From the hour of their birth, wrote Aristotle, some are marked for subjection, others for rule.

This tossup—whether you are born into privilege or poverty—determines everything. Where you live, or don’t live. How you are treated, or mistreated. Your blood code. Your zip code.

Add to that, the social, political, cultural, even agricultural consequences of centuries of rebellion and colonization and conquest, and—for generations of Irish people—the decision to leave became a frequent, if involuntary act.

Persecution pushes people out. It’s immutable, a binary blockage. It’s also inhuman.

Choosing to leave can hardly be called a choice.

Paul Muldoon writes:

I sigh constantly to be in Ireland,
where I still had some authority,
rather than living among foreigners,
dejected, dog-tired.

What must it have been like to secede from all that you know, to rescind your connectedness, the roots of your selfhood and strength?

There is no word in Irish for immigrant. There is only a word for exile.