Becoming American: Why Immigration Is Good for Our Nation's Future (11 page)

Like their father and grandfather before them, Brzezinski’s children have gone on to achieve much in the realm of political influence and discourse. Their oldest son, Ian, having spent almost two years in Ukraine as a volunteer, helped the Ukrainians with their national security problems. He also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO and was a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton. He is a Senior Fellow in the International Security Program and is on the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Advisors Group. Key highlights of his tenure as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Policy (2001–2005) include the expansion of NATO membership in 2004, the consolidation and reconfiguration of the Alliance’s command structure, the standing up of the NATO Response Force, and the coordination of European military contributions to U.S.- and NATO-led operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans.

Brzezinski’s second son, Mark, spent two years in Poland as a Fulbright scholar, both studying and occasionally teaching at Warsaw University. He then went to Oxford, where he completed a doctorate, focusing on the introduction of constitutionalism into Polish democracy. He became a lawyer who served on President Clinton’s National Security Council as an expert on Russia and Southeastern Europe and was a partner in McGuire Woods LLP. He now serves as the U.S. ambassador to Sweden.

His daughter, Mika, is a television news presenter and cohost of MSNBC’s weekday morning program,
Morning Joe
, where she provides regular commentary and presents the news headlines for the program. She appears under her maiden name and is often invited by Polish American communities to speak on special occasions.

The effects of Brzezinski’s immigration to the United States has provided this country with an immeasurable repository of knowledge, insight, and career dedication to the furtherance of our standing, interactions, and influence in the global community. His Polish heritage combined with his diverse upbringing helped to shape his goals, which truly contributed to a more just international system. Brzezinski’s children continue his contribution to the country. They, too, have not forgotten their Polish background, as can be seen in their work. We cannot begin to quantify the legacy his family has made in modern politics.

The Brzezinski family is one of many Polish families who have helped shape America. Today, the Census Bureau estimates that there are less than half a million Polish foreign-born immigrants in America. These immigrants work in a diverse range of sectors, ranging from manufacturing to health care to construction.
⁹
They all have their own story. Their story may not be as grand as Brzezinski’s, but all of their stories will share at least one common plot point. Each and every single Polish immigrant had the bravery to uproot himself or herself and move to an unfamiliar land in hope of a greater future.

NOTES

1. “Polish/Russian Immigration: The Nation of Polonia,”
Library of Congress
,
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presen tations/immigration/polish4.html
(accessed July 8, 2013).

2. Al Jazeera English, “One on One: Zbigniew Brzezinski,”
YouTube
.
com
,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ApSE6mgHE
(accessed July 8, 2013).

3. Krystyna Iglicka and Magdalena Ziolek-Skrzypczak, “EU Membership Highlights Poland’s Migration Challenges,”
Migration Information Source
, September 2010,
http://www.migrationinformation.org/feature/display.cfm?ID=800
(accessed July 8, 2013).

4. Aleksandra Ziólkowska-Boehm, “Conversation with Zbigniew Brzezinski, from ‘The Roots Are Polish’ by Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm,”
RootsWeb: Freepages
,
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~atpc/heritage/articles/alek sandra/roots-brzezinski.html
(accessed July 8, 2013).

5. The Trilateral Commission, “About the Trilateral Commission,”
http://www .trilateral.org/go.cfm?do=Page.View&pid=5
(accessed August 27, 2013).

6. Aleksandra Ziólkowska-Boehm, “Conversation with Zbigniew Brzezinski.”

7. Ziólkowska-Boehm, “Conversation with Zbigniew Brzezinski.”

8. Ziólkowska-Boehm, “Conversation with Zbigniew Brzezinski.”

9. Iglicka and Ziolek-Skrzypczak, “EU Membership Highlights Poland’s Migration Challenges.”

8

Hard Work Makes for a Successful Career

T
he clichéd image of the immigrant includes the Chinese dry cleaner, the Greek restaurateur, the Korean greengrocer, and the Mexican construction owner. These examples are still occurring, but with an important addition to the twenty-first-century immigrant story. Today we see an astounding increase in immigrant influence in the high-tech fields. Both immigrant narratives share a common thread: perseverance and hard work.

Nguyen and Phong Phan came to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1991 from Vietnam. As new U.S. citizens under an arrangement that allows the United States’ old allies who were ranking officers to become citizens, they received government assistance. Within a few weeks, they both landed jobs at the local factory of New Hampshire–based Anvil International, which manufactures piping products.

They worked hard for several years, saving their money until they had enough to purchase a restaurant. They opened the Vietnamese Garden in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 2003. It is a family-run enterprise. After five years at the factory, Phong Phan quit to help run the restaurant with her son, Loc, and his wife. Nguyen still works at the factory, but the family has expanded their property holding, and their daughter opened a hair salon two doors down from the restaurant. 

Today’s immigrants arrive in the United States with varied levels of education. At one end of the spectrum are highly educated immigrant adults. These immigrants comprise a quarter of all U.S. physicians, 24 percent of the nation’s science and engineering workers with bachelor’s degrees, and 45 percent of scientists with doctorates. These highly educated immigrant adults are participating in and driving innovations, research, and development—and contributing substantively to technological progress. Today, more than 40 percent of America’s Fortune 500 firms were started by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant.

Immigrants are also frequently the risk takers who launch restaurants, convenience stores, dry cleaners, lawn care operations, and other small businesses in the service industry. Just a couple decades ago, only 12 percent of small business owners were immigrants. Today the number is 18 percent—a disproportionate ratio given that immigrants make up just 13 percent of the U.S. population. The largest number of owners is found in the professional and business services sector, but many are found in retail, construction, educational and social services, and leisure and hospitality.

For those immigrants who do not have educational or financial resources, they find employment in the labor market in construction, house and child care positions, and agricultural work. When we note that approximately 75 percent of all hired farm workers in the United States are immigrants, and that U.S. farms produce more than 9 percent of U.S. exports and almost all the food consumed in the United States, we can see that immigrant labor contributions are staggering.

Immigrant education levels are bimodal, meaning that immigrants are both better and worse educated than U.S.-born citizens. At one end of the spectrum, more than 1.9 percent of foreign-born workers have PhDs, almost twice the share of U.S.-born citizens. Yet, at the other end of the spectrum, nearly 30 percent of immigrants lack a high school diploma, nearly four times the figure for U.S.-born citizens. It is both ends of this spectrum that provide the diverse set of skills needed to fuel the U.S. economy. Immigrants perfectly complement U.S. workers and fill the gaps in the workforce.

In further support, noncitizens make up one-quarter of all international patent applicants from the United States, and college-educated immigrants have been found to be twice as likely to register patents as their U.S.-born counterparts. Indian and Chinese immigrants and their descendants are also thought to be overrepresented among inventors, holding 14 percent of U.S. patents. When we keep in mind that the foreign born only represent 13 percent of the U.S. population, it is impressive to note that they make up 27 percent of the U.S. workforce with a doctoral degree.

Today’s successful high-tech immigrants include an impressive accounting of the world’s most influential companies. Google, eBay, Yahoo!, PayPal, Zappos, and Amazon were all started by immigrants. These companies are now household names around the world.

Google

What began as a simple research project for graduate school turned into a multibillion-dollar company called Google. While at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page decided to create a search engine that filters web pages based on popularity. Realizing its potential, Brin and Page raised money and named their search engine
Google
, as a pun on the mathematical term
Googol
, which means one followed by one hundred zeros. Half of the duo is foreign born. Brin immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1979 to escape Jewish persecution.
¹
Because his father was a mathematician and valued education, he would teach Brin after hours. Brin followed in his father’s footsteps by majoring in mathematics and computer science while at the University of Maryland at College Park.

But Brin isn’t the only immigrant who has had a major influence on Google. Omid Kordestani joined the team as the company’s twelfth employee in 1999. He is credited “for developing the business model that capitalized on the powerful, new internet search engine,” according to San Jose State University, from where he received his bachelors degree.
²
Kordestani is originally from Tehran, Iran, but he immigrated at the age of fourteen to San Jose with his family, a year before Khomeini seized power in Iran.
³
After graduating with a degree in electrical engineering, he was recruited by Hewlett-Packard. There, he realized how beneficial it would be to have skills in both engineering and business, so he also obtained an MBA from Stanford University. Both Brin and Kordestani were instrumental in growing Google from its inception to the $268 billion market capital it sees today.
⁴
With over fifty-thousand employees and more than $50 billion in sales, Google clearly has a huge impact on the U.S. economy.

 But the company doesn’t just stop there; it’s also a leader in technological innovation. Headed by another immigrant from Tehran, Project Glass, a Google-led endeavor, has created glasses that allow wearers to take photos, shoot videos, translate their voice, and more. Babak Parviz from Iran is leading the project, along with Google X lead product manager Steve Lee and founder and head of Google X, Sebastian Thrun. 

eBay

Born in Paris, France, to Iranian parents, Pierre Omidyar was originally named Parviz, after his Iranian roots. In the early 1960s, both sets of Omidyar’s grandparents moved their children to Paris so that they could receive a proper education, unavailable to most students in Iran at the time.
⁵
Omidyar and his parents moved to the United States when he was six years old. Though they eventually separated, both of his parents played an instrumental role during his childhood. In an interview in 2000, Omidyar spoke about his “fond memories” of doing medical rounds with his father, a surgeon and doctor, on weekends.
⁶
While his father worked in a hospital, his mother established a nonprofit that helped fellow Iranians remain closely connected to their heritage. Additionally, she was an executive director at the Institute of Comparative Social and Cultural Studies, which advocated for a greater appreciation of cultures among people of varying backgrounds.
⁷

In Washington, D.C., Pierre enrolled at St. Andrews Episcopal High School. While there, he began programming an Apple II computer and digitizing the school library’s card catalogue at $6 per hour. He also helped with the school’s computer program that created class schedules.
⁸

In 1995, Omidyar, then twenty-eight years old, wrote the original computer code for what would become eBay. The first item Omidyar sold on the site was a broken laser pointer. He was amazed that anyone would pay for such a thing, but he learned the buyer wanted the device for his laser-pointer collection.
⁹
The site soon exploded in popularity. Though the site initially sold collectibles, it grew to include a wide spectrum of items, from furniture to airline tickets to cars. After eBay went public in 1998, Omidyar became a billionaire.