Life in the land of a thousand welcomes

Rotimi Adebari snaps his fingers. "The change happened just like that," he says, and--as he leans forward in his chair to speak, warm but convincing at the same time--it's easy to see why Adebari, 43, was elected mayor of Portlaoise, making him the first black mayor in Ireland. But the Nigerian émigré is not just representative of the wave of immigration that has changed Ireland so deeply over the past decade. He is also a sign, he says, of how willing the Irish are to give people like him the opportunity to succeed. "There is no doubt Ireland is a land...