Feargal O’Sullivan

I was fortunate not to need to leave Ireland, but I was doubly fortunate to have the opportunity to live in America.

The movie Thelma and Louise was the spark that started me on my path. I was a student at UCD, majoring in History and Philosophy, when I made friends with a fellow student born in America to an Irish father. We loved going to the cinema at the weekend, and this was a film that had a big impact on us. While the movie is intense and thought-provoking, it also features spectacular scenery and captures the wide-open space not found in many places outside America. We dreamed of buying a second-hand convertible and heading out west (avoiding run-ins with the locals and any cliffs along the way, of course). So, when news broke that the Morrison Visa program was offering additional visas to the Irish, my friend called me up and suggested I apply.

Eleven months later, I finished my final college exam and headed to New York City. Interestingly, my friend moved out west… to Tralee, Co. Kerry, and neither of us has driven through Texas or Arizona in a convertible. Then again, given how hot it gets there, I think that’s one of those things that looks better in the movies than in real life.

“I think anyone who’s been to New York City has had that moment where they realise just how unique this place is.”

For me, it was probably my first week here when I took the bus to the Port Authority on a Saturday evening. While walking to meet a friend at a bar on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, I was offered drugs, girls, and a game of speed chess… by multiple people, each in the friendliest manner. In those days, I could find my way around the bars of Dublin without any issues, but my Irish upbringing had not prepared me for any of that.

Getting started with a job and an apartment was my biggest challenge. While I came alone, I did have family friends who put me up for three weeks and a distant relative who added one more week. That was enough time to find a job as a doorman on the Upper East Side (somebody had resigned the day before, so Douglas Elliman was looking for a replacement the morning I walked into the offices) and an apartment in Elmhurst, Queens (I had to use my Irish charm to sweet-talk my landlady into leasing the apartment even though I didn’t have enough money to pay a security deposit).

I left Ireland straight out of college and had no clue what I wanted to do, so I can’t speculate what my work life would have been like had I stayed. However, I met my wife five weeks after landing in NY (she was a babysitter in the building where I was a doorman), and we have wonderful twins (boy and girl) who will graduate from college and start their own journey of discovery this spring.

As has been true in millions of other cases, America took a chance on a random person from Ireland, and both parties won. America helped me become a successful entrepreneur who founded an American business that employs Americans who help other American firms grow. This story happens repeatedly and is a significant part of what makes America great. I hope the legacy of the Morrison Visa program is a reminder of this fact for all Americans.

Bruce Morrison had a vision of how to make America better, and he was wildly successful.