Why immigrants are good for america

In , India sent more immigrants to the U. Indian Americans are the most successful ethnicity in the U. Up to a fifth of all startups in Silicon Valley were founded by Indians.

As a minority, we are the model. Most of the immigrants who come here are substantially better educated and richer than the countrymen they left behind.

We do not come empty-handed, mine host! In , two-thirds of the 1. When we needed money, we borrowed from family. My mother came here in because her sister in Detroit, a U. Because, as I discovered recently, my mother never finished her college degree. In a month, she was to get her bachelor of arts, in philosophy and French, after her final exams.

She was confident of the results; she was a good writer, and her essays would be shown around as a model for other students. She had married my father the previous year and was now five months pregnant with me. The taxi pulled into a petrol pump to get refueled, and her friends insisted that she move to the middle because she was pregnant.

The taxi drove out of the pump, and a drunk driver came speeding down, broadsiding the taxi. Her friend sitting near the window had multiple fractures. The friend sitting on the other side was also hurt, and the taxi was totaled. But my mother seemed to be largely unhurt, except for some bleeding around the hip. The doctor told her this. But of course studying was impossible for a new mother. She never got her B.

She had never mentioned this incident to me until now. Immigrants are not only helping to build a more dynamic economy right now, but we are counting on them to help ensure our continued shared prosperity in the years ahead. Most immigrants come to the United States during their prime working and reproductive years.

As the current administration has made dramatic cuts to the U. Refugee Admissions Program, 17 it is worth talking about the important economic contributions of refugees 18 —particularly to places such as Utica, New York, Clarkston, Georgia, and Fargo, North Dakota—that have increasingly turned to refugees over the years to help revitalize local communities and, again, fight population decline.

Despite the obstacles, that drive helps to explain why refugees thrive in America. Undocumented workers are fully integrated into the economic prosperity of this country. In , CAP worked with two leading economists to study the economic impacts of removing all undocumented workers from the workforce.

I have included in the Appendix to my written testimony Table 1, which shows the economic damage that removing unauthorized workers from the workforce would have in each of the states from which members of this committee come.

In , the U. Senate passed legislation with strong bipartisan support to reform our immigration system and provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who had long resided in the country. Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan also testified that the legislation would have significantly increased border security and helped to address some of the challenges that the administration is now dealing with along the border.

Earlier this month, the U. House of Representatives passed with bipartisan support H. The legislation would offer protection to people such as Donaldo Posadas Caceres, a Honduran TPS holder and member of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, who has worked for the past 20 years on some of the tallest bridges in the country, making needed repairs and hanging larger-than-life American flags. Although the legislation would directly affect up to 2.

What gives me hope that we may find our way back to those conversations in the years ahead is that the American public is having a visceral, negative reaction to the relentless, daily attacks on immigrants and refugees that we are now experiencing. According to Gallup polling, a record-high three-quarters of all Americans now say that immigration is a good thing for the country—the highest level of support in decades.

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What we believe Explore our latest work. Everyone deserves dignity, respect, and opportunity. We champion American values while fighting for policies that provide opportunity to all immigrants. Did you know? Immigration statistics. Open tooltip? Census Bureau data American Community Survey, data. Citizenship Learn how to become a U. Learn more.