Two of my clients were naturalized this week in ceremonies on opposite coasts.  The first, a pharmaceutical researcher who received a green card based on his research, became a citizen after five years as a green card holder that have seen him rise to become chief scientific officer at a biotech company.  The other is a recently-enlisted sailor in the US Navy whose long-pending naturalization could finally be resolved.

These clients and their service to our country remind me, and should remind all of us, that the United States was founded on the ideal that all people are welcome if they share our values and are willing to come together, working for a better country, without regard to divisions of religion, language or natonality.  Many people do not realize that, prominent among the causes for the reasons for separation from King George that the Continental Congress listed in the Declaration of Independence, was:

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

From the very founding of these United States, welcoming new immigrants and allowing them to become citizens though naturalization has been one of our greatest strengths.  These immigrants become Americans by choice – choosing to join in the project of improving our country and handing a better life to all of our children.

So to these two, and all our new citizens, I say, “Thank you, my fellow Americans.”

While the number of visa holders is very small compared to the U.S.
workforce, their contribution is huge.  For example, last year 35
percent of Microsoft’s patent applications in the U.S. came from new
inventions by visa and green card holders. 

I’ve always said the H-1B visa was for “insourcing,” not “outsourcing” – and each H-1B worker here buys or rents a house, pays taxes, eats out, shops at Best Buy – so that sending talented people home makes no economic or policy sense.  The scope of the benefit beyond the immediate economic impact is breathtaking, though – what if 35 percent of Microsoft’s new products were developed in India, instead of Washington?

Both chose to become Americans, and both won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

The immigrant stories of Eric Kandel and Oliver Smithies, winners of the 2000 and 2007 Nobel Prizes in Medicine respectively, are important for immigration policymakers to understand. At the time each was allowed to immigrate to the US – as a 10-year-old Jewish refugee fleeing Austria in 1939, in the case of Kandel, and just after earning his doctorate from Oxford in the case of Smithies -their potential was not yet apparent. In today’s immigration system, they would have had difficulty proving their “national interest” or “well founded fear of persecution,” and yet sending them back where they came from would have deprived the United States (and perhaps the world) of two great scientists.

It is immigrant stories like these that got us to become immigration lawyers. Our clients bring enormous potential and energy with them. While some have already won their prizes and renown, others are just beginning to show their promise. Many bring their time and talent to the United States in less noticed, but no less important, ways – teaching our children, caring for our patients, helping run our businesses. Many come to join an American spouse, or parent, or child. All enrich our country as they work to make a better life for themselves and their children.

We believe in the contributions of immigrants to our country. We believe in their dreams, and their place in building the American Dream. We believe in aliens.