How Immigrants Made A Difference & Why We Should Help
Recently, someone on TV made a comment that immigrants are just a burden to our society. That made me angry, of course. I’ve been volunteering for various causes that help immigrant communities and that just doesn’t fit my experience. And more importantly, there are many ways that immigrants have actually made huge contributions to our country.
So I have been doing some research into tangible ways that Asian Americans have made a dent into the average American life.
And it’s been pretty eye-opening for me. I think you will be surprised too at some of the examples I’ve found.
Did you know that many of the most well-known companies today were founded or are led by Asian Americans? Check out some examples I found when researching this topic further, including:
- Fitbit: Founded by Korean American entrepreneur James Park.
- Forever 21: Founded by Korean American husband and wife Do Won and Jin Sook Chang.
- Coffee Meets Bagel: Founded by 3 Korean-Amerian sisters, Soo, Arum and Dawoon Kang.
- Door Dash: Tony Xu, his mother was a immigrant from China.
- Yahoo: co-founded by Jerry Yang, a Taiwanese-American.
- YouTube: co-founded by Steven Chen, of Taiwanese descent.
- Zoom: founded by Eric Yuan, who was born in China.
- Ancestry.com: CEO Deborah Liu, whose parents were both from Hong Kong.
And guess what? This is just a short list of some of the most well-known companies founded or run by Asian Americans.
You might say that Asian Americans have had a huge influence on American life and culture for many people’s lives. I was actually surprised myself at how many well-known companies were started by or have leaders at the top that are Asian American. It makes me proud to be a Korean-American.
If we can help immigrants overcome language barriers, cultural misunderstanding, access barriers to education here in the US, then they can make huge contributions to our economy and community. This is why volunteering for social service nonprofits that serve immigrant communities matters. It’s a way to make a positive impact on our society because immigrants can go on to make amazing contributions that impact and improve lives everywhere.
The bottom line is that the Asian American community has already made enormous contributions through a diverse range of entrepreneurs, coders, and business leaders, and everyone in this country should be supportive of an immigrant community like ours. America was made by immigrants to begin with, and our country has only been made better by the contributions of Asian Americans. Immigrants prove the American Dream is real. And by the way, you can add my name to the list of Asian Americans trying to make an impact for others, as a 3rd generation Korean American founder of this small nonprofit, NJHSVolunteers.com today — but with dreams of making a huge difference with all high school students — for people in need everywhere.
