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I HAVE WRITTEN on several previous occasions about what it was like to grow up in a very Irish Boston in the 1980s and 1990s. Strange as it may sound in 2026, a majority of my pals had one or two Irish born parents. The vast majority of these women and men hailed from counties on the western seaboard. And the vast majority of those were from Galway.

Moreover, the young Irish were everywhere. My contemporaries and I formed lifelong friendships with our Irish cousins who, having been given phone numbers and addresses by their parents, came to our family homes in search of a sanctuary, a decent meal and, in some instances, details of potential work opportunities. Loads of them benefited from my uncle’s Donnelly Visa or the Morrison Visa programme that succeeded it.

Still, there were plenty who were unlucky and did not manage to regularise their status. Prior to 9/11, they could breathe fairly easily in their adopted United States, and even travel back and forth to Ireland. When the Twin Towers fell, however, there was a definite change. It tightened up considerably.

Whether owing to a stricter immigration regime or a booming Celtic Tiger economy, thousands returned home to a country that had changed significantly. As has been chronicled extensively, the amount of Irish born residents of the US has declined precipitously in recent decades. That said, I am invariably struck on visits by how many remained and by how many have continued to move to Boston in pursuit of an increasingly elusive American Dream.

Séamus Culleton is one of them. A plasterer by trade, who had two uncles in the Boston area, the promise of a fresh start in life and well-paid work in a fantastic place had to be a strong allure when he left his native Kilkenny........

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