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Periscope by Niall O'Dowd

Emigrants give far more to America than they take --Time to stop racist anti-emigrant sentiment

Posted on Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 09:03 PM
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Immigrant children arriving to a new land
If there is one sentiment that bothers me at present it is the oft repeated lie that emigrants always take American jobs.

It has been my experience that emigrants far from taking jobs, create them.

Let's take an incredible example, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google.

Here is an emigrant from Russia who started one of the world's greatest companies.

No doubt there are many America Firsters out there who would prefer he never came to these shores because he would 'take' an American job.'

He now employs close to 10,000 Americans and gets 1,300 resumes a day from people seeking to work at Google.

Over half the start-ups in Silicon Valley are by emigrants, yes, that despised class that many America Firsters seem to believe belong in the nearest jail.

In my own experience as an emigrant, I never worked for an American company in my life.

I came to the US as a school teacher. After a brief period as a house painter I stated my own newspapers and have been working for myself ever since -- and employing many Americans along the way.

I love what this country has given me and hope I have given back -- partly by providing jobs for some Americans.

So when anti-immigrant groups such as Numbers USA start their usual rant that America is full up of foreigners and doesn't need any others I ask you to think of Sergey Brin, Albert Einstein, Nobel winner Eli Wiesel and many other magnificent emigrants to this country who have made such a profound difference

Only that way will we have any understanding of the massive up-side of emigration.


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46 comments

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paul0123 | Feb 29, 2012, 01:22 PM EST
Definitions: "Emigrate"to leave one country or region to settle in another; migrate: to emigrate from Ireland to Australia. "Imigrate"to come to a country of which one is not a native, usually for permanent residence.

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Seanmor | Feb 28, 2012, 08:18 PM EST
Madeline: I agree with what you say in your first sentence. The Native Americans are the true Americans because their ancestors were here 10,000 years before the first European set foot on these shores. However, my experience has been very different from what you state in the rest of your comment. Since I came here as a permanent resident a half century ago, the only ones who treat me in a supercilious manner are those who are only a generation or two removed from Ireland, especially my own first cousins. During my four years in theMarine Corps, my closest friends were Southern WASPs, who always accepted as an equal. But such was seldom thne case with Irish Catholics from the Norheast, many of whom perceived themselves to be superior to me becaus of where I came from. My wife was the widow of a Presbyterian minister when we first met and 2½ years later I married this Methodist woman whose ancestors lived in New England since the late 1600s. I have always been accepted as an equal by her relatives, even though they are better educated and wealthier than I. Finally, I want to state that loyal, law-abiding, tax-paying U.S.citizens should not be compelled to accept all foreigners who enter the U.S. illegally. We all must obey the laws of this great nation, in whose defense forces I'm very proud to have honorably served.

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Madeliene | Feb 28, 2012, 03:05 PM EST
sorry Catholic

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Madeliene | Feb 28, 2012, 03:04 PM EST
the only "true" Americans are the native indians- the rest of us are immigrants- My parents were born in Ireland and all of my ancestors/ they Loved America and worked HARD here.. but they felt prejudice at times- so did JFK when he aspired to be President " OMG AN IRISH CAYHOLIC" -- piss off all of you Ameircans who clainm the right to tell others where to live and what to do!

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Seanmor | Feb 25, 2012, 09:43 AM EST
It is the immigrants from Irelandm past and present - the vast majority of us-who have and are having positive effect on the U.S. However, joycean makes an excellent point when he refers to the lack of opportunities in Ireland, especially the part of that country that is under the control of the Dáil. I don't know of anyone from Ireland, North or South, who ever took a job away from a U.S. citizen. My first job in NYC included cleaning urinals and toilet bowls, After 2 yeras of that work, I joined the Marine Corps and was honorably discharged 4 yeras later, but I was still finger-printed, photographed and investigated all over again before I became a citizen. I dearly love this great country and I also feel strong affection for Ireland, that whole nation, but I never felt the least loyality to the Partitionist gov't in the Dáil.

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joycean | Feb 25, 2012, 05:14 AM EST
Ireland does not give America anything when her citizens immigrate. Ireland is an "old sow that eats her farrow." Her citizens have traditionally emigrated to seek better opportunities. It is time the Irish start creating opportunities for themselves at home, rather than taking opportunities from others already here.

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Seanmor | Feb 24, 2012, 09:50 PM EST
The title of the above item reminds me of an Editorial I read in "The New York Daily News" in mid March of the late 1970s. It stated that Ireland [through her emmigrants] gave much more to the U.S. that the U.S. gave to Ireland. This Editorial was especially true regarding the contributions Irish natives made to this country in all the major conflicts, including America's War of Independence. Volumes have been written on this subject, but I'll only tell of one Irish emigrants experience (and the thanks he got for his honorable service. In the late 60s, I shared an apt. with a young erryman who had recently been recently discharged from the army but was still an Irish citizen. He obtained a fstate fishing license but was denied a permit to fish in the NYC resorvoirs, for lack of citizenship. No one even questioned him about citizenship when he was ordered to basic training' shipped out to Vietnam and sent on night patrols in the Viet Cong-infested jungles. Having survived a year of this dangerous activity, the Kerryman was NOT allowed to fish in the reservoirs.

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seanomelb | Feb 24, 2012, 09:41 PM EST
Poor auld george as usual he misses the message I'll put it in a bottle for him and by the time he recieves the bottle the penny might drop.

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Seanmor | Feb 24, 2012, 09:17 PM EST
The above article says a lot about immigrants, all of which is true, but it makes no distinction between those who legally entered the U.S. and abide by its laws and those who unlawfully came here and continue to violate our laws by living here illegally.

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irishcop025 | Feb 24, 2012, 03:02 PM EST
Niall, What appened to the thousands of Visas that were granted to th Irish in the 1980's and 1990's? Oh that's right? They are back in Ireland!

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GeorgeDillon | Feb 24, 2012, 08:37 AM EST
seanomel: "Let's remove all the immigrants from the USA". OK, but first let's remove all the immigrants from Australia. You, for starters.

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joycean | Feb 23, 2012, 07:38 PM EST
There are many illegal Irish immigrants in this country. The United States, like most other countries, limits immigrants and has since the 1920s. The difference is in the quotas which will change. This country has the third largest population of any country in the world already, after China and India. We are not able to employ or provide services to all the people currently here.There are 312million people here, of which 2.5 million are American Indians. For some reason, mostly to confuse the issue, people like to bring up Indians. BTW, Hispanics also have Native American ancestors. Hispanics make up the largest goup of immigrants, 50740,089, 16.40%, and increasing every day through illegal border crossings.

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seanomelb | Feb 23, 2012, 06:59 PM EST
Let's remove all the immigrants from the USA (legal or illegal) and watch the economy slide into a depression.

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IrishAncestor | Feb 23, 2012, 06:05 PM EST
Pardon me if I'm missing something, but aren't Americans all immigrants? What axe is being ground here? The only people with a right to this argument are the indigenous North American tribes.

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pattbaa | Feb 23, 2012, 05:31 PM EST
Greenwich Connecticut USA---What most troubles Americans is ILLEGAL immigration, and if any Irish are gulity of this , their number is miniscule and not worthy of attention , compared to Hispanics who numbers in the TENS OF MILLIONS!!!.-- If you believe confronting this problem is "Racist" simply because the illegals are non-white ,and if you oppose the enforcement of immigrations laws and the adherence to them because mostly non-whites would be effected , then you are arguing for a preferential ," above-the-Law" treatment of a class of people dependent upon their race; i.e. , the law cannot be applied to certain types of people who are given a privilege" to be exempt from the law because ot their ethnicity.-- Alexander Cockburn,the son of a British Communist , expresses his virulent hatred of the United States in general and the American people in particular in his column in the "Nation" magazine. No surprise that a ultra far-left Brit would despise everthing the United States stands for , but where does the hypocrite LIVE!!! -- that's right , you guessed it!!-- OBTW , the $3.000.000 per-year career of baseball pitcher John Rocker nearly ended simply because he said "I'm not a big fan of foreigners". -- Free Speech in America is longer "Free" .

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