The contribution of immigrants to the United States has “been called into question”, but they “make the country what it is”, the Irish-born head of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Prof Louise Richardson, has said.
In a speech in Boston where she was honoured by the Charitable Irish Society, Prof Richardson said 14 per cent of the US population was now foreign-born, of whom half were now naturalised.
About 230 of the top Fortune 500 companies in the US are led by immigrants, of the children of immigrants, generating more than the gross domestic product of Germany or the United Kingdom.
Immigrants support the US economy in so many ways, she said: 23 per cent of entrepreneurs are immigrants, so are 23 per cent of science and technology workers and 16 per cent of nurses, offering a total spending power of $1.6 trillion (€1.47 trillion) nationally.
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“The contributions that immigrants, and this has been called into question in recent days, in recent weeks, especially, but the contributions that they make are what make this country what it is,” she said.
Noting the rise in anti-immigrant feeling in the US, Prof Richardson, a former vice-chancellor of Oxford University and of St Andrews, she said that for the first time in 20 years Americans want fewer immigrants.
“It’s never been more important that we make the case for immigrants, for the contributions they make, both financial and cultural, and every other way to this country. And that we are, indeed, a nation of immigrants, and all the better for it,” she said.
The Charitable Irish Society was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1737 to alleviate suffering among Irish immigrants to the city “or other worthy recipients as by the vicissitudes of fortune might be deserving of its charity”.
This year, the Carnegie Corporation has spent $27m providing legal support, language and job training and other supports to immigrants, “doing what the Charitable Irish Society has been doing since the early 18th century and it has never been more important”, she said.
Nicholas R Burns, a former US ambassador to China, said the success of the modern Irish state offered lessons to the US in “this turbulent, divided and disputatious time in our own country”.
Mr Burns, who has served in seven countries, said: “One of the most impressive global stories of our time, in all the world, is the rebirth and the transformation of Ireland, phoenix-like, from a relatively poor country on Europe’s western margins to today.”
Praising the role played by Irish soldiers as peacekeepers, he said: “Ireland sends its sons and daughters to the most difficult conflict areas. It doesn’t ask them to fight. It asks them to try to keep the peace in very difficult parts of the world.”
The Irish Government, he said, “has a tradition as well” of standing up for human rights.
“And maybe that’s right, given Ireland’s own bitter past and bitter problems with colonialism,” he said.
“There’s so much to admire about modern Ireland, especially its healthy, stable democracy.
“And that begs a question for us in St Patrick’s Day this year, for those of us who are Americans, who are so passionate in this turbulent, divided and disputatious time in our own country.
“What can and what should we learn from modern Ireland, as Americans, about maintaining a centred, fair, democratic system here in the United States?
“In this sense, ironically, Ireland, once so poor, so benighted, so fractured, itself, in the past, is now in some ways a guiding light for us, shining across the dark sea.”
