Elaine Brennan was in London in 1994 when her mother phoned to say she’d won the lottery. Not the Lotto, you understand, although almost as lucrative and life-changing. It was the lottery for Morrison visas, which allowed about 45,000 Irish people to live and work in the United States at a time when the economy here was ailing.
“There was almost 20pc unemployment,” Brennan recalls. “I remember looking at job applications, and the only one I could get an interview for was washing dishes in a hotel in Ennis, and that was with a science degree.”
The mothers of Ireland knew how tough it was, which is why Elaine Brennan’s mum applied for the lottery without even telling her. “She did it all. She saw an ad in the newspaper and filled out the application. There’s a lot of funny stories like that. One guy in California, his girlfriend’s aunt applied for his visa, because the girlfriend was going and the aunt wanted them to be together.
“He got the visa, they both went to the States, then broke up, and he’s now married to an American.”
The reason Brennan knows all these stories is because she is on the board of the Bruce Morrison Legacy Foundation, along with Denis O’Brien, Niall O’Dowd and Loretta Brennan Glucksman. It is organising a celebration to mark the 30th anniversary of the visa programme, including a gala night in October in New York, due to be attended by writer Colum McCann and fiddle player Martin Hayes – another pair of lottery winners.
As well as showing “gratitude” to Morrison, a former Congressman for Connecticut, the foundation wants to proclaim the advantages of emigration, “if done in the right way, within a legal framework, and with the right intentions”, Brennan says.
It’s not a political organisation, she stresses over coffee in a Dublin hotel during a recent trip back to Ireland from her home in Manhattan. Extolling the benefits of immigration could be regarded as a political statement, though, given the hardline stance being taken by president Donald Trump’s administration, including sealing the border and mass deportations. Is this really the right time for such a campaign?
“Speaking for myself, I feel it’s absolutely the best time, because we can showcase that legal immigration has benefits. And I’ve heard Trump, president Trump, say that he is all for legal immigration,” she says. “So what’s happening now is, I guess, he’s resetting [policy]. There’s never going to be a good time for this, in my opinion. But if it’s not now, when?”
I get a lot of [companies saying] ‘thank you for stopping me coming to the States, because I don’t have the funds’
The Immigration Act of 1990, championed by Bruce Morrison and senator Ted Kennedy, allocated 40,000 green cards each year for three years to countries that had done badly under previous programmes, and Ireland got about 40pc of them.
The foundation is asking Irish ‘lottery winners’ to put their stories online, and it’s flushed out some fascinating ones. Don O’Neill from Kerry landed in New York in 1993, armed only with a desire to make it in the fashion industry. Now he’s dressed some of the most famous women in the world, including Oprah Winfrey when she accepted an Oscar at the 2012 Academy Awards.
Michael Brewster from Longford worked in Lehman Brothers during the week, “while moonlighting as a horse-and-carriage driver in Central Park on weekends to make ends meet”.
Deirdre O’Connor from Cork began her job search in New York by turning $20 into quarters and then cold-calling recruiters from a payphone. She eventually became managing director at Goldman Sachs and is now CFO of Cerberus Capital Management.
Brennan says the visa-holders include “fantastic” business people who’ve hired local Americans, and generated millions. “We’ve contributed economically, and to society and culture – Pauline Turley, who runs the Irish Arts Centre, is a Morrison visa holder. There’s bar owners, carpenters, plumbers, and scientists, who brought their skills to the United States, and passed them on.”
She does a rough calculation: let’s say 20,000 of those visa holders went on to have careers in America, and paid taxes for those 30 years. Based on the average graduate wage, that would be a contribution of $9bn. Using the multiplier effect, she estimates it could total $30bn-$40bn.
I have J1ers calling me, dozens of them, and it’s a very tricky situation
When she first arrived, Brennan moved in with a family friend in Miami. She had little money, but also no debt, as many young Americans would have after their college education. Therefore “we did not burden the country”, she says. “We didn’t put a burden on Ireland either, because we weren’t going on the dole.”
She got a job working in research and development for a small pharma company in Florida, with a salary of $13,000. After two years Brennan went to Boston to work in a spin-off from MIT with the unfortunate name Metabolix. “My dad was not a happy camper telling people where I worked,” she laughs.
During her time there, Brennan patented a biodegradable chewing gum, which was bought by one of the big multinationals. You’d think that would set her up for life; she actually got $5. “It was ahead of its time,” she says of the gum. “It fell under the research tech transfer of MIT, so the college really owns the patent.
“Working in Northwell now, and with scientists, I understand it a lot more. But back then, I’m like ‘how do I only get this?’ Big companies would suck up these patents, just to take us out of the market.”
Brennan’s career has since taken her to Roche, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, and AbbVie, and she had a role with Enterprise Ireland helping Irish life-science companies that were thinking of having a crack at the American market. Now, as executive director of global strategic partnerships with Northwell, a US healthcare giant, she is still helping Irish companies to do that.
“We vet them and, if they’re ready, introduce them into the system, for either a deal, clinical trial or even investment. Through our programme, we have brought over 100 companies in. I would have engaged with over 250. They don’t all make it.
“I get a lot of [companies saying] ‘thank you for stopping me coming to the States, because I don’t have the funds, or my IP isn’t secure enough, so I’m going to focus more on the European market until I get more cash in the bank or more investment’. America is costly and complicated. It’s not like ‘oh, I will just give it a shot’.”
Individuals still want to give America a shot, of course, and Brennan is regularly contacted by students who want help to get in. “I have J1ers calling me, dozens of them, and it’s a very tricky situation,” she says. “They get graduate J1s, which last one year. But then you’re asking a corporation to hire someone for a year. By the time the person is trained, the year is up.
Were the streets paved with gold? No, they were not. We worked our tails off. We grafted, we did whatever it took for our careers
“I think there needs to be further reform of the immigration laws, because the Morrison visa holders are a testimony to the benefits.”
Are the laws not more likely to be tightened rather than loosened, I ask. “For now, they [the Trump administration] are definitely taking a stringent look,” she agrees. “But part of the reason this is the best time to do what we’re doing is to reignite the success that Bruce Morrison had.
“That was actually supposed to be the Kennedy Visa, by the way, except Niall O’Dowd lobbied and said ‘this should be the Bruce Morrison visa. The Kennedys got enough’.”
While students and graduates are finding it harder to get into America, some scientists are bailing out. That’s because of cuts to research programmes, with Trump cancelling thousands of grants and withholding billions of dollars from scientists. Projects at Harvard and Colombia universities have been cut off. A brain drain looms.
Does Brennan fear an outflow of scientists? “Yeah, I would see that as highly likely, just because now, with federal cuts and as Trump slashed a lot of research, we’re seeing a hit, even in Northwell. We have lost some.
“What happens is when a physician or PhD gets a grant, it’s usually matched funding. When all those grants are gone, we’re left with 50pc of the salary to cover, but we’ve hundreds of researchers. So it is going to be very tight over the next while.”
Brennan has no plans to return permanently, but loves going to see her parents in Milltown Malbay – “or as my father says, Milltown Malibu” – and doesn’t feel like an emigrant. “I think that word needs to be changed,” she says. “Because it had that connotation of people leaving and never coming back. I’m over and back all the time. My son was in Glenstal and he’s now in Maynooth University and loves it.”
She’s in contact with Bruce Morrison, now 80, who is reading all the stories online about how his visa programme changed lives. “It’s quite emotional for him to feel that, after 30 years, ‘they’re going to acknowledge me’. He wants to change the mindset and the look and feel of emigration. It’s not a dirty word. Look at the power and the positive impact this had had in the United States.”
The lottery winners came to America with little money, she points out, and the first few years were tough and lonely, working low-paid jobs, getting just two weeks’ holidays per annum, saving up to buy call cards to phone home at the weekend.
“Were the streets paved with gold? No, they were not. We worked our tails off. We grafted, we did whatever it took for our careers. We were handed nothing. But the gratitude we have is profound, because it allowed us build our careers and families here, and to keep our ties back to Ireland.
