July 11, 2002
Mark Skelton had been working as an investment banker in London for six years when, as he puts it, "things went horribly wrong" in August 1998. The County Down, Northern Ireland native took a couple years off to travel before finding his way to Mt. Vernon in 2000, working for Metrocall on Route 1.
He served served as director of the investor relations department before that department disbanded and he started working on special projects for the company.
SKELTON IS ONE of 250 young people from Northern Ireland in the United States on a special program, the Walsh Visa Program, that has granted them a three-year visa to come work in the country. About half of the 63 participants in the Washington area work and live in Fairfax County. Other participants work in Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
The program was first proposed in 1998 by New York Rep. James Walsh (R) as part of the Northern Irish peace effort. The first wave of participants arrived in 2000. Northrop Grumman administers the program on behalf of the State Department with the aid of Irish government agencies.
People in the program are matched up with participating employers who agree not to help them get a permanent work visa. Participants are allowed to change employers once during their time in the United States. They may also return to Ireland at any time.
The idea, according to Marcia Hoexter, a Northrop Grumman employee who manages the Washington chapter of the program, was to remove people from the political tensions and bleak economic situation of Northern Ireland and give them work opportunities in the United States. When they return to Ireland, she said, they will be able to benefit from the work experience they gained here.
"It's also an opportunity to give them the exposure to individuals from a variety of different cultures and backgrounds," she added. "It's not unusual for somebody to come here and be working alongside people from Pakistan and Afghanistan or India and Pakistan. It's a real eye-opener."
IN ORDER TO make participants sensitive to this cultural diversity, participants undergo a six-week training course before they arrive to learn conflict resolution skills.
Ideally, said Hoexter, when participants return, they will not only be more employable but they will also be less likely to succumb to the sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland.
"One of our challenges is to get them to recognize it's not the same person going back," she said.
"On the whole they're more tolerant," said Brooke Wetzel, who works for the program. "They may still get caught up in some of the issues but they pause and think about it a little more."
There are strict eligibility requirements to take part in the program. Participants must be between the ages of 18 and 35, they must have been unemployed for at least three months and they must be residents of Northern Ireland or six counties in the Republic of Ireland that border Northern Ireland. Several participants are also eliminated during the predeparture training.
"The ones that come are the ones that really want to work hard and that are looking at it as a wonderful way to jumpstart their career," said Hoexter.
Participants receive a stipend for their first month here and bridge health insurance until the benefits from their jobs kick in. The program also provides temporary housing for the first 45 days.
PARTICIPANTS DESCRIBED themselves as very satisfied with the program even though many said they did not benefit particularly from the conflict resolution training.
"I was very open-minded to begin with," said Eamon Faulkner, who lives and works in Reston.
"I did not find the training particularly beneficial," said Skelton. Skelton added, however, that he did enjoy spending time with the other program participants during the training.
Having travelled a lot before joining the program, Skelton said he was ready to be thrust into a new culture, even though he found that travelling through a country was different than living there.
"When you travel, people are very open with you because you're not going to be there for a very long time," he said. When travellers settle somewhere, he said, "people are more guarded in general."
Skelton added that living in the United States gave him a greater degree of freedom.
"This is a much bigger place," he said. In Ireland, he said, "if you blow your nose everybody knows about it. It can be a little claustrophobic."