This is what Emma Lazarus had in mind
Immigrants are lazy bums who live off the taxes their betters pay and use up social and educational services, or so the Republican party would have you believe.
Ellen Chesler begs to differ.
- Natalya Berezovskaya, the class salutatorian with a 3.99 GPA, was just seven years old when her family escaped political unrest and a resurgence of anti-Semitism in post-Soviet Moscow.
- Carolyn Ly, the daughter of Chinese immigrants and the first in her family to go to college, will become a sociologist. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a 3.97 GPA and next fall will begin a PhD program at Yale on a full scholarship.
- Natalya Titova, born in Latvia, moved here when she was fourteen. She taught herself English, graduated from high school in Brooklyn with awards in math, history, science and English, and was accepted into Hunter's Honors College, where she's earned a 3.95 GPA.
- Anna Kouremenos, born in Greece, emigrated to the US at the age of nine, but never forgot her roots. She graduated with a BA/MA in anthropology and a 3.7 GPA and will begin her doctoral studies in classical archaeology in September at Oxford University in England.
- Suman Pradha grew up in a tiny village in a remote part of Nepal. There are no roads to his village, and it takes days to walk to the nearest populated area--the base camp around Mount Everest.
- Danielle Okoro, born in Miami, returned to Nigeria when she was two years old, so her grandmother could raise her, while her mother attended school in Florida.
All of those students just graduated from Hunter College of the City University of New York last week. There's more detail about them at the link.
We need these kinds of immigrants.
via Lawyers Guns and Money
Posted by Linkmeister at June 13, 2007 12:01 AM
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I suspect that a majority of the electorate supports a system where promising immigrants have a legal process to join.
Rather, there concerns revolve around illegal entry, and whether amnesty schemes result in unforeseen consequences and misguided incentives.
This reminds me that almost every 'test' I've seen to rate whether you would be a successful entrepreneur asks if you are an immigrant or first generation. You are statistically more likely to be successful if the answer is yes. (That's right - one more generation and you've become a lazy American.) Damn my ancestors for immigrating in the 1800s. Pass the potato chips...