Saint Patrick Was An Undocumented Immigrant. Happy Saint Patrick’s day! 🍀
Most Irish are generations away from the immigrant experience, but a reflection on it could be meaningful, specially in this Saint Patrick’s day.
Hopefully this reflection brings empathy for the immigrants of today.
History tells that Saint Patrick was an outsider in Ireland, he was taken to that country against his will. As an immigrant/refugee, he experienced hardship and suffering.
I recently listened to Lydia O’Kane’s interview of father Micheál MacCraith and some of his words stood out to me:
“Saint Patrick was our first known immigrant to Ireland and when we think today, maybe how harshly we tend to treat immigrants, we should remember that St Patrick was or very first immigrant…”
In the United States alone, there was a time when St. Patrick’s Day celebrations were condemned and everything else about the Irish. The Irish were one of the first major immigrant groups to settle in the United States and as they arrived, others would say: “There goes the neighborhood.”
Saint Patrick’s day is a special time we should use to help ourselves and others evaluate our attitude towards migrants and refugees. Thinking about the plight of Saint Patrick, we should realize that his struggle to live and integrate into a new culture is very much the same struggle faced by immigrants in the United States and across the world today.
And so today, let us send a prayer for the migrants at home who like Saint Patrick experience rejection and hardship. Let us send a prayer for refugees abroad who face challenges arising from war and poverty.
Lastly, we should keep an open mind and an open heart towards immigrants. History has proven consistently that new waves of immigrants, like the Chinese, the Italian or the Irish only make us better.
