Pub, Network of Countrymen Make U.S. Life a Wee Bit Better

Gerry Mackey is sitting at the door of his Costa Mesa pub, the Harp Inn, where he greets--by name--each person who enters.

Inside, the pub is noisy, but not from loud music or even the wide-screen TV in the corner, where a Boston Celtics basketball game plays silently. The lively din comes from the customers--laughing, telling stories, trading jokes.

“The art of conversation is one of the greatest things we have to offer,” says Mackey, stroking his graying beard. “Everybody knows everybody, which is rare for bars in Southern California.”

Plenty of bars put a shamrock or a leprechaun on the sign and call themselves Irish, but only a handful actually resemble a real Irish pub. Back home, the pub is a social center, not just a place to drink.

“Our pub could, to a certain extent, be any little village pub in Ireland,” says Mackey, and the clientele seems to bear out his boast. Irish brogues are everywhere, and the regulars include everyone from Irish-Americans several generations removed from their roots to new immigrants right off the plane.

For Orange County’s Irish, scattered over the suburban landscape, such spots as the Harp and the newer International Pub and Platter in Newport Beach provide a cultural touchstone, a place to share a common heritage for a people who cherish community values.

“There’s a lot of Irish in Southern California,” says Mackey, “but it’s so spread out, it’s difficult to get together in any sort of numbers.”

In the 1980 census, the most recent local statistics available, 67,802 people in Orange County listed Irish as their single ancestry, while almost 300,000 more said they were at least partly Irish. With no cohesive communities like those in such cities as Boston, New York and Chicago, Orange County’s Irish community has been, until recent years, sprawling and largely assimilated.

But since the early ‘80s, the local Irish community has been infused with a shot of new blood, as many young Irish have fled a stagnant economy that offers few job opportunities. The official unemployment rate in the Republic of Ireland has topped 20%, with the jobless rate for workers under 25 roughly twice that.

So Ireland has lost a young, highly educated generation that has left the island nation’s fabled green for the green of better job prospects abroad. Many have come to the United States, and while a good percentage settled in Irish communities in the East and Midwest, others have been enticed West by sunshine and a healthy economy. Some of them arrived legally, others not.

Since 1982, about 35,000 Irish have emigrated legally to the United States, while about 40,000 more have overstayed their tourist visas and stayed illegally to work and live, according to figures provided by the Irish Consulate in San Francisco. All told, more than 175,000 have left the country in the last decade.

Best guesses within Orange County’s Irish community are that several thousand illegal Irish make their homes here.

While most recent immigrants are from the Republic of Ireland, others have come from Northern Ireland. Though that country, part of the United Kingdom, is torn by political and religious unrest, recently arrived Northern Ireland nationals interviewed for this article say they came for jobs, just as their brethren to the south.

Together, they form an almost invisible network--the women working largely as live-in domestic help, the men in construction.

Conor (not his real name) is one who came to Huntington Beach. He decided it was time to leave his County Meath home in the Republic of Ireland nearly five years ago, after placing number 2,400 out of more than 4,000 who took a civil service exam.

The number of job openings? Six.

“The early ‘80s were a bad time for Ireland,” Conor said. About two-thirds of those with whom he graduated left the country, he said.

Like many Irish men here illegally, Conor works in construction. He started in New York City, but headed west with a friend when the cold and grime became too much. Many of the illegal Irish, Conor said, hold college degrees, but cannot hope to land better-paying jobs because of their undocumented status.

“There are people here, well-educated, that are wasting their careers in construction because they’re not legal and can’t get the jobs they’re trained for,” Conor said.

“I got in the habit of being sneaky,” confessed Niaiamh Smythe, who came to Southern California on a tourist visa, planning to stay just three months before returning to college in Ireland.

“I was going to school from 7 in the morning to 10 at night, and when summer came--and summer in Ireland isn’t very summery--I said, ‘OK, I’ll go to California and get skinny and tan and come back in fall,’ ” Smythe said. “That was 4 1/2 years ago.”

Being an undocumented alien did not keep her from getting a job with a jeweler as a diamond appraiser, work she had done back home. But then the new immigration law passed in 1986, requiring employers to get proof of legal status from employees. Too embarrassed to tell her employers she was here illegally, Smythe told them she had been called back home because her mother had been in an accident.

She has since started the paper work to become legal. When she started, she was told all she needed was $2,000 and a sponsor, but so far the process has taken three years and cost $3,500. She still does not have her green card, but she does have a labor certificate to allow her to work while she continues the process.

Smythe and most other Irish illegals didn’t qualify for the amnesty program because they hadn’t been in the country long enough.

Obtaining legal status requires a sponsor, a job and enough money to pay a lawyer to get through the Immigration and Naturalization Service red tape. Once an application has been approved, the applicant must go through interviews at the American Embassy in the country of origin. For Smythe, that means flying back to Dublin once she is given notice to appear.

In the meantime, Smythe is working as a nanny in Long Beach and studying at the university there for a music and drama degree.

Margaret (not her real name), 26, is also a Dubliner and a nanny for a Huntington Beach family. She has been here four years and has applied for a Donnelly visa, a special visa for west Europeans dispensed by lottery. But she does not have a lawyer or any plans to hire one.

She said she is in no hurry because she is so attached to the family for which she works. She is paid $250 a week, plus gas money for her car and all her phone bills and room and board. She has two charges, a teen-age boy and a 5-year-old girl. The girl attends school in the morning and Margaret is free to go her own way.

Although she is happy with her present situation, that was not the case with the family that flew her from Ireland.

“A lot of them just look for slave labor--they don’t care if you don’t have a green card,” Margaret said. “When I first came I made $90 a week plus room and board, but they wanted someone to cook their meals and clean (the house) and watch the kids.”

Helping young Irish women who have come over as nannies is a job Monica Keogh has been doing for years. As founding president of the Orange County chapter of the Ancient Order of Hibernian, she has aided young women in finding jobs and networking with other Irish in the county.

The order, she said, was founded in the 1800s “for the protection of priests and domestics at a time when the Irish were facing great discrimination in this country,” Keogh said.

She and her husband, John, came to California more than 30 years ago from their native Ireland when John was transfered by the aerospace firm where he worked. They moved from Northern California to Huntington Beach eight years ago.

Though she never had to face being an illegal immigrant, Keogh said she understands the difficulties of being an undocumented worker from the young women she has met over the years.

“To be young and illegal is terrible. Their life style does not allow them to flourish,” she said with a sigh. She has many tales of young Irish who have been victimized because of their illegal status.

“I’ve heard of young men starting painting businesses and then not being paid when the job is done because the contractor found they were illegal,” Keogh said. Some girls she knows “after five years are being paid $80 a week and giving money to their employers for a lawyer, and still don’t have a green card,” she said.

All in all, though, Orange County’s financial and recreational opportunities are enough to keep Conor and others working here--at least for the time being. But all the undocumented Irish interviewed for this story talk of returning home someday.

“I’ll probably stay in the States awhile. It’s a great place to spend your 20s,” Conor said. “But when you’re thinking of settling down, Ireland’s a better country for raising your kids. That sounds terrible--what I mean is, you always want your kids to be reared the same way you were reared,” he said.

Living here but planning to return home someday can keep some of the Irish from getting into serious relationships with Americans. One woman said she was engaged to an American for a time, but the differences in culture put a strain on them and the relationship ended.

What are the differences? Most of the Irish interviewed, used to the tight social fabric of friends and neighbors back home, said they felt Americans were less sincere in their relationships.

“Here couples get married and the first sign of frustration they get a divorce,” Conor said. Divorce is still illegal in Ireland after a recent ballot measure to legalize it failed.

Another Irishman said Californians take friendship too lightly.

“They’re your friend this week, in a month they move on,” he said. “Back home you know you can count on a friend to stand by you in a rough time.”

Feelings of isolation are not confined to undocumented Irish, but are shared by many of the newly arrived who come legally.

“Particularly in Ireland, the sense of community, the attachment, are much stronger than you would find here,” said Cairen Murtagh of Newport Beach. His wife, Deirdre, agreed: “One is far more anonymous here.”

On the surface, the Murtaghs would seem a shining immigrant success story. A scant 14 months after arriving from Ireland, the couple enjoy well-paying jobs in their chosen fields--he as a research chemist, she as a financial analyst--and make their home in an upscale Newport Beach condominium within sight of the Pacific.

Still, memories of the life left behind have proved hard to shake. Once, the Murtaghs talked about applying for U.S. citizenship after the minimum five years; now, they believe they might return home one day.

“It would be foolish to view Ireland with totally rose-colored glasses,” allowed Deirdre, 32. But, she said, “It seems most people we talk to talk about going back.”

Although the economy in the Republic of Ireland has stabilized somewhat, jobs there remain scarce. Many Irish in Orange County plan to stay at least for a time and are doing their best to adjust.

The Murtaghs are helping to create an Irish Network in Southern California, patterned after one in the San Francisco Bay Area. The organization, with 120 members so far (about 20 of them in Orange County), publishes a membership directory and organizes events. A recent talk drew more than 300 people.

“It seems to be mostly of interest to the recently arrived,” said Cairen Murtagh, although he estimates about 25% of the group’s members are Irish-Americans. The network, which provides a chance to make both business and social contacts, is an attempt to create an Irish sense of community in fast-paced Southern California.

“It’s working out that way,” Murtagh, 39, said. “Our social life has picked up considerably.”

Leonore Coyne is an Irish-American who has come up with her own way to bring the community together. She put together a two-day Irish fair, held earlier this month in Laguna Beach, with authentic food, entertainment and contests. The event raised money for Straight Ahead Inc., a residential drug abuse program in Dana Point.

“I wanted to bring back the times when I was very young,” Coyne explained. Her father was an Irishman, and when Leonore was a youngster in Los Angeles, “every week he would bring me and my brother to these Irish dances at places that aren’t even there any more.”

The Brothers of St. Patrick Novitiate in Midway City has become one network for the Irish in Orange County. Brother Edwin Guidera, himself an Irishman, is active in trying to establish an Irish youth center along with Keogh.

One of the reasons the novitiate has attracted the Irish is through the Irish soccer leagues that play their games on the brothers’ field.

“We let them use the field in exchange for fund-raising support,” said Brother Edwin, as he is most often called.

Because the novitiate has become a meeting place for the Irish, Brother Edwin has organized events specifically for them. To mark St. Patrick’s Day, Sunday’s Mass will be said in Gaelic--complete with a locally based Gaelic choir--and a celebration will follow.

But perhaps the biggest social centers for local Irish remain the pubs--especially the Harp Inn. The Costa Mesa pub offers live Irish entertainment three nights a week, along with lessons in Irish dancing and Gaelic, and sponsors several sports teams: Irish and English soccer, hurling and Gaelic football.

Videos of soccer games from back home are played on the pub’s televisions, as are Irish newscasts broadcast weekly by a Los Angeles television station. Some American sports are popular too--especially Notre Dame football. The Harp has darts and Guiness beer on tap--it doesn’t have pool tables, video games or a jukebox.

And though the conversation flows, two topics stay largely off-limits: “Politics and religion are things that we don’t discuss,” says Mackey. While people keep informed on the situation in Northern Ireland, they keep their opinions on the matter--and any affiliations to the combatants--to themselves, according to Mackey.

“It’s kind of a unique place in Orange County. It’s not a yuppie bar,” says Greg Kelley, an Irish-American who convenes local meetings of a Notre Dame alumni club at the Harp. “It’s just a friendly Irish pub.”

Denis Murray and Terry McCarten are the Mulligans, an Irish music duo that has played pubs throughout Southern California for 10 years. The Mulligans also have some rock songs in their repertory, but can leave those aside when they play the Harp every Friday night.

“You know you have a real crowd when they just want the Irish stuff,” McCarten said. “We get a great response from the crowd here.”

Set next to an industrial park behind Newport Boulevard, the Harp is easy to miss. But its reputation hasn’t suffered--it has even been written up in a small-town Irish newspaper.

“For some reason or another, they’re pretty quick to find it,” owner Mackey said of his customers. Though the Harp is just 2 years old, a number of marriages have already come of meetings there.

Mackey, who first toured California as part of an Irish soccer team and fell in love with the weather, moved here from County Armagh in Ireland 10 years ago. “It’s a big culture shock coming to the U.S. for the first time,” he said. The Harp, he said, “gives them a little bit of the old sod.”

Maresa Archer is a Fullerton-based free-lance writer; Rick VanderKnyff is a Times staff writer in the Calendar section.