We understood why the U.S. Democratic Party loves “illegal immigrants” so much. The Democrats, also known as the liberals or left-wingers, would simply collapse without immigrants’ votes. Democrats prefer to call them “undocumented immigrant” instead. A latest estimation shows 11.1-milion illegal immigrants reside in the U.S. – roughly 3.5% of America total population.
By 2014, about one-fourth (25% or 10.5-million) of the 42.4 million foreign-born people living in the United States were illegal immigrants. In fact, illegal immigrants provide the fastest and cheapest way to boost the Democrats vote-bank, so much so that every Democrats president has been fighting an uphill task “converting” the never ending flows of those illegals.
In November 2014, Obama tried a series of executive orders that granted amnesty to about 5 million illegals, but was blocked by the Supreme Court because it was glaringly unconstitutional. On average, there are more than 100,000 illegals given legal status every year. The only reason why the Democrat politicians love them is because those illegals do vote fraudulently.
Of course, not every illegal or legal immigrant is terrorist, rapist or criminals. True, America would not become where it is today if not for the (legal) immigrants. The key word here is “legal immigrants“, not illegal immigrants that the liberals have been blindly fighting for. If Hillary Clinton were to win the presidential election last year, she was expected to give 8,000,000 illegal immigrants the legal status.
Understandably tonnes of American billionaires and even corporations were (and are still) foaming at the mouth every time President Donald Trump criticizes or issues executive orders against illegal immigrants / refugees. That’s because of the importance of immigrants on America’s business landscape. Here’s a look at some of the most well-known U.S. companies started by immigrants.
{ 1 } Yahoo (Market Capitalization: US$52.2 Billion)
On June 13, 2017, Yahoo! Inc. completed the sale of its operating business to Verizon Communications Inc (stock-code: VZ) for about US$4.48 billion. Yahoo changed its name to “Altaba Inc.” (stock-code: AABA) on June 16, 2017. Although Yahoo is now a dinosaur, the fact is the brand was once valued at US$125 billion at its peak in January 2000.
More importantly, one of the company’s founders – Jerry Yang – was born in Taiwan and moved to America at the age of 10 with his mother in 1978. What started as “Jerry’s guide to the world wide web” in 1994 soon became Yahoo, a nerd name which stood for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”. In the 1990s, Yahoo was in many ways like what Google is today.
{ 2 } eBay (Market Capitalization: US$38.2 Billion)
Like Yahoo, eBay (stock-code: EBAY) is one of the big stories which survived the crash of dot-com boom. The company could easily have been a French company, instead of an American. Its founder – Pierre Omidyar – was born to Iranian immigrant parents in France in 1967. He made his way to the United States as a child, creating the online auction site as a hobby.
Originally called Auction Web in 1995, Omidyar changed its name to eBay in September 1997. He hadn’t the clue that his website attracted huge volume until his Internet service provider informed him he would need to upgrade to a business account. The resulting price increase (from US$30 per month to US$250) forced him to start charging those who used eBay, and the rest is history.
{ 3 } Procter & Gamble (Market Capitalization: US$223.3 Billion)
Investors knew Procter & Gamble (stock-code: PG) more because of billionaire Warren Buffett rather than the company’s founders. After all, Procter has been one of Berkshire’s largest holdings since 2005, until the Oracle of Omaha sold his entire stake in 2016. But Procter & Gamble (popularly known as P&G) has been an American consumer goods company since 1837 – about 180 years old.
However, neither the founders of P&G, was born in America. Candle-maker William Procter was born in the United Kingdom while soap-maker James Gamble in Ireland. They migrated to Cincinnati and met when they married sisters, Olivia and Elizabeth Norris. Alexander Norris, their father-in-law, persuaded them to become business partners and Procter & Gamble was created.
{ 4 } DuPont (Market Capitalization: US$70.2 Billion)
Dow Chemical Co (stock-code: DOW) and DuPont (stock-code: DD) announced a merger deal in December 2015 in what was billed as an all-stock merger valued at US$130 billion. The actual name of the company is more complicated than that – E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. The founder’s name is even more jaw-dropping – Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours.
The founder, simplified as E. I. du Pont, was born in Paris and sailed to Rhode Island on 1 Jan, 1800. Within 2 years, the French chemist and industrialist had founded his business – manufacturing gunpowder. Today, the DuPont operates 6 segments: Agriculture, Electronics & Communications, Industrial Biosciences, Nutrition & Health, Performance Materials and Protection Solutions.
{ 5 } AT&T (Market Capitalization: US$232.6 Billion)
Kids are often taught that without American Alexander Graham Bell, we would not be able to communicate with each other using telephone, let alone play Candy Crush on smartphone. In reality, however, Mr. Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Bell became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1882, when he, his wife, and two daughters moved from Boston to Washington.
In May 1976, 2 months after Bell and his assistant Thomas A. Watson successfully communicated for the first time using a telephone, Bell introduced his invention to the world. By July 1877, the Bell Telephone Company was formed. He later established American Telephone and Telegraph Company (stock-code: T) in 1885, which acquired his own Bell Telephone Company.
{ 6 } SpaceX (Market Capitalization: Privately Owned)
Do you know why Ironman Elon Musk has been rejecting President Trump’s immigration ban? That’s because the founder of SpaceX was an immigrant. Born in South Africa, he first moved to Canada in 1989, then made it to America in 1997 when he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania before finally became a U.S. citizen in 2002.
This migrant who plans to colonize Mars with his spaceship SpaceX is also the owner of automaker Tesla and solar energy company SolarCity. Forbes estimated Elon Musk to be worth a staggering US$16.7 billion. Tesla alone has a market capitalization of US$59.5 billion. If he could successfully send the first batch of human to Mars, his rocket company’s worth will definitely skyrocket.
{ 7 } U.S. Steel (Market Capitalization: US$3.8 billion)
The United States Steel Corporation (stock-code: X) is another American success story that would not exist without immigrants. Founded 116 years ago in 1901, U.S. Steel was created from a merger of Andrew Carnegie‘s Carnegie Steel Company with Gary’s Federal Steel Company and William Henry “Judge” Moore’s National Steel Company for US$492 million (US$14.16 billion today)
Known as one of the richest Americans (in the same league as Rockefellers and Morgans), Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. At the age of 13, he immigrated in 1848 to the United States with his parents. After selling Carnegie Steel, he surpassed John D. Rockefeller as the richest American for the next couple of years. He had given away 90% of his fortune to charities.
{ 8 } Comcast (Market Capitalization: US$184.8 billion)
Comcast Corporation (stock-code: CMCSA) is the largest broadcasting and cable television company in the world by revenue. Although Comcast, which owns MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, NBCSN, and The Weather Channel, was founded in 1963, the history of the family-owned business stretches multiple generations.
Although the Ralph J Roberts family owns 33% controlling stake in Comcast, it was Daniel Aaron, a Jewish who was born in Giessen, Germany, in 1926 who actually founded Comcast. He and his family immigrated to the United States in 1937 to escape the German Nazi. In 1963, Ralph J. Roberts agreed with Aaron’s proposal to buy a small cable television system, provided the latter run it.
{ 9 } Pfizer (Market Capitalization: US$199.8 billion)
Consumers might not know Pfizer (stock-code: PFE) but they certainly know the blue “Viagra”. The company was founded in 1849 by cousins Charles Pfizer and Charles F. Erhart in New York City as a manufacturer of fine chemicals. Both chemists were born in Ludwigsburg, Germany. Charles Pfizer was actually born Karl Gustav Pfizer while Charles F. Erhart was Karl Erhart.
Both immigrated to the United States in October 1848 and formed their first pharmaceutical company in New York – Charles Pfizer & Co. – the next year. Their first product was santonin, used to expel parasitic worms. Pfizer has been growing through various mergers and acquisitions – famously with Warner–Lambert (2000), Pharmacia (2003), and Wyeth (2009).
{ 10 } Google (Market Capitalization: US$629.5 billion)
Co-founder Sergey Brin was born Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin. If the name sounds Russian, that’s because he immigrated to the United States with his family from the Soviet Union at the age of 6. His Russian Jewish parents were forced to abandon Russia in 1979 due to discrimination against Jews. Today, Forbes estimates Brin’s net worth to be US$42.8 billion.
After earning his degree in mathematics and computer science at the University of Maryland at College Park, Brin famously met Larry Page at Stanford University, where the pair stopped pursuing their PhDs and started Google in a garage. Page is the inventor of PageRank, Google’s best-known search ranking algorithm. Today, Page is worth US$44 billion.
{ 11 } Disneyland (Market Capitalization: US$167.1 billion)
America would be a dull and boring country, if Elias Disney had not moved to California with his father in 1878 in hopes of finding gold. There would be no Snow White, Cinderella, Pinocchio, let alone Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney was the fourth son of Elias Disney – born at the rural village of Bluevale, Ontario, Canada, to Irish parents.
Initially, Disney created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but lost the intellectual property rights to his popular creation and many of his employees were poached in a corporate dispute. In response, he developed a new character originally dubbed Mortimer Mouse before his wife Lillian suggested Mickey would be a better moniker. Disney holds the record for most individual Oscar wins (22) and nominations (59).
{ 12 } Apple (Market Capitalization: US$752.6 billion)
Although Steve Jobs wasn’t the Einstein of our generation, he was definitely the Picasso. Without him, Apple could have died a natural death like Yahoo. However, not many know that Steve Jobs biological father – Abdul Fattah “John” Jandali – grew up in Homs, Syria and was born into an Arab Muslim household. As a kid, Jobs was rebellious and frequently misbehaved.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 to sell Wozniak’s Apple I personal computer. Following a long power struggle, Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985. Jobs later founded NeXT and Pixar. In 1997, Apple merged with NeXT. Jobs became CEO of his former company, reviving Apple at the verge of bankruptcy. Jobs would roll out products such as iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad.
{ 13 } Amazon (Market Capitalization: US$458.9 billion)
Although his biological father isn’t an immigrant, Jeff Bezos’ stepfather is. Jeff Bezos was born in Albuquerque in 1964 as Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen. His biological father, Ted Jorgensen, was 18 when he impregnated Bezos’ mother, Jacklyn Gise, who herself was 17. Both still in high school at the time, they got married before their son was born. The marriage lasted only 17 months.
When Jeff was four years old, Gise married another man, Miguel Bezos. Miguel was born in Cuba and, as a refugee, arrived in Camp Matecumbe in Miami at age 16 on July 21, 1962. Then, in 1968, Miguel Bezos legally adopted young Jeff, and since then, Jeff has used his stepfather’s Cuban last name. Jeff would later set up Amazon in his garage.
{ 14 } Kraft Heinz (Market Capitalization: US$104.1 billion)
You might not recognize this company but suffice to remember that without this food and beverage company, delicious food such as Cadbury, Jacobs, Oreo, just to name a few, would not have existed. Born in Stevensville, Ontario, Canada in 1874, James L. Kraft immigrated to the United States in 1903 and started a wholesale door-to-door cheese business in Chicago.
In 2015, Kraft Foods Group merged with Heinz forming the Kraft Heinz Company. Even Henry J. Heinz, the founder of the Heinz Company, was born in the United States to German immigrants. Interestingly, Henry J. Heinz was distantly related to the Trump family now based in New York.
{ 15 } Colgate-Palmolive (Market Capitalization: US$65.5 billion)
Colgate, the favourite toothpaste of many Americans owes its existence to an English businessman named William Colgate, who was in Hollingbourne, Kent, England, on January 25, 1783. He immigrated to Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. in 1798. Later, Colgate formed a partnership with Ralph Maher to manufacture soap and candles.
After their partnership dissolved, William Colgate went to New York City in 1804. He established a starch, soap and candle business in Manhattan after his apprenticeship to a soap-boiler. Eventually in 1873 the company introduced its first Colgate toothpaste, an aromatic toothpaste sold in jars. The first toothpaste in a tube was only introduced in 1896.
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July 3rd, 2017 by financetwitter
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