Irish Economy: Immigration

Wooden Sticks Dept: Hurling -- the sport, not the morning-after ritual -- is a cross between field hockey, lacrosse and Whac-a-Mole. After despising the English, it is the Irish national pastime. They play it so they may legally hit each other with big wooden sticks, according to Vancouver Sun. When the Irish economy began to implode a couple of years ago, the emigration figures out of Ireland skyrocketed. Last year, with the economy shrinking by more than seven per cent, and with an unemployment rate of 33 per cent for those under 25, almost 65,000 people left the country. Estimates for this year are as high as 120,000 and oddly, it went unmentioned in the local sports media that this September, the Vancouver Harps won the 2010 Junior A Hurling Championships in Chicago, Ill. Somehow, we missed it. The Harps beat the San Francisco Naomh Padraig in the finals. This was the first time the Harps had ever competed in the championships, mainly because they had never had enough people to form a team before. But lately, Vancouver has experienced such an influx of Irish immigrants that, suddenly, the team was awash with players. They had come looking for work. As reported in the news.
@t national pastime, irish immigrants