Gareth O'Callaghan: Re-election of Donald Trump could be trouble for undocumented Irish
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Frank Kramer is an old friend of mine. I don’t see him very often unless I visit him in Boston, where he moved to during the summer of 1980, when he was 22 years old.
He left here with Rosie, his girlfriend who was pregnant at the time, and together they started a new life in the Bay State where the Irish were always extended a warm welcome.
Like so many others, they emigrated and never returned — not for weddings or birthdays, not even for the funerals of their parents.
They couldn’t because they were undocumented — illegal aliens, as they came to be known in songs that lamented the plight of the emigrant.
Frank left school when he was 15 and started an apprenticeship as a carpenter.
Good with his hands, as he used to say, but not with his grades.
Back in the ’80s, there was no shortage of work in Massachusetts for a young man who was handy with a claw hammer and a circular saw, who knew how to hoist timber and bricks up a high scaffold.
They were offered a room in Dorchester, hugely popular back then with Irish Americans, and were made to feel at home by the locals.
On a first-night stroll around their new neighbourhood, Frank was offered full-time work within an hour of walking through the door of an Irish pub.
Barely days before, he had no hope of getting any work here; now he would be earning more money than he could ever have dreamed of.
Two years after their baby daughter was born, Frank quit full-time construction because he was often away from Rosie for days, and he took a job in the Irish pub close to where they lived.
Some nights he would end up in the cellar because word had quickly spread that an off-duty immigration officer was sitting at the bar having a drink.
Such occasions were rare. Back then, Boston was regarded as safe for undocumented Irish immigrants, considering many of the cops were first- or second-generation Irish, and there was also a sense of the importance of looking out for your own.
Even Democratic politicians like Senator Ted Kennedy and “Tip” O’Neill, as Frank says, gave the Irish living in Boston a sense of security.
“It was our home now,” he told me years ago, in a Boston accent he claimed he picked up from his daughters.
For decades, successive governments took a more lenient approach towards the undocumented Irish. They mostly left them alone, unless they engaged in crime.
Then it was game up. You didn’t want to tempt fate by swimming out of your depth in any way, and ending up being questioned by the Feds.
For two years after they arrived, they became used to a life of cash — no bank accounts until they got to know people they could trust.
They had always dreamt of owning their own place, even just a small apartment, but applying for a home loan was foolhardy.
Even friends who visited them over the years had to make their own way from Logan to Dorchester.
Frank never went near the airport because of the risks. All in all, it was a good life; but so much has changed, and not for the better.
There’s a sadness at the heart of his life now that he can’t shift.
Rosie died of cancer 12 years ago. Frank still lives in Dorchester and will be 67 shortly, a proud grandad.
Up until 2016, he had been able to comfortably forget about watching over his shoulder, about the fear of arrest and deportation.
He thought his age and his time in the States would be his ace card. That all changed when Trump became president.
Frank’s favourite topics of interest are Irish emigration and the Famine, and the history of the American civil war.
“Abraham Lincoln was the greatest president this country has ever known,” he tells me confidently.
“He saved democracy. Trump has reduced the office to a level of delinquency I never thought possible.”
I asked Frank during a phone call on Wednesday how he had reacted to the assassination attempt on Trump.
“Trump drives many of his supporters into a state of anger that borders on insanity.
“Why a kid who’s a registered member of the Republican party takes aim through the lense of an AR-15 rifle at a former Republican president seems a bit weird, until you remind yourself that madness attracts madness.”
For a man who never sat an exam, the walls of the comfortable well-lived-in home overlooking Dorchester Park that he shares with one of his daughters and her young family house more books than a mobile library.
“Boston has changed. There’s not a lot left of ‘little Ireland’, as it was known when we moved here in 1980.
“Even then, the support for the Democrats was slipping. Reagan was a very persuasive president, and eight years was a long time in the White House.
“Many dyed-in-the-wool Democrat supporters crossed over and never came back.”
So what if Trump is re-elected in November?
What does that mean for an undocumented Irishman like Frank Kramer who has paid his taxes from the day he started work there, and has given so much to his local community where he has lived for over twice the number of years he lived in Ireland?
His greatest fear is that Trump will be re-elected, and that he could be arrested and deported back to an Ireland he hasn’t set foot in since he boarded a 747 in 1980.
“Everyone is telling me his re-election is a dead cert because of what happened in Butler.
“My gut is it would have happened anyway.
“Bigger problem for America now is that he’s been elevated to a messianic status of infallibility.”
What’s most worrying is that people are being drawn to him by the prospect of all the crazy stuff he’s capable of doing if he gets back in.
On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump stated that he would “deport all undocumented migrants” living in the US — around 13m residents, including an estimated 50,000 Irish.
I asked Frank if such a prospect worries him.
“Well he did call undocumented migrants without criminal records ‘terrific people’, so maybe I’ll get to stay because I’m a terrific person,” he says with a gruff laugh.
“My biggest fear is for my daughters and my grandkids if this dictator gets his hands on the job again.
“Their homes are safe, they’re US citizens, but their lives? I’m not so sure. I worry about them.”
“He’s nothing more than a ringleader, a klaxon, more spurious than anyone I’ve ever witnessed.
“More I think about it, more I wonder why anyone would want to move to America.
“All I want is a peaceful life, but those days are definitely gone. Maybe I should just pack up and go back.”