Stories
Hi-Tech Innovator Wants to Expand Into U.S. — Immigration Policy Makes That Difficult
After suffering long-term shoulder pain, serial entrepreneur Mark Yu started a company — U-Gym Technology — to solve the problem of chronic pain. The Taiwanese-American founder, who was born in Honolulu but raised in Taiwan, developed an app-controlled device that make the muscles contract and release using transcutaneous electrical nerve… Read More
In America, Rwandan Refugee Gains a Voice and Creates Jobs
From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Rubens Mukunzi runs a Buffalo-based newspaper, where he writes, edits, and meets with advertisers. After a one-hour break for dinner, the Rwandan refugee starts his shift at a cleaning company, where he works until midnight. The hours are long, but Mukunzi… Read More
Giving up ‘Not an Option’ For Child Farmworker Turned Entrepreneur
As the daughter of Mexican immigrants who came to America in 1963, Frances Prado started picking onions in the California fields alongside her parents and six siblings at age 6. At one point, her family was homeless. She remembers sleeping in the trunk of a car. Today, nearly five decades… Read More
Business Owner: Immigrants Boost the Economy, Revitalize Alabama Town
Robert Hester has owned Hester Printing & Graphics, Inc. in Russellville since 1976. For much of that time, he’s relied on Hispanic immigrants and first-generation customers. “Their business has really helped me,” says Hester. “The invitations for quinceañeras and weddings and things like that are really big. Other people here… Read More
Chamber Executive: It’s Amazing What Immigrants Can Accomplish
Wilma Cartagena grew up in Puerto Rico and moved to Washington state when she was 22 years old, still struggling to learn English. “People always tell me I have an accent, and they can be so dismissive,” says Cartagena, who went on to earn a degree from the University of… Read More
Troy Professor: Make It Easier For High-Skilled Workers And Entrepreneurs to Immigrate
Maryam Stevenson has dedicated her professional career to studying how high-skilled immigrants help the American economy. As an immigration attorney in Memphis in the mid-aughts, she specialized in skilled worker visas for the healthcare industry. Today, as an assistant professor of political science at Troy University in Troy, Alabama, she… Read More
A Mexican Doll Shows Kids ‘our Differences are our Strength’
In 2014, Leslie Guzman was trying to think of a way to remind her children of their Mexican heritage. As it turned out, one of her neighbors in Cincinnati had created Mensch on a Bench, a toy that teaches children about Jewish culture. Inspiration struck. She decided to create a… Read More
Garage Owner Shows How Hard Immigrants Work
Oswaldo “Boler” Castellanos, a Guatemalan immigrant, is pleased with the opportunities that have come his way. But he knows that many others who want an opportunity to create a new life are denied that chance. “I want to show that we are coming here to work hard,” he says. Castellanos… Read More
Local Celebrity Chef Dan Wu Talks Immigrant Entrepreneurship
“When we think about other people’s cultures, the first entry point we have – before music, before dance, before literature, before language – is food,” says Dan Wu, a private chef, MasterChef contestant, and Chinese immigrant who lives in Lexington. “What do you know about Thailand? You know pad thai. Read More
A Student of U.S. Immigration Points to Economic Impact
Qingfang Wang had already started a promising career at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, one of Asia’s top-ranked think tanks, when the University of Georgia offered her a fellowship for a PhD in geography. She jumped at the chance. “The U.S. has the best higher-education system,” she says. “I… Read More
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