Immigrants From Nice Countries
Following up on those shitholes: Donald Trump, at a fundraiser in Florida’s Palm Beach this past Saturday night, decided to clarify some of his thoughts on immigration.
He referred to his comments back in 2018, when he questioned why the U.S. should be letting in immigrants from what he called “shithole countries” like Haiti and Nigeria, saying that Haitians “all have AIDS” and that Nigerians should “go back to their huts” and that America should let in more Norwegians.
“And when I said, you know, Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries, I’m trying to be nice,” Trump said at the dinner on Saturday night. “Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”
“They took that as a very terrible comment, but I felt it was fine,” he followed up.
Then Trump turned his attention to the influx at the southern border, saying that the Latin American gang members who are purportedly flooding in “make the Hells Angels look like extremely nice people.”
“They’ve been shipped in, brought in, deposited in our country, and they’re with us tonight,” said Trump. “In fact, I don’t think they’re on this island, but I know they’re on that island right there. That’s West Palm,” Trump said, pointing across the water. “Congratulations over there. But they’ll be here. Eventually, they’ll be here.”
Trump probably means that as a fearmongering line, along the lines of “immigrants will take over, and these previously nice communities will cease to be.” But there’s also a positive interpretation (that Trump surely doesn’t mean): Eventually, immigrants—even those from dire situations and disintegrating countries—do sometimes make their way to the Palm Beach political fundraisers, so to speak, or to levels of wealth and influence.
Immigrants make it rain: Roughly half of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. Jeff Bezos, who helmed Amazon, is the son of a Cuban immigrant. Steve Jobs, who helmed Apple, is the son of a Syrian immigrant. Costco was co-founded by the son of Canadian-Romanian immigrants. Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai was born to a Tamil family in India before making his way to California. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was also born in India, later traveling to the U.S. to attend school in Wisconsin.
Roughly 55 percent of America’s billion-dollar startups that are privately traded—also called unicorns—have immigrant founders or co-founders. Avant co-founder Al Goldstein, an Uzbek Jew, came to America at the age of 8 as a refugee. His co-founders Paul Zhang and John Sun, both born in China, also immigrated to the U.S. as children.
Some detractors might stress that the above success stories did not stem from asylum seekers. And that is true. But immigrants do tend to be more likely than native-born residents to become entrepreneurs (more on this from Harvard Business Review). And research from the National Foundation for American Policy finds that “there is generally no reliable way under U.S. immigration law for foreign nationals to start a business and remain in the country after founding a company,” so “successful immigrant entrepreneurs in America are almost alw
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