One need only look at Silicon Valley to see the value of immigrants. Starting in the late 70s, it was Vietnamese immigrants fleeing oppression who formed the backbone of Silicon Valley. They took many of the manual labor jobs in the new high-tech firms. Those companies needed people to do assembly work as well as packaging. The Vietnamese were the hardest working and most dependable – they showed up on time, worked hard, and didn’t complain. By contrast, many native-born Americans thought the work was beneath them or weren’t dependable. In time, the Vietnamese also became technicians, engineers, and scientists at the same kinds of high tech firms or ran businesses.

In more recent years, immigrants from India, Taiwan, and China have also contributed heavily to Silicon Valley success. Many electronics, software, and biotechnology firms employ not only Chinese and Indian scientists, technicians, and engineers but product managers and sales reps. Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs would squawk but the fact is that without immigrants, Silicon Valley would grind to a halt.

The less pretty side of immigration is also on display. Immigrants from Latin America often take the menial jobs that require little education: food service, landscaping, and janitorial services. There is less of an emphasis on education among the Latino communities too so there’s a higher drop-out rate and fewer Latino faces seen among the professional classes in Silicon Valley firms.

In any case, the idiocy of our immigration laws is all too evident. Unfortunately, too many people believe in the Limbaugh/Beck/Buchanan/Dobbs view of immigrants to be especially optimistic about immigration reform. ]]> http://citiwire.net/post/1583/comment-page-1/#comment-1058 Jeffrey Kenworthy Mon, 28 Dec 2009 09:52:24 +0000 http://citiwire.net/?p=1583#comment-1058 This is a great book to have publicized through this column. I am sure there would be many a worthy PhD dissertation that could explore different aspects of immigrant-led city revitalization. It reminded me of the stories I have read, the anecdotes I have been told and the experiences I have had in America's checkerboard cities of good and bad neighbourhoods. Many years ago I was introduced to Greektown in Detroit, a small area, an island in a sea of decay, made safe and brought to life at night by a conglomeration of Greek restaurants. Later on in the 1980s I spent a whole afternoon in MacArthur Park in LA, just talking to the Mexican families crowded into that space having Sunday family picnics and how welcome they made me feel and how it so changed my perception of what LA symbolizes. And there were the stories of the Puerto Ricans moving in to areas of NYC and sitting out on their stoops bringing life and friendliness to previously not so friendly streets (not that this was always understood or welcomed by existing residents). And then there were the stories of the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the waves of immigrants that passed through that area, Jewish, Irish, Italian, and how when the social fabric of those immigrant communities remained strong and intact, the crime rate was very low, something not missed by the US Bureau of the Census in its musings on how such high density areas could possibly have such positive social features (coming as they were from an anti-density tradition). Your column also brings a welcome reminder of what immigration has done for the cities of my own country, Australia. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s all Australian kids ate "meat and three veg" as it later became known. The one or two Chinese restaurants that existed in Perth at the time were places of enormous mystery and even fear for children, brought up as we were on outlandish stories of the dangers posed to Australia's security by that part of the world. Half my friends in this era were kids from Italian immigrant families who made wonderful home made tomato sauce in their garages and graced our neighbourhoods with the scent of previously unknown pasta dishes and who grew vegetables in their front and backyards, a welcome break from the rows of neat and tidy and unsustainable expanses of European lawns. I shudder to think where Australian cities would be today without the southern European, Asian and other waves of immigration that have so diversified the streetscapes of Australian inner cities with their lively shopfronts and wonderful cuisine, not to mention enlarging our understanding and appreciation of the rest of the world outside of its British colonial origins. When one wanders around places like the bazaars in Cairo, the streets of Istanbul, and what is left of the old parts of Shanghai, to name just three of countless other places in the world, one realizes the incredible vitality, colour, diversity, work ethic and gregarious character of so many urban cultures worldwide with their very public and interactive, street-oriented traditions... and of course their capacity to diversify and revitalize local economies. It brings home how much the poorer we become when we are not embracing more creatively and enthusiastically such potential in our own cities of perhaps less "exotic" origins. And it also raises the issue of how to constructively acknowledge, harness and honour the incredible potential and contribution of our own indigenous population, the original custodians of the land, something Australia has so poorly done for much too long. Thanks again for the column and the alert about the book. I hope it wakes up some positive policy responses. Sincerely Jeff Kenworthy This is a great book to have publicized through this column. I am sure there would be many a worthy PhD dissertation that could explore different aspects of immigrant-led city revitalization.

It reminded me of the stories I have read, the anecdotes I have been told and the experiences I have had in America’s checkerboard cities of good and bad neighbourhoods. Many years ago I was introduced to Greektown in Detroit, a small area, an island in a sea of decay, made safe and brought to life at night by a conglomeration of Greek restaurants. Later on in the 1980s I spent a whole afternoon in MacArthur Park in LA, just talking to the Mexican families crowded into that space having Sunday family picnics and how welcome they made me feel and how it so changed my perception of what LA symbolizes.

And there were the stories of the Puerto Ricans moving in to areas of NYC and sitting out on their stoops bringing life and friendliness to previously not so friendly streets (not that this was always understood or welcomed by existing residents). And then there were the stories of the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the waves of immigrants that passed through that area, Jewish, Irish, Italian, and how when the social fabric of those immigrant communities remained strong and intact, the crime rate was very low, something not missed by the US Bureau of the Census in its musings on how such high density areas could possibly have such positive social features (coming as they were from an anti-density tradition).

Your column also brings a welcome reminder of what immigration has done for the cities of my own country, Australia. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s all Australian kids ate “meat and three veg” as it later became known. The one or two Chinese restaurants that existed in Perth at the time were places of enormous mystery and even fear for children, brought up as we were on outlandish stories of the dangers posed to Australia’s security by that part of the world.

Half my friends in this era were kids from Italian immigrant families who made wonderful home made tomato sauce in their garages and graced our neighbourhoods with the scent of previously unknown pasta dishes and who grew vegetables in their front and backyards, a welcome break from the rows of neat and tidy and unsustainable expanses of European lawns.

I shudder to think where Australian cities would be today without the southern European, Asian and other waves of immigration that have so diversified the streetscapes of Australian inner cities with their lively shopfronts and wonderful cuisine, not to mention enlarging our understanding and appreciation of the rest of the world outside of its British colonial origins.

When one wanders around places like the bazaars in Cairo, the streets of Istanbul, and what is left of the old parts of Shanghai, to name just three of countless other places in the world, one realizes the incredible vitality, colour, diversity, work ethic and gregarious character of so many urban cultures worldwide with their very public and interactive, street-oriented traditions… and of course their capacity to diversify and revitalize local economies.

It brings home how much the poorer we become when we are not embracing more creatively and enthusiastically such potential in our own cities of perhaps less “exotic” origins. And it also raises the issue of how to constructively acknowledge, harness and honour the incredible potential and contribution of our own indigenous population, the original custodians of the land, something Australia has so poorly done for much too long.

Thanks again for the column and the alert about the book. I hope it wakes up some positive policy responses.

Sincerely

Jeff Kenworthy