Immigrants are the essence of America

This week has been big on attacking immigrants, with Donald Trump announcing a slew of executive orders restricting or opposing immigration during just his first days back in office.

I don’t play around with targeting people because of their country of origin, race or ethnicity. Immigrants are the essence of America. The biggest reason the USA has achieved such great success in so many spheres – economically, geopolitically, culturally, in scientific advances and inventions, and on and on – is because it has been a magnet for immigrants throughout its history. Immigration and geography, the twin blessings and secret sauces of the U.S.

Being a beacon for ambitious, hard-working, creative people from around the world is a through-line for the United States.  Now, that hasn’t always been without exclusion and discrimination, to say the least, including of the only people who weren’t immigrants to the land, Native Americans, and of African-Americans forced to come to the U.S. as slaves.

But every phase of U.S. development has depended on a fusion of ideas and traditions and contributions from people long living on the land that is now the U.S. and recent or new arrivals. Some of the fathers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (sorry, back then, women didn’t have the right to play a key role) were immigrants. Diverse cuisines from tamales to jerk chicken to Irish soda bread to chai tea to pizza to sushi all came to the US. Via immigrants. Immigrants founded 45% of Fortune 500 companies based in America. I can’t even conceive of what life in the U.S. would be like without the blend of things brought, created and developed by people from so many cultures. A 2013 piece by Charles Hirschman on “The Contributions of Immigrants to American Culture” delves far more deeply into some of the innovations and creations of immigrants and their children, from symphonies to All-Star baseball players to scientists such as Albert Einstein (a refugee from Nazi Germany, it bears reminding, as Trump tries to ban refugees).

The quantitative superlative contributions are just one piece, really a small piece, of what we all gain from immigrants wanting to go to the United States and from having wanted to go over the last centuries. We gain perspectives, getting to know different viewpoints and cultures and expanding beyond the perspectives of our own family or just others with similar backgrounds.

Listening to Chris Sacca on the Tim Ferriss podcast this week, Sacca said at one point: “Nobody f*** hangs out with anyone unlike them anymore.”

And while I think there is something to that, it’s easier to be in siloes when much of life is online and we aren’t limited to 3-4 TV channels like a couple generations ago, that is also a foreign concept to me.

Look, I grew up in Iowa, which is not the most diverse place in the United States (though it’s much more diverse now than 30-40 years ago when I was growing up there). And yet, my friends in adult life – whether while living in Texas or NYC or Connecticut or Philadelphia or now in Spain – have been and are from dozens of different countries, of different races and ethnicities and religions and sexual preferences, with some skew towards higher education but still coming from very different economic backgrounds. Hanging out with people who aren’t just like me is amazing. I don’t want to be surrounded by 10 people who could be my clone or by sycophants. Yet that seems to be a trend.

I understand there need to be some regulations around immigration. An immigrant in temporary status commits a severe crime, that is a reasonable grounds for deportation. But only an absolutely miniscule fraction of immigrants fit that description.

I have been in the position of being an immigrant denied a visa. When I tried to move to Spain six years ago – already fluent in Spanish, having interned at Real Madrid, with an MBA from Wharton, and with a job as CMO of a startup that was sponsoring my visa – I was denied a visa (for highly qualified professionals) because the salary did not meet new thresholds Spain had put in place. I was devastated. I had put so much of my heart and soul and finances into trying to make that move. But I didn’t agree with the many people who told me some version of that they didn’t understand my visa being denied, I was the type of immigrant they wanted and needed in Spain. I hope I do contribute positively to wherever I am living, but immigrants bring benefits irrespective of their educational background or the country they come from. I’ve volunteered with refugees, asylees and more broadly immigrants since I was a kid doing the CROP Walk or in college working at the Don Bosco Centers in Kansas City or as an adult with the International Rescue Committee. Throughout, I have met people who awed me with their courage and their tenaciousness.

Turning against immigrants is shooting ourselves in the foot, by making life more boring, less likely to achieve a scientific or entrepreneurial innovation, and harming the economy. At the highest levels of income and education, immigrants founded Google and WhatsApp and Moderna and Chobani, among many other standout companies. At lowest levels, immigrants often do the jobs that those born in the U.S. don’t want to – such as working in meatpacking plants or picking our crops or caring for our children.

I hear stories now of people being criticized for speaking a language other than English in various places in the U.S., and I shudder in horror. Having neighbors who speak multiple languages is a gift. People being pursued or accused of not being citizens due to speaking another language or the color of their skin is abhorrent.

I stand with immigrants, today and always.