Immigrants play vital roles in the American economy and deserve pathway to citizenship

Last spring, in the weeks before graduation, I was often overwhelmed when I thought about everything I’d been through in medical school. I’d worked hard, but my parents — formerly undocumented immigrants from Guatemala who started here with nothing — always had to work harder.

When they got here, my dad cleaned taco trucks while he learned English at night school, studied carpentry and eventually became a construction foreman. My mom worked as a cleaning lady before earning her high school diploma in night school in her 40s. In her 50s, she built a successful home health care company.

I am especially aware of my parents’ perseverance and grit these days as the White House continues its assault on immigrants — legal and not. In late June, President Trump issued a new executive order banning many high-skilled and seasonal workers. He tried to pass policies that would have forced thousands of international students to leave the country if the pandemic shuttered their campuses in the fall.

These policies work against American interests, especially in a recession. The White House says it is freeing up jobs for Americans, but many positions exist either because Americans refuse to do them or lack the necessary education and skills.

Take healthcare, where we face growing worker shortages; by some estimates, we will need 2.3 million new health care workers by 2025 in order to care for our aging population. Already, 16.5% of healthcare workers are immigrants, according to the bipartisan nonprofit New American Economy. This includes 28.7% of physicians, 19.7% of surgeons, and 22% of nursing assistants.

The number of healthcare jobs requiring multi-fluency has also nearly tripled over the last five years. In 2018, over 58% of all medical interpreters working in the US were immigrants. Many of the clients my mother serves today speak Spanish, which means her staff must too.

Anti-immigrant policies also fail to account for the jobs that immigration creates. Every H-1B visa holder creates approximately 1.83 American jobs, according to New American Economy, while international students support over 455,000 jobs and contribute $39 billion to the economy. Even Dreamers have high rates of entrepreneurship and business income that tops that of many Millennial American entrepreneurs.

My parents exemplify how immigrants build and care for our country. Growing up, I watched my dad commute up to four hours daily to lead construction projects all over Southern California. My mom showed me what it means to hustle, turning over hotel beds and taking me along to houses she cleaned in the nice part of town. At an age when most of us start thinking about retirement, she started her own business, Gracelight Home Health, in Southern California.

It wasn’t easy. My parents took out two loans against their house to fund the endeavor and even my grandmother took out a second mortgage. Today, my mom’s staff of nurses, therapists and caregivers provide in-home care for around 300 patients in California’s High Desert. She remembers her patients by name and often provides care beyond what insurance covers by providing additional supplies or groceries when there’s need.

I was lucky to be born an American citizen, which made me eligible for scholarships and student loans. Today, many immigrants, like my parents, don’t have these opportunities. And my parents were lucky; in 1986 President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which gave more than two million undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship.

Our leaders today should do the same. They should provide pathways to citizenship for hardworking immigrants that will allow American businesses to hire the talent they need to grow and create jobs for everyone. Our country should embrace international students, many of whom comprise significant percentages of the STEM graduates. If we fail to do these things, we will lose so much.

Bipartisan leadership allowed my parents to succeed, which in turn led to me becoming a doctor. Welcoming policies allowed my wife’s parents to emigrate from Taiwan and Malaysia. Because they did, she is now an American engineer, working on rapid-result laboratory machines that test for illnesses including COVID-19.

Someone that’s willing to cross oceans or deserts, learn a new language, face down rampant discrimination and risk deportation to succeed is precisely the kind of person America should want. The people who are willing to do anything to get here are the same people who will do anything for this country once they arrive.

We need leaders who understand this, who acknowledge the contributions that immigrants make, both in their own right and through their children. What Trump failed to understand is that when you look to people like my parents, you find so much of what has made this country great.