A student asked another Council contender, the Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger, his opinion of the immigration bills Congress is debating this week. After Mr. Silbiger, an immigration attorney, gave his response, the discussion apparently was going to waft away.
Mr. O’Leary, however, was determined to shoehorn himself into the debate before his chance vanished.
Discussing the volatile subject later with thefrontpageonline.com, Mr. O’Leary said that “when I finished, the students cheered. They were jubilant. I did not expect that. They were very supportive.”
It is not clear if Mr. O’Leary’s stunning admission will influence his chances of winning on April 11 when he, Mr. Silbiger and first-time challenger Scott Malsin compete for two City Council seats.
Any potential fallout will be monitored in the coming days.
At length, the forty-year-old first-time candidate for public office traced his steps since arriving in the United States from Ireland in 1989 as a college student.
During the three years that he was illegal, he said that he stepped every day with extreme care.
The son of an Irish police chief, he was determined not to break any American laws, not to give law enforcement authorities any reason to question him, investigate his status as a foreign visitor and perhaps punish him permanently.
The ordinary manner in which Mr. O’Leary extricated himself from this extraordinarily untidy situation is the stuff that leprechaun stories are composed of.
Was It a Miracle?
As Mr. O’Leary related the details, after he had been in this country for four years, two Boston area politicians made a remarkable discovery:
Some fifty thousand visas that were being allotted to one hundred and sixty two countries were going unused every year.
The Massachusetts politicians, resolved to devise a way in which their Irish brethren could benefit from this potential windfall.
A lottery was created.
Ultimately, says Mr. O’Leary, Ireland, with a little help from their friends in Boston, landed all but two thousand of the fifty thousand visas.
Mr. O’Leary and his brother, who was in the same alien predicament, immediately saw a chance to wipe out their untidiness with the law.
The O’Learys and eight of their immigrant funds chipped in to fly Mr. O’Leary’s brother to Washington, D.C. The idea was to give the notoriously slow Post Office a shove by mailing the required qualifying documentation as near as possible to the immigration offices. They wanted to make certain that immigration authorities would receive the papers before the deadline.
To condense a lengthy story, when Mr. O’Leary, among others, flew to Dublin and showed up on the doorstep of the American Embassy.
He entered the embassy with the previously offered guarantee under his arm that he would not be penalized for having heavily overstayed his visa.
The only thorny issue, evidently, was whether he ever had violated other American laws. He had not, he said.
Mr. O’Leary was awarded his visa, and subsequently he obtained a green card, all necessary foundational steps before applying for citizenship.
Further, by the candidate’s account, ever since leaving the embassy, he has been scrupulously following the laws of America, down to the softest, least acknowledged ones.
Readers of thefrontpageonline.com will recall that two years ago this spring, Mr. O’Leary recounted every painstaking detail of a bizarre snafu two years ago January.
He intended to run for City Council in the ’03 election. But he was denied the opportunity when documentation from his citizenship ceremonies the previous summer could not be located in time.
And so, it seems, on the twelfth day after St. Patrick’s Day, miracles alternately have shined and frowned on the Irish candidate.
