

Irish Republicans now sit in the Northern Ireland Assembly in Stormont in Belfast, as well as in the Irish Republic’s parliament, the Dáil, in Dublin — past members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army serve in both bodies. One past IRA member, Martin McGuinness, now sits as Deputy First Minister in the Stormont Assembly in Belfast. Still other Irish Republicans serve daily in the Assembly and other elective offices north and south and all got there the old fashioned way: they were elected.

The CIS, however, seems to have its gaze fixed firmly backward in ignoring Morrison’s request to return to his native home for a short visit. Morrison now makes his home in St. Louis, where he and his wife have raised a family and where he serves the medical community on a daily basis as a registered nurse — including teaching classes for the Saint Louis Police Department.

Sadly, CIS head Chester Moyer refused even to speak to Bill McClellan. Instead, Moyer had a hostile underling call McClellan, shedding neither light on Morrison’s request nor reflecting credit on CIS..

Does this refusal to allow a man to return home reflect the American Government’s support of the 1998 Belfast Agreement or is he some petty bureaucrat with a grudge?

Thomas J. Burke, Jr.
President
Irish American Unity Conference