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Sitting around a table listening to Sister Mary Ellen Burns talk is something that not everybody gets to experience. The founder of Apostle Immigrant Services is Sister Mary Ellen Burns. Sister Mary Ellen Burns just is a person that likes to help other people, especially immigrants.
Generally speaking, immigrants have a positive impact on us. If we stopped letting them in, what would happen? Sister Mary Ellen was asked this and she replied with “If we stop letting immigrants in we are going to get to be a very much older country.” What she means is that the birth rate wouldn’t be enough to replace our current population. We wouldn’t have enough people to do all the work that the country needs. “Immigrants are more likely to create jobs and to create businesses than people who are born here.” This is true because since they had the courage to leave their country they have the courage to start their own businesses. We need immigrants to keep this country as a world power.
She started Apostle Immigrant Services in 2008 and it is located in the Fair Haven section in New Haven, Connecticut. The Fair Haven section is a highly populated immigrant area. The top 3 nationalities of immigrants in Fair Haven are Mexican, Ecuadorian and Guatemalan. People may ask why did she start Apostle Immigrant Services? She said that it all started with her dad. Her dad was an immigrant from Canada and he moved to the U.S. because of the pull factor. He was in a house with no electricity or heating. She explains that immigrants come here because “U.S has a feeling of optimism.” That is why she thinks so many people come to the U.S.
After Sister Mary Ellen graduated college she went to Yale law school. Some of the cases she has covered have been difficult. When asked what was the hardest case that you covered she thought for a little bit. Then she explained that in immigration court it was a man that had mental issues and had problems with his family, when he came to the U.S. It is amazing that Sister Mary Ellen helps immigrants but this is something that not everybody has the ability to pull off.
Before she founded Apostle Immigrant Services, Sister Mary Ellen was an attorney in New York. One of the cases was somebody from Haiti that fled to the U.S for their life. She helped him apply for asylum and eventually got him his green card. “At that point in time that was like the most meaningful thing I’d done as a lawyer,” she said. Some people don’t realize it but it really isn’t that easy trying to get your citizenship somewhere. It can take a really long time for an immigrant but you just have to keep pushing and that is what she did.
Sister Mary Ellen Burns thinks she is really lucky to be able to work with immigrants. “Working with Immigrants is really fascinating, I’ve met people from 90 different countries.” She thinks of these immigrants as courageous and is grateful that they share their stories with her. “These are people who had the guts to leave their country and everything they knew to come to a place that was personally unknown.” It is pretty crazy that people are willing to leave their country to a basically an unknown destination, and that is why Sister Mary Ellen is tipping her cap to them.
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