America: 400 Years — A Celebration of Immigrants

Without immigrants, the American economy would collapse. It’s not just the scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs and risk-takers, but it’s also the immigrant labourers, nurses, healthcare aides, construction workers who keep this nation moving every single day

By Anil Madan

It is not an exaggeration to say that over the past 700 years, Britain and America have had the greatest impact on the world. No matter what markers define the end of the British era and the advent of the American, much of how the world thinks, communicates, works and functions, has been influenced by the culture, systems, technology, and infrastructure created by these two nations.

Three weeks hence, America will mark the 250th anniversary of the declaration that it was a free and independent nation.

In truth, the celebration of American independence should be a celebration of the accomplishments and achievements of immigrants and their children.

But what of the indigenous people, the American Indians so-called? On June 2, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act which declared all non-citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States to be citizens.

From the first English settlement at Plimoth Plantation in 1620 to the present, the United States has been shaped — economically, scientifically, culturally, and politically — by immigrants and their descendants. Their impact runs from the founding of the nation itself to the cutting edge of today’s technology and medicine.

Early settlement and founding of the United States (1620–1820)

* Colonial settlement and labour: Immigrants: English, Dutch, German, Irish, Scottish and others populated the colonies, providing the labour and skills that built farms, ports, and early industries. Impact: They drove agricultural expansion, trade, and the growth of port cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

* Founders of the republic: Foreign-born signers: Eight of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence — including Button Gwinnett (England), Francis Lewis (Wales), James Wilson (Scotland), and John Witherspoon (Scotland) — were born outside the American colonies, and many others were born in different colonies than the ones they represented. In other words, they were immigrants in the colonies they represented. Impact: Immigrant and intercolonial elites helped craft the political institutions and ideas that defined the new nation.

* Early innovation: Example: Alexander Graham Bell, a Scotsman working in Boston, was instrumental in developing the telephone, a key to the early communications infrastructure of America and the world.

Perhaps the most significant development that these immigrants and children of immigrants brought forth into the world was the notion of equality and representative government built on the idea that each person has certain unalienable rights – Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – that governments must secure.

The idea of America itself is the creation of immigrants.

Mass immigration and the industrial revolution (1880–1920)

* Workforce transformation: Industrial labour: Between 1880 and 1920, immigrants and their children comprised over half of manufacturing workers; including the third generation, more than two-thirds of manufacturing workers were of recent immigrant stock. Impact: They were the mainstay of the American industrial workforce, enabling the rapid shift from a rural agrarian society to an urban industrial economy with railroads, factories, and mass-produced consumer goods.

* Innovation and technology: Patent evidence: Historical work linking Census and patent records finds immigrants accounted for about 19–20% of inventors between 1880 and 1940, and technology areas where immigrant inventors were prevalent experienced more patenting and citations in subsequent decades. Sectoral impact: Immigrants were especially active in chemicals and electricity — sectors that accounted for roughly 13.9% and 12.6% of all US patents and had large effects on economic growth.

* Iconic industrial innovations: Nikola Tesla (Serbia): Developed alternating current electrical systems, enabling the modern power grid and widespread electrification. David Lindquist (Sweden): Advanced electric elevator technology, supporting skyscraper construction and urban growth. Herman Frasch (Germany): Pioneered techniques analogous to modern fracking, transforming resource extraction.

20th century science, technology, and global leadership

* Refugee scientists and World War II: Albert Einstein (Germany): A refugee who settled in the U.S., published over 300 scientific papers, and whose work on relativity and the photoelectric effect helped cement America’s scientific prestige. Enrico Fermi (Italy): Fled racial laws, became a key figure in the Manhattan Project, produced the first nuclear reactor, and is often called the architect of the nuclear bomb. Impact: Refugee scientists gave the Allies crucial technological advantages and helped establish the US as a global scientific leader.

* Postwar innovation and industry: Andrew Grove (Hungary): Co‑founder and later CEO of Intel, whose decision to focus on microprocessors helped create one of the world’s largest technology companies and drove the rise of personal computing. Amar Bose (India): Founded Bose Corporation, applying advanced acoustics research to consumer audio; the company now employs thousands and generates billions in revenue.

* Nobel‑level contributions: Immigrant laureates: Har Gobind Khorana (Medicine), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Physics), Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (Chemistry), Abhijit Banerjee (Economics), and Muhammad Yunus (Peace) all did major portions of their Nobel‑winning work in the US as immigrants or foreign‑born scholars. Impact: Their work spans genetics, astrophysics, structural biology, development economics, and microfinance — fields that have reshaped global science and policy.

Modern innovation, entrepreneurship, and the knowledge economy

* Outsize role in patents and innovation today: Recent patent data: Researchers examining nearly 880,000 American inventors between 1990 and 2016 found that immigrants comprised 16% of inventors but were behind 23% of patents. It wasn’t just a matter of quantity: The share of patents immigrants produced was slightly higher when weighted by the number of citations each patent received… Moreover, immigrants were responsible for a quarter of the total economic value of patents granted in that period. Productivity: The average immigrant is substantially more productive than the average U.S.-born inventor, according to recent work from Stanford and NBER.

* STEM education and patenting: Upper‑tail human capital: Immigrants often have science and engineering degrees or come to US universities to further their education, and immigrants obtain patents at twice the rate of native Americans, according to the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates. Global inventor hub: While the US is not the largest destination for all migrants, it hosts 57.1% of the world’s inventor community, and in 2011, 76% of patents earned by the top 10 patenting American universities listed a foreign inventor.

* Entrepreneurship and billion‑dollar firms: High‑growth companies: A 2022 National Foundation for American Policy study found that 55% of US billion‑dollar corporations were founded by at least one immigrant. Examples:

* Sergey Brin (Russia): Co‑founded Google, transforming information access and spawning Alphabet’s broader innovation ecosystem.

* Elon Musk (South Africa): Co‑founded PayPal and founded SpaceX and Tesla, pushing advances in online payments, reusable rockets, and electric vehicles.

Health care, communities, and social infrastructure

* Foreign‑trained doctors: Critical to care: Foreign‑trained physicians are essential to serving many US communities, particularly in rural and underserved areas, helping to alleviate shortages in primary care and specialized services.

* Scientific contributions to public health and environment: Mario Molina (Mexico): Nobel Prize‑winning chemist whose work on ozone depletion and climate change guided global environmental policy and helped protect the atmosphere. Carl Djerassi (Austria/Bulgaria): “Father of the pill,” whose synthesis of norethindrone enabled oral contraceptives and transformed reproductive health and women’s autonomy.

Long‑run impact: from Plimouth to the present

Across four centuries, immigrants have:

* Built the economy: From colonial agriculture and early trade to the industrial workforce where immigrants and their children made up over half of manufacturing workers by 1920.

* Powered innovation: They have consistently been overrepresented among inventors — about 20% in the late 19th–early 20th century, over 30% by 2000, and responsible for roughly a quarter of the economic value of patents in recent decades.

* Advanced science and technology: Refugee and immigrant scientists have driven breakthroughs in physics, chemistry, medicine, computing, and space technology, helping the US “lead the world in science for generations.”

* Created global companies: From Intel and Bose to Google, PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX, immigrant founders have built firms that define the modern economy and employ tens of thousands of people.

* Strengthened institutions and communities: Immigrants have signed founding documents, staffed universities and hospitals, and sustained local economies, especially in cities and underserved regions.

Put simply, the American story — from Plimouth Plantation to today’s innovation hubs — is inseparable from the energy, ideas, and resilience of immigrants.

Without immigrants, the American economy would collapse. It’s not just the scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs and risk-takers who are examples of the American Dream in action, but it’s also the immigrant labourers, nurses, healthcare aides, construction workers, and so many others who keep this nation moving every single day. One quarter of all doctors in the US are foreign trained. Without them, our healthcare system would not exist.

If we think of inventions that have had the most significant impact on the world in the last century or so, one will have to include the deployment of electricity, the Atom Bomb, the telephone, the Internet, and perhaps now, Artificial Intelligence. In respect of these, immigrants have been a major force.

Happy birthday America! And a tip of the hat to the immigrants who made it all possible. In short, every single person who was considered an American until that 1924 law conferred citizenship on Indians, was an immigrant or the child of an immigrant.

We are all immigrants.

Cheerz…
Bwana

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 19 June 2026