High-End Immigrants: Their  Insight into America

A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.

O.W. Holmes (1809-1894),  The Professor at the Breakfast Table

I’ve been reading a book, The Road to Home, by Vartan Gregorian, Simon & Schuster, 2003

Vartan Gregorian  is an 81 year old Armenian immigrant who migrated to the U.S at age 22 in 1956,  earned a PhD in History at Stanford, held professorships at 4 American universities,    became President of  Brown University,  the New York Public Library, and the Carnegie Foundation.

I mention these accomplishments because Dr. Gregorian, like many highly skilled and learned immigrants,  had the insight to instantly recognize America’s greatest assets – its limitless opportunities,  its freedoms to rise, and its immeasurable   natural human and physical resources.

Here is Gregorian giving his insights upon  his arrival:

“My first impressions of Americans during my first two months were many and varied.  I wrote in my diary that Americans don’t like to be bossed or told what to do by anyone,  nor their government nor their clergy or their employers.  They must believe they are acting on their own volition.  Americans are very individualistic.  They work hard, they are open, kind, and generous.”

And here is Gregorian, sharing his views  after assuming a professorship at the University of Texas and living in Austin.

“Texas was huge! It was an endless frontier. It was a proud, self-confident, optimist state. It was the land of “Why not?” and “can do.” Whether you  know  it or not,  while in Texas you had to think big. With size went a swaggering boastfulness…Texas had the biggest horizons, the biggest skies, and the largest number of stars.  In Texas, you never felt constrained  You never felt claustrophobic  The whole state was restless and on the move.”

More than anything else immigrants recognize America as the land of opportunity, of "why not?" and "can-do."    

Peter F. Drucker (1909-2005), an Austrian immigrant and the father of management as we know it,  said it best on how to succeed in American business.

“Courage rather than analysis dictates the truly important rules for identifying priorities;

·         Pick the future as against the past. 

·         Focus on opportunity rather than on problem.

·          Choose our own direction – rather than climb on the bandwagon.

·         Aim high, aim for something that will make a difference, rather than for something that is    'safe' and'easy' to do.”

hHighly skilled  immigrant entrepreneurs  recognize America as their future home   Forty-three percent of Silicon Valley founders and  CEOs are immigrants.  These include Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, and Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle.  Small wonder that Silicon Valley lobbyists are fighting a running battle to loosen restrictions on H-1 visas for entrepreneurs from abroad.  

bBefore I end this blog post,  let me remind readers that 25% of physicians practicing in America are foreign-trained immigrants,  including anesthesiologists, 31%, cardiologists, 31%.,internists, 32%., nephrologists, 40%, psychiatrists, 31%, family physicians, 35%.  Immigrant doctors too want to share the American dream of freedom and opportunity.