I know we posted this story before, but this is a recent article in the New York Times and it bears repeating! People come to this country, not to take us over in some bizarre plot to overthrow our democracy, but to have an opportunity that we all were blessed to be born into. We have people within our own PWC community, having come here “illegally”, that are now thriving business owners. Yes, we have issues that need to be constructively resolved, but lets not forget, that ALL our ancestors came here as immigrants, dreaming that they too, could live the American dream.
At the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa has four positions. He is a neurosurgeon who teaches oncology and neurosurgery, directs a neurosurgery clinic and heads a laboratory studying brain tumors. He also performs nearly 250 brain operations a year. Twenty years ago, Dr. Quiñones-Hinojosa, now 40, was an illegal immigrant working in the vegetable fields of the Central Valley in California. He became a citizen in 1997 while at Harvard.
WHEN YOU HEAR ANTI-IMMIGRANT EXPRESSIONS ON TALK RADIO AND CABLE TELEVISION, HOW DO YOU FEEL?
A. It bothers me. Because I know what it was that drove me to jump the fence. It was poverty and frustration with a system that would have never allowed me to be who I am today.
As long as there is poverty in the rest of the world and we export our culture through movies and television, people who are hungry are going to come here. There’s no way to stop it.
