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Joe Biden, Irish Leader Call for Immigration Reform

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Joe Biden hosted Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny today for an annual St. Patrick’s Day breakfast, and both leaders took the opportunity to call upon Congress to pass immigration reform.

Irish-Americans have long had a stake in the immigration reform debate, with the US Council on Irish Immigration hosting another lobby day on Capitol Hill just this week.  As Kenny said, according to Buzzfeed:

We’ve got 50,000 here in America, undocumented. And what we want is a process of legalization, where they pay their taxes, pay their way, raise their families, travel home and travel back.  To do that, in terms of the numbers that are in this country, is what’s going to make America. Is what’s going to regenerate it from generation to generation…

It is the frustration of people who look at elected representatives who say, ‘why can’t you do these things?

Biden praised Kenny for his advocacy of immigration reform and issued his own call for action on the issue, saying that US strength comes from “a significant wave of immigration that never stops. Because that’s what revitalizes this country.”