Immigration to America in five stories

My grandfather arrived with little formal education and helped to build the [insert] industry.

Comment: during late 19th C – mid 20th C manufacturing employment grew by using new workers with few skills. Southern blacks were largely excluded from this workforce until the 1940s.

The rise of Silicon Valley was intimately tied to global workforce immigration of skilled engineers and scientists. American medicine has been deeply dependent on trained immigrants.

Einstein and Nobel Prize winners immigrated here.

Comment: this celebrity immigrant story remains current. Relates to perhaps 0.1% of immigrants.

In past 40 years, low skilled workers, many illegal, flooded the U.S.

Comment: Notable politically powerful industries, such as agriculture, textiles, meat processing, Trump resorts, and accounts for much of the geographic spread of low skilled immigrants since about 1980. This explains the continued successful resistance of the business community to mandatory verification of employment status.

Expected increases in demand for unskilled workers — personal aides, growing now at 5% a year — are not associated with politically powerful employers

America needs to meet its responsibilities re: global refugees

Comment: this commitment arose out of major American wars — WW2 and Vietnam. Most global refugees today arise from other circumstances (Syria, Africa, Myanmar) Central American refugees referred to as anti-American by Trump. (His 2020 State of the Union speech: border policies are “restoring the rule of law and reasserting the culture of American freedom.”)

We are a nation of immigrants.

Comment: True yesterday and today.

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