The following is only a short and partial list of immigrants who have made America great again and It can go on for miles and miles.
Before you read this, the question that begs to be asked is Who's being removed by ICE tonight? The child who would've discovered the cure for cancer in 2046? The 9th-grade nerd who would’ve stopped that Astroid that’s gonna hit us in 2032? Do we care?
And I’m going to guess that every single one of you works with, lives next door to, or has your groceries bagged by a kind person from another nation, or has been told the stories of those in your family who came to these shores many decades ago, and due to their perseverance, or a hole in a fence, led them to be here and now.
Did you know that Steve Jobs from Apple, the American computer wiz was a birthright citizen? 70 years ago this week in San Francisco, California, a son was born to Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian Muslim who had entered the United States and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin. I don’t have the evidence of his citizenship, or how or why he was allowed to enter our country. The records do show that he impregnated a young woman from Green Bay and this baby anchor baby. is the result of that union. On the birth certificate, is the baby’s name, or his father’s, written in Arabic: عبدالفتاح جندلي.
So one more unintended, unannounced, unapproved Arab-Muslim made his way into this great country and became a US citizen simply because on this day in 1955 inside a birthing room at some random hospital in San Francisco and, naturally, because of a decision our Founding Fathers made in granting automatic free-to-be-you-and-me unvetted but highly-valued American citizenship.
Mona Hanna uncovered the Flint Water Crisis and led the fight to protect the children of Flint. She was born in England. Her scientist parents fled Iraq during the Ba’ath years in the 1970s. They then moved to Michigan. Without her, it is possible we never would have known the full truth of how Flint’s children were poisoned by the State.
Harry Belafonte, is one of the greatest singers, political activists, and humanitarians in American history. He was born in Manhattan to a Jamaican immigrant mother working as a housekeeper. She sent him back to Jamaica to live with his grandparents from age 5 to 13.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib represents the cities of Detroit and Dearborn. Her parents were Palestinian immigrants. She is serving her fourth term in Congress as the first Palestinian-American woman to be elected to the House of Representatives.
Albert Einstein, born in Germany, in addition to developing the theory of relativity among other things, also called for the creation of the IRC — the International Rescue Committee — that today helps refugees and displaced people around the world.
Pierre Omidyar, founder of Ebay. His parents left Iran to go to school in France, and when he was 6 they moved to the US where his dad got a residency at Johns Hopkins.
Joan Baez’s grandfather moved to the US from Mexico when her father was 2. Her father was instrumental in developing X-ray microscopes and related technologies, and Joan—well, Joan is Joan.
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google. His parents left the USSR when Sergey was a toddler.
Irving Berlin, the most famous composer of the Great American Songbook. He wrote “White Christmas.” His parents left Russia when he was 5, escaping the pogroms and the poverty. He brought joy into millions of American homes with such songs as “Cheek to Cheek,” “Count Your Blessings,” “Easter Parade,” “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” and “God Bless America.”
Gene Simmons, a rock legend from the band KISS. His mother was a Holocaust survivor, spending seven months in the Mauthausen camp. After liberation, she made her way to Haifa, where Gene was born in 1949. At age 8, his parents divorced and his mom took Gene and moved to Queens.
Billy Wilder. He made SOME LIKE IT HOT, THE SEVEN-YEAR ITCH, SUNSET BOULEVARD, STALAG 17, THE APARTMENT, and SABRINA. He was born in Austria-Hungary.
Linda Sarsour, born in Brooklyn, daughter of Palestinian immigrants, and co-chair of the Women’s March.
Two of the three founders of YouTube are immigrants. Steve Chen was born in the Republic of China. His parents moved the family to Illinois when he was 7. Jawed Karim was born in East Germany to a Bangladeshi father and a German mother, and then moved to Minnesota when Jawed was 13.
Jan Koum, creator of WhatsApp. He was born in Ukraine in the mid-1970s. His mother moved him when he was 16 to a tiny apartment in Mountain View, CA.
Cesar Chavez, an American labor leader and civil rights activist, was born in Arizona to Mexican immigrant parents.
Katalin Karikó, the famed biochemist, was born in Hungary before moving to the United States where she went on to lead the development of mRNA vaccine science — key to the Covid 19 Vaccine — for which she won a Nobel prize and saved millions of lives.