What Would America be Missing Without Immigrants?

The U.S. Has Many Famous Immigrants

Without immigration…America wouldn't have jeans. Levi Strauss was born in Germany in 1829 and moved to New York at age 18. He grew his small business into the iconic Levi’s clothing company. Overall, the U.S. would have 25% fewer new businesses Forbes/HBS reports. The U.S. also wouldn’t have won its first Nobel Prize in science in 1907 when Polish-born physicist Albert A. Michelson received the prize for his work measuring the speed of light. Without immigration, the U.S. would have 7% fewer physicians according to JAMA/Reuters and 24.4% less construction workers based on data from the NAHB.

Immigrants earned $1.3 trillion and contributed $105 billion in state and local taxes and nearly $224 billion in federal taxes in 2014, according to the Partnership for a New American Economy, based on an analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau's latest American Community Survey. The partnership is a group of 500 Republican, Democratic and independent mayors and business leaders who support immigration reforms that create jobs for Americans, according to its site. In 2014 immigrants had almost $927 billion in consumer spending power, an analysis of the survey showed. Though immigrants make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, they contribute nearly 15 percent of the country's economic output, according to a 2014 report from the Economic Policy Institute. The report contains the institute's latest data on immigration and the U.S. economy.

In 2016 alone the U.S. would’ve had 50 fewer Olympic athletes and missed out on 8 Olympic medals. Madeleine Albright the first female U.S. Secretary of State immigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1948. Movie star and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is an Austrian immigrant and Saturday Night Live was created by Canadian immigrant Lorne Michaels and let's not forget First Lady Melania Trump who immigrated to the U.S. from Slovenia in 1996.

Brut.