Stories
Afghan Immigrant Studies to Become a Professor While Serving Her Community Along the Way
When 12-year-old Sophia Aimen Sexton lived in Pakistan as a refugee after fleeing Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War, she watched a lot of Clint Eastwood movies. “I thought when we arrived in America, they would give me a horse and I’d be a cowgirl in the desert,” recalls Sexton. The reality was much different. In 1983, when Sexton’s family was resettled… Read More
Economist Escapes Ethiopia to Start Own Business in the U.S.
In his native Ethiopia, where he’d earned an economics degree and held a government job calculating GDP statistics, Mahfuz Mummed faced a quandary. He’d given eight years of loyal service when his bosses began pressuring his department to falsify data. Mummed watched as colleagues who protested faced violent reprisals. “I… Read More
Ethiopian Immigrant Fulfills Her Dream of Owning a Business
Rhoda Worku was a college student in Ethiopia when civil war broke out. Her father, a high-ranking member of the government, was executed and her mother was imprisoned. Eventually, Worku’s mother was released but life barely improved. “We didn’t have anything,” Worku says. “The government took everything from us.” In… Read More
Bolivian Immigrant Proud to Serve His New Country’s Air Force
Growing up in La Paz, Bolivia, Fernando Torrez was fascinated with American super hero cartoons. In 1996, when he was 12, his parents brought him and his older sister to Colorado in search of the American dream. There, he encountered real-life American heroes: cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Read More
Liberian Immigrant Serves Montana by Becoming Mayor of Its Capitol
Wilmot Collins knew nothing about cold weather. A Liberian, he had spent his life in sub-Saharan Africa. Now, at age 30, he was escaping civil war and moving to Montana, where his wife had spent a year during high school. So when a relative gave him two pairs of long… Read More
Filipino Immigrant Trains Lawyers to the Benefit of Montanans
Eduardo Capulong’s father, a prominent politician in the Philippines, had already endured one imprisonment when the family found their house ransacked by police and military forces one October evening. It was 1979, seven years after Ferdinand Marcos—notorious for torturing and killing his opponents—had imposed a martial-law dictatorship. “We fled here,”… Read More
Immigrant and Community Leader from Chile Paves the Way on Local Immigration Policy
Mirtha Becerra was born at the dawn of the Pinochet regime in Chile. When she was 11 years old, in the mid 1980s, her father, an architect, found himself unable to provide a good life for his family under the brutal dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte and took a… Read More
Economists’ Letter in Opposition to Dismantling of the International Entrepreneur Rule
To: Samantha Deshommes Chief, Regulatory Coordination Division Office of Policy and Strategy U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Department of Homeland Security 20 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington DC 20529 Re: Notice of Proposed Rule: “Removal of International Entrepreneur Parole Program.” DHS Docket No. USCIS-2015-0006 Dear Chief Deshommes:… Read More
Mexican Immigrant Builds Automotive Business from the Group Up
Joaquin Cordero met his wife while working in Cancun, and moved with her in 1998 to Boise, her hometown. He had earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in Mexico, but did not have U.S. licensure and spoke only Spanish. So he went to work as an auto technician. “When… Read More
Laotian Refugee, Entrepreneur, and PhD Candidate Calls Boise Home
When Palina Louangketh was three years old, her mother walked her and her brother into a field after a family dinner and kept going. They were escaping Laos, and would walk for two and a half weeks, always at night to evade communist patrols. During the day they hid or… Read More
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