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Today will mark the fourth St Patrick's day to pass since I first started writing about immigration reform and migrant rights. And as any blogger who's been doing this for any amount of time can tell you, blog years are like dog years, and over three years in blogtopia can seem like a half a lifetime.
Two years ago, in 2006, this day had brought great promise.
The Kennedy-McCain Bill was making its way through the Senate and the first wave of the great immigration rallies were but only days away. Millions, including Irish and other immigrants from around the world, would take to the streets and demand meaningful reform.
We all thought change would surely come....yet it hasn't.
I'm not Irish, and don't partake in the revelry that marks the day. It usually passed for me rather uneventfully. But once I started blogging about immigration, in some strange way, it's become a milestone that marks the passage of time.
Somewhere today in the mainstream media, or in the blogosphere, there will be a story about what's become annual rite of spring that takes place every St Patrick's Day.
At a parade in New York, or Boston, or in the halls of Congress in Washington, some political leader will pose with members of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform , or some other advocacy group, and make promises they have no intention of keeping.
Donning their best green ties, and an eagerness to pander on the day when "everyone's Irish," even the most ardent anti-immigration hawk will promise to "look into the Irish immigration situation." ... but of course they won't.
So to mark this day I have chosen not to write the obligatory St Patrick's Day "Politicians Promise" post ...instead I offer a story first published in the Boston Globe this past January.
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