I have a friend who has built a business that employs more than 300 workers. She is Polish-Russian. She’s been here 16 years, is married and has two children.
She is an illegal immigrant.
Another friend, now over 90, was on the last Kinder train from Austria. He suffered hardship and prejudice. In spite of this, he built a multi-billion dollar business based on creativity and service. He, his wife and family have given away most of his wealth.
He is a legal immigrant.
My friends who live in California, Texas, Arizona and Florida admire the hard work and honesty of immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America. When they get to know these immigrants (legal or not), they see them as humans.
Many large companies such as Google and CNH have immigration attorneys attached to their human resource departments. They need to import talent and to sell to other countries.
I know medical professionals who come from Burma, Cambodia, the Philippines, Pakistan and India, among other places. They are great doctors, care about patients and contribute time and energy to our communities. These immigrants fill the shortage of nurses and doctors we have.
Read the Forbes 400 and play the game I have for years. Try figuring out what businesses were created by new immigrants or their children. For instance, Sergei Brin, the co-founder of Google, is Russian. The Canadians, who have a liberal immigration policy, have a similar list of immigrant successes.
The benefit to our society, economy and culture from immigrants and their families is immense. Look back to Andrew Carnegie, a Scot, and his revolutionizing of the steel industry or Charles Steinmetz’ contribution to electricity as examples.
Yet America has long had nativist hate toward immigrants. There was prejudice against Germans, Scandinavians, Jews, Poles, Irish, Greeks, Japanese, and Chinese. This prejudice is now directed toward Mexicans and others from Central and South America, as well as our long-term prejudice against Blacks, whose immigration was non-voluntary.
The “know nothings” who preceded the Civil War were led by ex- president Millard Fillmore. They were anti-immigration and anti-Catholic. Working folks were scared of losing their jobs or facing competition from the “others” who were willing to work harder for less (something that unethical business owners exploited). Few blamed technology that increased productivity.
Mr. Trump’s ballyhoo on immigration, with his simplistic solutions, now generate the rawest feelings.
Yet, who would clean Mr. Trump’s hotels, harvest our food, do our gardening, or fill jobs in medicine, research, technology, and engineering?
Why do people immigrate to the U.S., either legally or illegally? Is it to get “welfare”? Or to have an opportunity to prosper and bring up their children in a country – while flawed –that offers freedom to succeed and fail; to speak up and protest; and to worship or not worship as one pleases?
Some legal immigrants resent illegal immigrants because they view them as jumping to the head of the “line.” But most would create a system to regulate illegals and put them in a queue to get green cards and, perhaps citizenship.
Anti-immigrant fever has roots that are more than economic. It is, as one friend said, primal. The hatred of the “other,” the stranger. It most often occurs against those who we do not know personally.
Yet business folks understand that we are now facing a labor shortage, long predicted by futurists, and that we gain skills and creativity from both legal and illegal immigrants.
Let us work on solving illegal immigration and avoid using it as a political stick.
Bob Chernow is a local Milwaukee businessman.
