Silicon Valley was energized by legal immigrants from all over the world who founded eBay, Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, Stripe, Sun Microsystems, Tesla, Yahoo and a host of others.
The Greek-American Elia Kazan’s 1963 film “America America” is based on the Herculean struggle of the director’s uncle to immigrate to the United States.
It summed up Americans’ traditional view of immigrants: They had risked everything for the chance to reach America, and once there, became hyperpatriotic in their gratitude for the magnanimity of their new hosts.
I grew up in rural California surrounded by hard-working immigrant farm families from Armenia, India, Japan and Mexico. Their work ethic, love of America and productive farms were models for US non-immigrants.
My own Swedish grandfather, disabled by poison gas while fighting on the Western Front in World War I, loved all things Swedish, but not nearly as much as his beloved America.
Four Hansons fought on the front lines of World Wars I and II. One was disabled, and another was killed. And all felt blessed that their parents and grandparents had gotten to America.
But something has gone terribly wrong with immigration — an open border, of course, but also a change in legal immigration as well as student visitors.
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