Dr Brian J. O’Dwyer, lawyer and civil rights advocate will follow in the footsteps of his father, former City Council President Paul O’Dwyer and his uncle, former New York Mayor, The Honorable William O’Dwyer on Saturday as he leads the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade up Fifth Avenue and he cannot be prouder.
“It’s a tremendous honor. It’s the greatest that an Irish American could have in this town, to be designated as the Grand Marshal. I’m really honored by it. I’m really delighted, of course. that a part of that is to honor my work and the work of many others in the immigrant experience, and to honor immigrants as who they are and what they are, what they give to this country.
“Not only Irish immigrants, all immigrants who have come to this town and worked hard and made a better life for themselves and through hard work, made a better life for themselves and their children and their grandchildren.
“Part of what I think about regularly is my father’s story; my uncle’s story is well known, but what many people don’t know about is on the other side. My grandmother came from a farm in County Galway, she was the oldest of four children. The poverty and the hunger in the late 1800s basically forced her from her house. Her parents told her that she had to emigrate to literally keep hunger from the door.
“Alone at 16 years old, she got on a boat. No support, no nothing. And she came to America, not by choice, but because she had to. Almost immediately after she landed and she got a job as a scullery maid in one of the big mansions on Fifth Avenue. And I’ll be marching past that mansion. And I’ll be thinking of her all the way up.”
Tracing his roots to County Mayo, Brian grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and while that was not a traditional Irish neighborhood, he received a traditional upbringing which “valued all things Irish, and particularly all things Mayo.
“I went back [to Ireland] for the first time when I was 11. I’ve marched in every parade since I was five, apart from a few years when I was away in college. I’m 73 now, I’ve probably have marched in 50 parades or more.”
He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from The George Washington University in Spanish-American Literature and his Masters of Arts degree in Spanish-Language Literature from Middlebury College in Madrid. He then went on to receive his Juris Doctorate degree from Georgetown University and his Masters in Law from The George Washington University.
Almost all of his legal career has been spent at O’Dwyer & Bernstein, LLP, a law firm founded by his late father, which concentrates on personal injury, construction accidents, immigration rights, labor relations and general commercial litigation, now serving as the firm’s senior partner. It was his father’s philosophy that has guided him through life and made him a superb advocate for civil rights, especially as related to immigration reform: “My father said that ‘if I look back on the year on December 31st and all I did that last year was make money then that year was a failure.’ I think that’s been my philosophy as well. I mean, he brought me up on that. If on December 31st I look back on the year and I haven’t helped anybody or done something for others then that year is an abject failure in my life.”
Brian has been a consummate advocate for immigrants’ rights: “A big part of my professional career was during the early eighties, at the time when thousands of young Irish arrived and demanded legalization. I had been doing some work with Latin American immigrants up till that time. But, you know, you have to take care of your own first. And I did.
“They came here to this office and said ‘we need your help, this is the place where immigrants come for help.’ That’s how it got me started. There was at that point in time a big push for the legalization of the Irish, led by the work of the Irish Immigration Reform Movement. They had the legalization issue down, but I thought that we now needed to take care of the immigrants on the other side. You know, getting settled, getting jobs.”
To aid in this, he founded the Emerald Isle Immigration Center, which is the largest Irish immigrant center in the United States. In its storied history, the center has helped literally thousands of Irish men and women as they immigrated to New York City. It also serves as a focal point for the advocacy of Irish immigrant causes. Brian has served as chairman and counselor to the Asociación Tepeyac as well, which provides advocacy and services to New York’s growing Mexican community.
Often cited for his work in promoting immigrant and human rights, He received recognition from the Catholic Church by being named as a Knight of the Holy Sepulcher, a papal knighthood conferred by Edward Cardinal Egan and conferred The Child of Peace Award by the Catholic Home Bureau as well as the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
His work has been cited and awarded by the New York City Council, the government of Puerto Rico and the State of New York. He has also been recognized for his work in the Clinton Administration by an award citing his outstanding public service.
Asked whether he saw a light at the end of the tunnel for Immigration Reform, currently stalled in Congress and the White House, he was optimistic for the future and scathing of the current system: “Yes, eventually there must be reform. The reason I think that, though I’ve been wrong before is that the present immigration system doesn’t do anybody any good. It is an equal opportunity destroyer. It has deprived us of skilled workers. It has deprived us of unskilled workers who work in the restaurants and on farms. In New England now there are restaurants and hotels closing because they can’t get help.
“So we’ve deprived ourselves of that. Deprived the people who are here of due process and ability to regularize themselves. There’s not one good thing about our present immigration system. So eventually, though I don’t know when it’s going to be, but eventually, big business, small business, immigrant advocates are all going to have to come together.”
Despite stepping back a little from his roles both at O’Dwyer & Bernstein and the Emerald Isle, he is not resting in his ‘retirement’ and sees it as an opportunity for doing more good work: “I’m going to be out and I’m going to be out fighting for immigrants, fighting for people that don’t have people to fight for them. And I’ll be in Albany and I’ll be in Washington and I’ll be in New York. I’ll be making sure that people who get the short end of the stick don’t get it anymore.”
Brian has also been actively involved in advancing Ireland’s cause in the United States and he serves as a member of the Board of Ireland West Airport in Knock, County Mayo, where he met Pope Francis when he visited there, an meeting that he will never forget: “It was a wonderful experience to meet with him. He exudes holiness. You can tell this is a man of great, great character.”
He and his wife Marianna are also actively Dublin City University who “have a wonderful program called Access where kids from the west and the slums of Dublin can go and get extra support and financial help so that they can afford a third level education. People ask doesn’t Ireland have virtually free third level education?
“I answer that while that may be so, if you’re on a farm in Mayo or Sligo, you’ve got to move to Dublin and you have to live there and that’s not cheap. So the Access program at Dublin City University provides support for a few hundred kids there. It’s a wonderful thing to watch these kids from say Mayo or Sligo, you know, Galway and Roscommon who would never be able to go to third level education and watch them blossom as they do.”
One of his greatest accomplishments for immigration reform was when he helped convince the late New York City Mayor Edward Koch to open the doors of New York City’s public universities and colleges to all immigrants regardless of their documented status. He explained, “In the ’80s I had a young Irish girl come to me in tears, absolutely in tears.
“She’d come over, she was a Sligo girl, and she had been working for a family as a nanny. During the course of the day while the kids were in school she would go over to City College but after the first semester they came to her and said. ‘where’s your green card?’
“When she said that she didn’t have one they said ‘you can’t go to school. The only people can go to school are documented immigrants.’
I knew that was just wrong. Ed Koch was the mayor and luckily I knew his chief of staff, Diane Coffey so I called her and told her the story.
Almost overnight Ed Koch changed the rule and said that anybody who was resident could go to City College. That rule has been there since and SUNY adopted the same rule.
“So I think there’s hundreds, if not thousands of young men and women that are going to school because of that because of that phone call.”