Stories

Spanish-Born Entrepreneur Creates Big Ideas for Small Spaces
Today, access to affordable housing presents a significant challenge. Ivan Fernandez de Casadevante is part of a team of recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduates that thinks they have a solution to the problem. The Spanish native is a co-founder of OriSystems, a company that grew out of… Read More

Immigration Policy Splits the Startup That’s Making a Wildly Popular History Teaching Platform
Thomas Ketchell hopes to transform America’s education system through a simple digital platform. The Belgian native is the CEO and co-founder of Sutori, a tool that allows students and educators to create free interactive timelines — similar to those on Facebook or Twitter — to document historical events. Ketchell first… Read More

CEO of Sundt Construction Says Immigration Policy is Holding His Industry Back
“We have a serious shortage of skilled workers in this country, in every industry,” says Doug Pruitt. “Every business is suffering from a lack of a skilled workforce.” Pruitt served as the CEO of Sundt Construction for 13 years, and has continued to serve on its board since his retirement. Read More

New York Fashion Week: Immigrants, Diversity, and Creativity
As New York Fashion Week wrapped Thursday and London Fashion Week ramps up this weekend, industry commentators in the U.S. are taking stock of this season’s collections and shows. In the past several years there has been a focus on increased diversity in fashion—both in terms of… Read More

Weekend Reading: Highlights from this week’s immigration news (Feb 13-Feb 19)
New York becomes the first city in the country to launch a program (NYT) that will offer foreign-born entrepreneurs a cap-exempt H1-B visa, in exchange for their collaboration with professors and students on City University of New York campuses. Americans have been increasingly concerned about immigration in the past two… Read More

Pastor Advocates for Immigration Reform and Asks His Flock: What Does it Mean to Walk in the Shoes of Someone Else?
Rich Nathan, senior pastor of the Vineyard Church — the largest church in Columbus — empathizes with immigrants in this country; like them, he knows what it’s like to feel out of place. He grew up in a Jewish home in Queens and attended religious schools, but he always felt… Read More

South Carolina Primary: Immigrants in the Palmetto State
This Saturday, Republicans in South Carolina will head to the polls to cast their primary votes. The Palmetto State is home to a small, but rapidly growing, foreign-born population. Although just 4.8 percent of the state’s population is foreign-born, this group grew by over 90 percent between 2000 and 2013. Read More

Failure to Enact Immigration Reform Puts American Food Supply at Risk Says Former USApple Chair
Bill Dodd, a Republican and leader in Ohio’s apple farming community, is an expert in the apple business. A fourth-generation farmer, he lives on the same 85-acre farm that his great-grandfather bought more than half a century ago. As a farmer and an advocate for farmers, Dodd has watched America’s… Read More

Did You Know That Our Founding Fathers Were All Immigrants?
The hit musical Hamilton explains why. There are plenty of verbal acrobatics in Hamilton, the smash-hit hip-hop musical about the life of America’s first Treasury Secretary, but one simple statement has become a kind of battle cry: “Immigrants, we get the job done!” Sung by Nevis-born Alexander Hamilton and… Read More

Lunar New Year in America and the Growth of the Asian-American Population
Monday, February 8, marked the first day of the Lunar New Year, which is celebrated across East Asia and in Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese communities all over the world as the Spring Festival, Seollal, or T?t. Since the earliest days of Chinese immigration in the 1800s, the Lunar New Year… Read More
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