Immigrant of the Day: Alice Callaghan (Canada)

Alice Callaghan (born 1947, Calgary, Alberta, Canada) is an Episcopalian priest and a former Roman Catholic nun. She is an advocate of the homeless and poor of downtown Los Angeles and the founder of the SRO Housing Trust and the manager of Las Familias Del Pueblo, a Skid row community center. Some developers view the Skid row area in Los Angeles as an opportunity to convert aging buildings into condominiums and sell them for big profits. Callaghan has insisted that the renovated buildings be used to house the poor.

Callaghan's family moved from Canada to southern California when she was a small child. Like many teens in southern California, she became an avid surfer. After attending college, Alice became a nun but later left the convent to become an Episcopalian priest.

Callaghan is a proponent of immigrants learning English and wrote an op/ed on the subject (and critical of bilingual education) in the N.Y. Times.  For more about Callaghan, click here and here.

KJ