Benson had worked briefly on Wall Street when he was first in New York on a J-1 exchange visa, so he was ready to pick up where he’d left off. Wall Street in the 1980s was dazzling—the stuff of Hollywood glamor in films like Wall Street (1987) and Working Girl (1988). New York, city of possibilities, was where he would start his life. He talked his way into a tourist visa at the U.S. consulate in Dublin, packed his bags, and soon found himself sharing a city with the Statue of Liberty—and millions of dreamers and strivers. There was nobody to greet him at the airport when he arrived, but a friend had a place in Woodside, Queens, where he could crash. He and about ten other guys, all of them undocumented, stayed there. Within a couple of days, he had landed a job at a restaurant on the east side of Manhattan.
Six months later when his visa expired, Benson stayed.
As an immigrant without legal status or work authorization in the United States, Benson joined a growing cohort. Between 1982 and 1986, hundreds of thousands of Irish people—as much as 10 percent of Ireland’s population—fled a cratering economy at home. Nearly 150,000, like Benson, sought a new life in New York.
In 1987 alone some 105,000 Irish people entered the United States as temporary visitors, with 81,000 listing “pleasure” as their reason for travel. That unemployment in Ireland stood at 19 percent at the time hinted that many of these tourists intended to stay in the United States and seek work. Overstaying nonimmigrant visas was hardly unique to the Irish. A government commission that studied immigration had recommended in its 1981 report that the United States devote more resources to investigating people who overstayed temporary visas (and “student visa abusers”). Though they entered the country with permission, those who continued to live and work here beyond the terms of their visa did so without authorization.