So, who would you keep out?

[OrmontUS]

More than half of the top American tech companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants and most of the rest of them are managed by first or second generation Americans. They com from every continent, possibly every country, in the world - and many of them, or their parents, arrived in the US in poverty.

How much poorer would our country be if they had been refused entry.

Apple founder Steve Jobs is the son of a Syrian immigrant,
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is a second generation Cuban immigrant,
Google founder Sergey Brin was born in Russia, and
Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin is a Brazilian native.
Enterprise software firm Oracle counts two children of immigrants as founders, and all four founders of what would eventually become digital payments leader PayPal immigrated to the U.S.

SpaceX, of course, is founded and led by Elon Musk, a native of South Africa who attended college in Canada before immigrating to the U.S. The company reportedly hit a valuation of just over $100 billion in a secondary share transaction last October.

Stripe is co-founded by brothers Patrick and John Collison, who hail from Ireland. Patrick Collison, who also serves as the payment company’s CEO, came to the U.S. to attend MIT but left to build a startup. John Collison attended Harvard, but also left to pursue the startup life before completing his degree. Stripe’s last publicly disclosed valuation was $95 billion.

Instacart’s CEO, Fidji Simo, who took the post in August, hails from France. Meanwhile, Instacart’s founder and former CEO, Apoorva Mehta, was born in India. He moved to Libya shortly after he was born, and then to Canada at age 14. The company’s last reported valuation was around $39 billion.

Databricks’ founder and CEO, Ali Ghodsi, was born in Iran and moved to Sweden as a child. After completing a doctorate in Sweden, he joined UC Berkeley in California as a visiting scholar. Databricks, which offers AI-enabled tools for managing large quantities of data across platforms, was recently valued around $38 billion.

Chipmaker Nvidia has moved into the top seven, per CNBC. Its CEO and co-founder, Jensen Huang, is a native of Taiwan who immigrated to the U.S. with his family at age 9.

And those are only the founders. The “builders”, such as Andy Grove (former) CEO of Intel, Satya Nadella CEO of Microsoft, Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer and Stéphane Bancel CEO of Moderna are just a few which come to mind.

And the above is just representative of a small sliver of our commercial businesses with immigrants or their children in management positions.

On a “closer to home” basis, recent immigrants have built and supplied personnel to hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the nation. The sort of 16 hour per day businesses that we all depend on which Americans don’t have the incentive nor stamina to keep open despite their frequently minimal profitability.

Sure immigrants should be “documented” and vetted, but in order to do that efficiently, our systems need to change. In the meantime, it serves no particular purpose to ship new arrivals off to “points unknown” rather than to integrate the vast majority who are honest and hard-working into the local society.

Jeff

[steve203]

Based on DoJ crime data, I would deport the citizens and keep the immigrants.

Steve…go ahead and deport me. dad’s birth certificate says I would go to Canada. I can make that move in an afternoon.

[telegraph]

“More than half of the top American tech companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants and most of the rest of them are managed by first or second generation Americans. They com from every continent, possibly every country, in the world - and many of them, or their parents, arrived in the US in poverty.”

Actually NO

All were founded by LEGAL immigrants who came to the US under immigration quotas. Not border runners. Big difference.

For a century or more, to gain entry into the US, you had to either have sufficient means to live here for years (such as money to buy a farm and get through the first year), have a relative pledge to take care of you if you couldn’t make a living, or had a job already with whatever skills you had. Two centuries ago, immigrants would come as indentured people, promising to work for XXX years at low pay (maids, nannies, cooks, etc) so that others would pay your passage and guarantee work. You had a contract.

No one came penniliess until recently when ‘refugees’ started being admitted by the tens of thousands - and most of them had job skills, were somewhat vetted and came via regular channels.

I’m sorry, but your whine of 'let ‘em all in’ and ‘give them papers’ falls on deaf ears here. Undocumented, border runners, folks escaping ‘poverty’ with not even 3rd grade education. You think they are going to found high tech companies, really? Gimme a break.

All my family tree came from Europe. All came legally through Ellis Island.

We have likely 2-3 million border runners in TX, now clogging the education system with unexpected half million kids, cratering the state health care system, major housing problems…and ZERO financial help from DC and no plans to even try to close the border.

Of course, DC happily arrests businesses for ‘hiring undocumented workers’ while they are at it too, fining them big bucks.

I think we should charter 10 or 20 AMTRAK trains a week, with 5,000-10,000 ‘undocumented folks’ a week and ship 40,000 to DC each month. Maybe then we’d get some response. Free housing. Free food. Free healthcare. Free education.

t.

[sunrayman]

EZ Answer: Everyone who wades/walks across our Southern border!

{"illegally" goes without saying}

[Leap1]

The question is do you just want cheap labor?

Because letting people in is just to use them, not tax them, and blame them.

Being nice has nothing to do with it at the end of the day.

We need to charge taxes. Meaning permit them and employers get real and pay their taxes. That is the real loggerhead in congress. It is both parties.

[Macroman77]

We do have a huge labor shortage in the US. Tech companies, fast food companies, farmers, police and all walks of life are short of workers.

Existing laws sharply restrict the amount of legal immigration. Opening up to more legal immigration would be one way to address this labor shortage. This would also help rebuild the base of the Social Security/Medicare pyramid.

I’ve yet to see any well designed studies that would verify or disprove the commonly stated crime problems coming from illegal immigration. It’s my feeling that if there were any such studies political operatives would be playing them up. It’s my feeling that Republicans and Democrats are happy to throw innuendos at one another rather than identify and prove the facts.

I have a hard time believing that illegal immigrants are responsible for some huge crime wave. An illegal immigrant is a criminal by definition but if they are committing other crimes I expect that the political right would make the most of that. What we hear instead are very isolated reports of horrific crimes. Shameful, despicable acts to be sure but there is no evidence that illegals are committing more crime than native born criminals.

Illegal border crossings appear to be setting a record with about 2 to 2.5 million this year but there have been at least approximately 0.5 million every year since 2000. In 2000 there were about 1.67 million illegal crossings. With all that illegal immigration if they were causing some huge crime problem I would think that someone from the RNC would carefully document the issue.

If we want to stop illegal immigration we need to address the root causes of the issue.

1. We need to find workers to fill the open jobs in the USA. The illegals come here because there are jobs.
2. We need to work with our Latin American neighbors, where most illegal immigrants come from, to help them improve living conditions. As a possibility perhaps Latin American imports could replace much of what we’ve gotten from China.
3. Illegals come into the country in cargo containers, boats, boxcars and countless other ways. A fancy border wall may slow the flow of illegals but there is no stopping it while the incentive to come remains.
4. The I-5 form requirements keep illegals from taking legit jobs so they work underground or with a stolen SSN. The stolen SSN just means that they pay into someone slse’s Social Security which they can’t collect on.

In the end the bottom line for me is that immigrants, legal or not, are not the problem.

Macroman77

[jerryab2]

Being nice has nothing to do with it at the end of the day.

The point being missed is the critical one: People are migrating because there is no other choice for them.

It is a variety of reasons, but the primary driving force is global warming (i.e. climate change). There will be far more climate refugees over the coming years, particularly as surface and water temperatures go up over time. Growing food with become impossible where they now live. Remember the history of the US Dust Bowl (1930s)? Same situation today, but on a far greater scale and over a far longer time frame.

What to do? It will take an international effort to even make a dent in the coming mass migrations driven by desperation (people moving north AND south–to get further away from the equator).

[flyerboys]

A whole lot of “border runners” were working in California all my life. California is the richest agricultural produce state in the union, mostly due to border runner families coming and going for the last century, when the border was purely notional.

Politicos should shut up about their demogoguery or implement the only immigrant control that actually works everywhere else in the world by making employers liable for hiring illegals (ok ok not documented or whatever weasel words are current). Then much of usaian agriculture would become non competitive with, what a surprise, Mexican agriculture! And suddenly Congress would seak to radically increase legal immigration. And i won’t even touch construction workers, but I know that in Los Angeles being fluent in Spanish is a big plus for any legal worker wishing to become a construction foreman.

The hypocrisy is so thick on this subject we can barely move.

david fb

(opposed to illegal immigration and even more opposed to illegal hiring all my life to no avail because the conversation and debate and battle are close to totally false and ruled by money and power and ignorant prejudice)

[jaagu]

No one came penniliess until recently when ‘refugees’ started being admitted by the tens of thousands - and most of them had job skills, were somewhat vetted and came via regular channels.

===========================================================================

You have a distorted view of immigrants. You need some education:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displaced_persons_camps_in_pos….

I am one of the nearly one million European refugees that came to America after WW2. My family lived 5 years in German refugee camps run by International Refugee Organization (IRO) and United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) before we were given permission to immigrate to USA in 1949. We had to have a sponsor in the USA to help us settle in with assistance for housing, food and work. My father found a job in a furniture factory. He had a college degree from Estonian Military Academy. We were essentially penniless when we arrived in New York.

Our story is the similar to hundreds of thousands of other WW2 refugees from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Ukraine, Armenians, Jews and others that were given permission to immigrate to the USA.

Jaak

[captainccs]

More than half of the top American tech companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants

Andrew Carnegie was an immigrant from Scotland. Have you been to a library lately? Thank Andrew Carnegie.

Nikola Tesla - Croatia
Enrico Fermi - Italy

The Captain

[captainccs]

All were founded by LEGAL immigrants who came to the US under immigration quotas. Not border runners. Big difference.

The Pilgrims were border runners.

The Captain

[PhoolishPhilip]

Undocumented, border runners, folks escaping ‘poverty’ with not even 3rd grade education. You think they are going to found high tech companies, really? Gimme a break.

This describes my grandfather perfectly. Like most poorly educated “border runners”, he started his own small business, accumulated some small wealth, and sent three of four sons to college. All his sons did well financially, one becoming the owner of a mid-sized business most of you may have heard about at some time in your lives. All his grand children are well educated, contributing members of our society. Hell, a few of his kids and grand kids have become maga supporters hating the symbolic founder of their feast because of his original sin. The only difference between our founding American and those on Martha’s Vineyard is he arrived penniless and ignorant in 1920. If he waited five years he would have been a “criminal”.

Add up all the taxes paid, the wealth created, the societal contributions made, the functioning families formed, the commodities purchased by the children of our border runner and multiply it by the millions of other ignorant and poor unwashed runners and you start to get a sense of the enormous contributions immigrants have played in making America the greatest economy on earth. Open those borders and let the world’s industrious masses in, after all it’s not the meek who risk everything for a new start in a new world. For that you need initiative and self confidence, the stuff of entrepreneurialism.

[captainccs]

This describes my grandfather perfectly.

Great story!

It isn’t even necessary to become great wealth builders, it is enough to create enough wealth so as not to be a burden on society. That is already much more beneficial that the homeless.

The Captain

[OrmontUS]

Two points to ponder (in a non-political fashion):

(1)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/16/politics/desantis-marthas-vin…

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday said he intends to use “every penny” of the $12 million his state budgeted to relocate migrants and set the expectation for buses and “likely more” flights full of migrants paid for by the state.

“These are just the beginning efforts,” the Republican governor said. “We’ve got an infrastructure in place now. There’s going to be a lot more that’s happening.”

Speaking at a news conference in Daytona Beach, DeSantis defended using taxpayer dollars to send 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard because he said many people who cross the border end up in Florida. He said people working for Florida are in Texas and they “profile” individuals who are likely headed to Florida.

Florida, he added, has hired its own contractor to coordinate the state’s relocation efforts in Texas, though DeSantis did not close the door on working with Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott to arrange future transportation.
_____________________________________________________-

So the governor of Florida is using Florida’s taxpayers money to reach out to a remote state and “preemptively” assume which immigrants will eventually end up in Florida and, attracting them with falsehoods, transport them to a “third party” state/community of his choice. One would presume he is finding his fodder in Texas because there re too few illegal Mexican immigrants in Florida (who are not already gainfully integrated into its society, say working at golf courses) to easily find a significant number.

(2)

Both New York and Massachusetts have a higher foreign-born population than either Texas or Florida, so the excuse of evening things out seems weak. It is true that the populations of Texas and Florida are growing faster than that of NY, MA or Washington DC - but so are their tax bases.

Absorbing immigrants and turning them into net-positive taxpayers is a long-term proposition which, if children are present can be accelerated by their attending school to about a decade, but even there, in the absence of the financial resources, training and aptitude which would allow the family to open a business, might have to wait a decade or two. That said, it is clear that our nation has been built by immigrants and their descendants.

---

So, the real question (rather than the manipulated emotional one of “us vs. them” which is behind the current dramatics) is what should be the criteria of providing a rational path towards permanent residency and/or citizenship, and who should provide the interim financial support until the family becomes tax-positive. Whether that criteria gives precedence to those with financial resources, educational background, families here already or running from conditions left behind is one which can be hammered out, but clearly what we currently have is inappropriate.

Jeff

[iampops5]

Politically brilliant. Assume immigrants are not human beings- cattle - should play well with his supporters.

[YourRooster]

The point being missed is the critical one: People are migrating because there is no other choice for them.

---

Choosing to migrate, relocate is very common for most everyone. The question is if they have so many choices of where to try and go, why do they focus to mostly one or two locations? It is because of the enticements (overt and covert) of free stuff in exchange for ???

2-3 billion people on planet Earth live below the poverty line, do all these get access/entry because they feel stifled. Are they all persecuted for political reasons and get immediate entry rights? Apparently that is a yes if they so claim.

How much is enough?

If you set limits/guidelines then you are discriminating. Do the people who foot the bill for this easy access (entry) get a say in how their money is spent and how much is allowed? With so much floating illegal immigration one can only make a guess.

Why is it that whatever political institution is in power, basically nothing gets done. Like the deficit, it will grow until we break, they what?

YR

[warrl]

Both New York and Massachusetts have a higher foreign-born population than either Texas or Florida, so the excuse of evening things out seems weak.

Only if you assume that legal and illegal immigrants are the same.

But there’s a fairly obvious and important difference between them.

[JLC]

For a century or more, to gain entry into the US, you had to either have sufficient means to live here for years (such as money to buy a farm and get through the first year), have a relative pledge to take care of you if you couldn’t make a living, or had a job already with whatever skills you had.

About 10+ years ago I began looking into working/living in New Zealand as a last step before full retirement. What got me interested was following a blog from a fellow ER physician and his wife about their experiences there for a year.

Long story short, to become a citizen/permanent resident, they have a “points system” and essentially if you have enough points they roll out the welcome mat, if not you were put on a waiting list. The top points and one that basically made you qualified, do you have a skill that is short supply. The other major points, do you have the finances to live there for 3 years without requiring government assistance, IIRC.

We should adopt a similar point system. Although I think it would wind up being a dichotomy needing high skill/high education jobs like engineers and low skill/hard labor like farm hands. But if that is what the country needs, let them in, legally.

Way easier to control the influx of people when you are an island though.

JLC

[Leap1]

This is why Desantis’ bold move to ship some to Mass is brilliant, politically- in your face, Feds / Dems. It’s all about the election.

Exactly! It is campaign finance fraud using the state of Florida’s $12 million.

[AlphaWolf]

First, the subject of this thread is not illegal immigrants. It is perfectly legal to apply for asylum in the United States. That is the current law and that is what these people are attempting to do.

Second, I think it is loathsome for people in power, regardless of political party, to abuse powerless people for political gain.

Third, a personal anecdote. My great-grandparents came to America from Russia (technically, Ukraine) in 1900 seeking asylum. Things were not good in Russia (some things never change) and they wanted a better life for their children. They had no formal education and barely spoke any English. But their descendant’s became doctors, attorneys, teachers, engineers, musicians, CPAs, etc. This is an American story. This is American DNA.

Now, this immigration story is very complex and there is plenty of blame to go around.

Administrations that have tried to ignore the problem.
Politicians who abuse the problem and exacerbate the issue.
Criminals in foreign homelands who grow illegal drugs.
Americans who buy illegal drugs.

It’s like Who Killed Davey Moore by Bob Dylan. There’s a LOT of blame to go around.

I’m in favor of politicians that try to solve problems, not those that create problems.

There are 11 million unfilled jobs in America. There are 6 million unemployed Americans. Until we close that gap, inflation will dog us.

I think one relatively easy way to help our nation would be to quickly assess individuals seeking asylum to see if they qualify to stay here (not criminals, etc.). It ain’t easy to pick up and move to another country. It takes guts and moxie. Perfect to become a future citizen of this country. That would solve a multitude of problems for us and create a growing tax base. Other issues (foreign countries, drugs) are more long term solutions.

I’m sure there are many other creative solutions that don’t involve cruelty and can benefit our nation.

Ya, I know. They say I’m a dreamer.

AW