From Personal Roots to Purpose: Ellen Sullivan’s Immigration Story

In the very first episode of the You Belong Here Podcast, founder Ellen Sullivan shares the deeply personal story that shaped her path into immigration law. Through her family’s experience with the U.S. immigration system, she offers an honest look at the challenges, emotions, and turning points that ultimately inspired her to build Cambridge Immigration Law.

This episode sets the foundation for the podcast, highlighting why this work matters and who it’s meant to serve. It’s a story about resilience, identity, and creating a place where others can feel seen, supported, and confident in their next steps.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to You Belong Here, a podcast about immigration law, real stories, and the journeys people take to build a life in the United States. Here's your host from Cambridge Immigration Law, Ellen Sullivan.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Welcome to You Belong Here, a podcast where we explore immigration stories, legal insights, and other interesting topics. Have you ever wondered what it's really like to go through the immigration process here in the United States, not just as a case number or case type, but as a real person? That's what we're here to talk about today. My name is Ellen Sullivan, your host, and the founding attorney of Cambridge Immigration Law. Cambridge Immigration Law is a Massachusetts-based law firm that is dedicated to helping individuals and families navigate the complexities of the U.S. immigration system. Our team here at Cambridge Immigration Law is made up of immigrants who speak a variety of different languages, first generation Americans whose parents immigrated to the United States, other descendants of immigrants, and people who just care about immigration and immigrants here in the United States. Our team provides experienced legal guidance on matters including green cards, citizenship, employment-based petitions, and other types of immigration benefits. Our love for our families who immigrated here to the United States and the gratitude to them for their journey and their sacrifices inspire us to help others navigate their own path with confidence and support. Our goal is always to help people understand the process they're going through, feel supported while they're doing it, and know that they're not alone. Know that we value them as individuals, but we also have worked with people in very similar situations, and we've helped people through those situations with success. So with that in mind, I'd love to take you into today's episode and share a bit more about my story and how I got here to be the owner and founding attorney at Cambridge Immigration Law.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Great. Thanks, Alan. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what led you into Cambridge Immigration Law? Or what led you to immigration law?

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yeah, so it's hard to pinpoint an exact moment when I decided I wanted to practice immigration law. But looking back, I know that my father's family especially informed my understanding of what it was to be an immigrant in the United States. My last name is Sullivan, and my father's parents were both immigrants from Ireland. They came to the United States in the 20s, I think. I actually have that info and can't remember offhand. And they came separately and they met here. They were part of an Irish community in Massachusetts and to some extent in New York. They came because they didn't have opportunities in Ireland. So, you know, with that, but also with the conditions in Ireland, like I said, there just weren't opportunities for them to support themselves or to think of having a future. They both came from farms and they had a variety of siblings, and they weren't going to be the ones that were going to be working the farm. One of their farms really was on like rocks, so I'm not really sure how that ever worked out. My grandparents were white, they spoke English, so they faced less, I think, obstacles than immigrants do who have language issues or challenges or learning English, and also whose skin color immediately identifies them as different. But with that said, at that time, the United States being Irish was not favored. There was a lot of outward discrimination towards Irish people. They were Catholic, which also had some level of like otherness in sort of an otherwise Protestant country. And then they just had economic challenges. My grandmother worked for families as a maid and a cook, and so she worked with like a lot of wasps here in Boston and also New York. So she saw an interesting side of life that I think she valued as really interesting experiences. But you know, it was it was a life that she was never going to be part of. My grandfather was a musician and a bartender, and he he struggled to hold jobs maybe because of you know job opportunities, but also because of alcohol issues that that affected him. My grandmother was able to go back to see her family after many years, but it was a long time before she saw her parents after she left. Um my grandfather came to the United States and never went back to Ireland. So he never saw his parents again, he never saw his siblings that didn't live here. Um, you know, he just he never had any attachment. Well, that's not not attachment. He never had any visit to Ireland, to where he was from. Um and I think that that's kind of an amazing thing to think about, um, especially in light of how family-oriented they were, how family-oriented my father is, how family-oriented I am. And to imagine leaving my family and not seeing them again because I had to, it's it's kind of um, it is overwhelming. And that's something that a lot of our clients face. They come here and um most of them who don't have the option to go back, you know, people that have the option to go back maybe are in different situations, but people who can't go back, it's because they don't have a future in these other countries because of, you know, mainly economic issues, and that's exactly what my grandparents um experienced. We don't exactly know what my grandfather's immigration status ever was. Um we tried to find it for um us actually becoming Irish citizens, and we we weren't able to find his status. So he, you know, might have just been an undocumented immigrant his whole life. Um there's a little bit of family lore. We don't actually know where he entered the United States. There's a story that he was in Canada and then he and his brother were on a boat and they jumped into the water up in um like Vermont, Canada, Vermont, New York area, and swam and then just you know came into the United States. My grandmother came on a boat like many immigrants. Um she was sick on the boat. She actually had to stay on the boat or Ellis Island, I'm not sure where because she was sick when she came to the United States. Um but she did come on a boat, and so she was processed when she entered and she ultimately became a citizen. So on the other side with my mom's family, they were a little bit um further along in their American journey, but they also came from Ireland as well. So that you know has a big impact, um, had a big impact on me. And as I get older, and now I'm a mom, and it is sort of I reflect on it through different lenses because of the thought of you know my kids ever having to leave me and not be able to see them again. Um, another big part of my story is that my my parents, um, especially my mom, worked with non-citizen populations when I was growing up. She worked in schools, um, vocational schools in Lawrence and Lowell. Um, she studied um, especially in the Cambodian community and in Lowell. She worked with folks there is related to public health issues. Um, so you know that gave me an understanding of just different immigrant communities that I didn't you know interact with on a on a daily basis. Um, and then when I graduated college, I moved to Los Angeles to work in an elementary school that was serving um children who were from um other countries or whose parents were, and they were mainly Mexican and Central American kids. Um, and it was interesting to see that I was in the same country um as these kids. I was able to move to Los Angeles really easily without any problems. And some of these people, especially the folks from Mexico, were so physically um, they were from a place so much physically closer to Los Angeles than I had come from, but for me, my life was drastically different because, you know, of borders. So it just got me to think about immigration on a philosophical level there and seeing how borders and status affect people's present lives and also their futures and the trajectories that their lives can take. So I'd say those are some big influences.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Definitely, yeah. Very impactful. So tell us a little bit about your transition from living in LA to being a teacher to how you ended up going to law school and that journey.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Yeah, I think that when I was when I was a teacher, every day there was amazing progress in terms of the way the kids were learning and moving forward, and that was really exciting. But at that time, I also remember that there was a lot of um, and there's still there always is um conflict about immigration status and the law. And one of the big debates when I was there was about um the legality of second language learning in schools. So when I taught in Los Angeles, I want to say the first two years we taught in Spanish. I speak Spanish, not so great, but enough to um support people that are learning English and with enough Spanish. So our our curriculum was in Spanish, and I remember like I think it was like the second year we had a grant and had to spend the money, didn't know how to spend it because we were concerned that bilingual education was going to be outlawed essentially. And then I know the principal sort of made a bet and she bought the um the materials using the money we had in Spanish, and then unfortunately, like you know, when the the referendum actually came, uh the results came out, it was like months later, but it was on the horizon, it ended up that we had to turn back to English. So all those materials were then no longer allowed to be used, but they're really like grant money you sometimes have to spend by a certain date, and there's just no going back. And so um, I think I felt like I wanted to be involved in some of these issues um from like I guess a more um macro level, and so that got me interested in you know law and policy, so that when I went to law school, I gravitated towards immigration issues and then just started having internships and immigration law, and then it just um it just kind of unfolded. It wasn't a grand plan that I had, it was just life just took me down different paths, and I just kind of followed them, and here I am.

SPEAKER_02 11:09

Okay, so let's talk about um your founding of the firm, what it means to you, and the mission and values that we stand for.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yeah. I guess backing up to your question about like, was there a moment when you knew this is the right thing to do? I think that I know that this is the right area of work for me because now that I have a firm and I have a team of I don't know, 15 people and I'm teaching them how to do this work, that for me makes me realize like, wow, I've been I've been doing a lot of work, I've been learning a lot, I know a lot, and I can help others not just help the clients, like I'm not just helping the clients, I'm helping the clients that my my team's gonna help. So that kind of makes me feel like it's the right thing to do. Um because um when I, you know, I'm not doing this work anymore, or just I am doing it, but we can expand our scope so much because we have other people doing the good work the way that you know I think it should be done. That I think makes me feel like, okay, I know I'm in the right place doing the right thing. Um, in terms of our firm values, our mission is to really help as many people as possible, um, mainly here in Massachusetts locally, um, help people get the lives they want using the tools of immigration status. We believe that our firm must provide the highest level of legal services at all times while we're trying to fulfill that mission, and we also must provide the highest level of client support during it's an important process for people's lives, but also a really stressful process, especially right now under the Trump administration, a process that's unpredictable, um, a process that we've experienced many, many, many, many times as the lawyers, and um also some of us in different ways as the actual folks going through the process.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Um in doing this work again, is there any example um that stands out to you on why this matters to you and your team? Um maybe share an impactful story?

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Yeah, I mean, a couple weeks ago a client was coming back after many years connecting a family member to me, and it gave me an opportunity to check in with her and see how she was doing. And she came to me through the Victim Rights Law Center, which is a nonprofit organization in um Massachusetts, and I think they have some um national offices that focuses on providing legal services to um survivors of sexual assault. So she first worked with them, um, and I used to work there. She first worked with them as a victim of crime, um, a survivor of childhood sexual assault. And then she got that process approved and was moving on to her next process, which um ended up not being related to the crime anymore because she married a US citizen. And so I met her and her husband probably 12 years ago, uh actually 10 years ago. And um, they were so young and they were just a very cute couple. Um, they were, I don't know what they were both like in college and they had all these dreams, and you know, you never know where people are gonna go. And so when she connected with me a few weeks ago, I said, you know, how's everything going? And she, who was a CNA at that time, I think, um, you know, working part-time or even an LPN, so working as a nurse's assistant, and her husband was doing something similar. He is now a nurse practitioner, so he's the U.S. citizen who wasn't born in the U.S., so he had his own immigration journey. He has become a nurse practitioner, and she has her doctorate in nursing, um, and she's now a U.S. citizen. So, I mean, that's just an amazing story for her that she was here as an undocumented child. Um, she had she had come with her mom and overstayed a tourist visa. She was a survivor of a horrific crime, series of crimes committed against her, and um she is now like flourishing and just talking to me about all the opportunities that she was given here in the United States, talking about what it takes to survive in the United States, like you know, the constant like hustle of like moving forward and working hard and just taking any opportunity that comes in front of her was a really amazing moment. Um, made me feel happy to be a small part of the successes that she's had.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Perseverance, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um that was so nice. So ne future episodes, what can we expect? Uh, what can listeners expect um from the podcast?

SPEAKER_01 15:45

So, what I'm really excited to talk about is are the immigrant or immigration experiences of people that I know. And we have so many immigration experiences right here in our office. So I want to talk to my team members about some of these questions, and then also invite some clients to talk to us about how their immigration stories have gone, are going, what they see in the future, um, and maybe some other folks that might want to be part of this conversation.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

And we're of course open to people writing in, asking questions. Are there any topics or any types of questions that you would love to hear from listeners?

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Well, comments I would love to hear about people's their own immigration stories, um, the good and the bad. Um it can be the legal work, like did you work with a lawyer? Did it work out? Did it not work well? What where do you think you were supported well? Where do you think you weren't supported? I also would love to just hear your stories, legal issues aside, even though I know that they're always there. But um, you know, what what where were you? Maybe when it started, maybe you were a kid who um didn't realize that you had different opportunities in front of you because of your immigration status, and then what happened? Um, hopefully there's success stories, but I know that there are still a lot of people who are not able to move forward in terms of immigration status because of the laws and the limitations that the laws have and the limitations and what they offer. Um so yeah, I just would love to hear about where people are in their journeys, where they've where they've come from, and where they hope to go. Thank you for joining us here on You Belong Here. Today we talked about my story in terms of my relationship to U.S. immigration and my family's relationship to U.S. immigration. Um, we talked about who Cambridge Immigration Law is and what you can expect on our future episodes. If you found this episode helpful or interesting, please subscribe, follow, and share it with someone else who might benefit from being part of this conversation. If you have questions or topics you'd like us to cover, we'd love to hear from you. And so send them our way. We'll be back soon with our next episode. Until then, remember no matter who you are and where you are, you belong here.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Thanks for listening to You Belong Here. To learn more about immigration options or to connect with the firm, visit Cambridge Immigration Law.com. If this episode was helpful, subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and share it with someone who may benefit. Until next time, remember no matter where you're from or where you're headed, you belong here.