Immigrants From Nice Countries

Following up on those shitholes: Donald Trump, at a fundraiser in Florida's Palm Beach this past Saturday night, decided to clarify some of his thoughts on immigration.

He referred to his comments back in 2018, when he questioned why the U.S. should be letting in immigrants from what he called "shithole countries" like Haiti and Nigeria, saying that Haitians "all have AIDS" and that Nigerians should "go back to their huts" and that America should let in more Norwegians.

"And when I said, you know, Why can't we allow people to come in from nice countries, I'm trying to be nice," Trump said at the dinner on Saturday night. "Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?"

"They took that as a very terrible comment, but I felt it was fine," he followed up.

Then Trump turned his attention to the influx at the southern border, saying that the Latin American gang members who are purportedly flooding in "make the Hells Angels look like extremely nice people."

"They've been shipped in, brought in, deposited in our country, and they're with us tonight," said Trump. "In fact, I don't think they're on this island, but I know they're on that island right there. That's West Palm," Trump said, pointing across the water. "Congratulations over there. But they'll be here. Eventually, they'll be here."

Trump probably means that as a fearmongering line, along the lines of "immigrants will take over, and these previously nice communities will cease to be." But there's also a positive interpretation (that Trump surely doesn't mean): Eventually, immigrants—even those from dire situations and disintegrating countries—do sometimes make their way to the Palm Beach political fundraisers, so to speak, or to levels of wealth and influence.

Immigrants make it rain: Roughly half of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. Jeff Bezos, who helmed Amazon, is the son of a Cuban immigrant. Steve Jobs, who helmed Apple, is the son of a Syrian immigrant. Costco was co-founded by the son of Canadian-Romanian immigrants. Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai was born to a Tamil family in India before making his way to California. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was also born in India, later traveling to the U.S. to attend school in Wisconsin.

Roughly 55 percent of America's billion-dollar startups that are privately traded—also called unicorns—have immigrant founders or co-founders. Avant co-founder Al Goldstein, an Uzbek Jew, came to America at the age of 8 as a refugee. His co-founders Paul Zhang and John Sun, both born in China, also immigrated to the U.S. as children.

Some detractors might stress that the above success stories did not stem from asylum seekers. And that is true. But immigrants do tend to be more likely than native-born residents to become entrepreneurs (more on this from Harvard Business Review). And research from the National Foundation for American Policy finds that "there is generally no reliable way under U.S. immigration law for foreign nationals to start a business and remain in the country after founding a company," so "successful immigrant entrepreneurs in America are almost always refugees or family-sponsored and employer-sponsored immigrants." We simply don't know by which route those who most benefit the American economy will come; all we can look to are the statistics we have from company founding in the past. If Silicon Valley's trajectory over the last 30 years is any indication, Trump is quite correct in saying that "eventually, they'll be here"—at political fundraisers full of monied people ready to cough up some cash.

Scandinavian asylum: Trump is also correct in saying we should let in people from Norway. Though Norwegians are not fleeing war or cartels, some of them are fleeing massive wealth-tax hikes which threaten to siphon away significant chunks of their fortunes and provide a disincentive for generating such wealth in the first place. Coercive redistribution is wrong, and Norwegians deserve better.

Scenes from New York: Beautiful scenes depicted by my friend Yael Bar tur.

It's been six months since Hamas' brutal October 7 attack on Israel. Here are some pictures and videos of hostages—some believed to be dead, and some believed to be alive—and their families, yearning for their return, so they won't just be an abstract concept, or names that all blend together.

Related: An interesting piece from Lahav Harkov in Jewish Insider about political divisions among hostages' families.

QUICK HITS

• The chairman vs. chair gendered language debate in the boardroom. I cannot imagine caring about this.

• Some Chinese nationals who've seen a pirated version of Netflix's 3 Body Problem are angry over the show's racial diversity and its depiction of a Cultural Revolution struggle session.

• Semi-related: collectivism vs. individualism on rice and wheat farms.

• Donald Trump says states should decide for themselves their abortion policies and that he is "strongly in favor of exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother."

• A bizarre line in this BBC article:

• Elon Musk faced with a tough choice regarding X access in Brazil. "A crusading Brazilian Supreme Court justice included Elon Musk as a target in an ongoing investigation over the dissemination of fake news and opened a separate investigation late Sunday into the executive for alleged obstruction," reports the Associated Press.

• The Vatican released "Declaration 'Dignitas Infinita' on Human Dignity" earlier today, which repudiates "gender theory": "Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God," it reads. "All attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected."

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