America, What Would We Do Without Our Immigrants?
Source: Silicon Bay Partners’ staff with assistance from ChatGPT
Photo: ChatGPT
From caring for our children to building Silicon Valley, immigrants are helping keep America running. Perhaps it’s time we started acting like we appreciate it.
Our Take
Imagine America without its immigrants. Who would help working parents care for their children? Who would fill essential jobs in hospitals, nursing homes, restaurants, farms, construction sites, hotels and countless other businesses? And who would be starting the next generation of technology companies, developing artificial intelligence, and creating the innovations that keep America competitive?
It’s an interesting question, particularly at a time when immigrants are so often portrayed as a problem to be solved rather than people who help solve our problems.
Before we get carried away with the political rhetoric, perhaps we should take a closer look at what immigrants actually contribute to this country. The answer extends from the person helping a working mother get through her day to the entrepreneur building a company that may one day change the world.
The People Who Keep Our Lives Running
Consider the working parents who leave home early in the morning, drop their children at daycare and head off to their jobs. Many depend on childcare workers who make it possible for them to earn a living and support their families. Immigrants are an important part of that workforce, just as they are in home health care, elder care and other essential services.
As America ages, the need for people to care for older Americans will only grow. Families already struggle to find affordable, reliable care for children and aging parents. The people who help meet those needs deserve to be recognized for their work, not treated as though their presence is somehow an inconvenience.
Then there are the workers who harvest our food, prepare our meals, build our homes, clean our hotels and maintain the facilities we use every day. Immigrants work across these industries, often in demanding jobs that are essential to the way Americans live.
Take away enough of those workers, and the consequences don’t remain confined to an immigration debate in Washington. They show up in businesses struggling to find staff, families paying more for services, construction projects facing delays and employers scrambling to keep operations running.
A 2017 National Academies of Sciences report concluded that immigration contributes to economic growth, helps address the challenges of an aging workforce and can reduce the cost of some consumer services, including childcare, food preparation, housekeeping and repairs.
These aren’t abstract economic benefits. They affect the everyday lives of American families.
Silicon Valley: Built With Ideas From Around the World
Of course, immigrants don’t just fill essential jobs. They also create companies, generate employment, develop new technologies and help shape America’s economic future.
Look at Silicon Valley, the global symbol of American technological ingenuity. Its success is inseparable from the contributions of people who came to this country from around the world.
Sergey Brin, who immigrated from the Soviet Union as a child, co-founded Google. Jensen Huang, born in Taiwan, co-founded Nvidia. Elon Musk, born in South Africa, built much of his business career in the United States. These are prominent examples of people whose immigrant experiences became part of the American technology story.
And the influence extends far beyond a handful of famous executives.
According to the American Immigration Council’s 2026 analysis, 229 of the 500 companies on the Fortune 500 list—45.8 percent—were founded by immigrants or their children. These companies generated $9.8 trillion in revenue in fiscal year 2025 and employed approximately 15.3 million people worldwide.
That includes companies across multiple industries, not just technology. But the figures make a point that is difficult to ignore: immigrant families have played a substantial role in building some of America’s largest and most successful businesses.
Read the American Immigration Council’s 2026 report.
The next time someone suggests that immigrants are simply taking from America, consider how many jobs, products, services and innovations have come from businesses founded by people who arrived here from somewhere else.
An immigrant entrepreneur may begin with little more than an idea, an education, a willingness to take a risk and the hope of building something better. When that business succeeds, its benefits can extend to American employees, suppliers, customers, investors and communities.
That’s not charity. It’s economic activity. It’s job creation. It’s the American entrepreneurial tradition at work.
The American Dream Has Never Been Exclusively American-Born
There is something particularly ironic about celebrating the American Dream while dismissing the people who come here hoping to pursue it.
For generations, the United States has attracted people seeking safety, opportunity, education, freedom or a better future for their children. Some arrive with advanced degrees and technical expertise. Others arrive with limited resources and take whatever work they can find. Some eventually establish businesses; others spend their lives helping other people’s businesses succeed.
Their stories are different, but the underlying aspiration is familiar: work hard, build a better life and give the next generation opportunities that may not have been available back home.
And immigrants are not merely participants in the economy. They are consumers, taxpayers, homeowners, neighbors, parents, students and community members. They open restaurants and small businesses, purchase homes, rent apartments, support local shops and contribute to the vitality of the places where they settle.
Of course, immigration presents real policy questions. A country has legitimate interests in maintaining secure borders, enforcing its laws, managing admissions and ensuring that newcomers can integrate successfully. Immigration systems should be orderly, fair and workable.
But acknowledging those responsibilities does not require pretending that immigrants have contributed little or that their labor and ingenuity are expendable. Nor should the actions of individuals who break the law be used to define entire populations.
We can debate immigration policy without losing sight of the people involved—or ignoring the benefits they bring.
What Happens When the Workers Aren’t There?
Here’s a question worth asking whenever politicians promise sweeping immigration crackdowns: What happens to the jobs immigrants currently perform?
Who takes care of the children while their parents work? Who fills the vacancies in industries already struggling to recruit employees? Who harvests crops, staffs kitchens, cares for patients and helps build the homes and infrastructure the country needs?
Some positions may be filled by American-born workers. Employers may raise wages, improve working conditions, invest in technology or redesign their operations. Those adjustments can be beneficial, and labor markets do change.
But replacing an entire workforce is neither instantaneous nor cost-free. Training takes time. Technology cannot perform every task. And when businesses face higher costs or labor shortages, some of those costs can eventually reach consumers.
The National Academies has also documented the role of immigration in supporting long-term economic growth as the U.S. population ages. Its findings underscore a basic reality: the country’s future prosperity depends in part on having enough workers, entrepreneurs and innovators to sustain it.
That doesn’t mean every immigration policy is automatically beneficial or that every labor shortage should be addressed through immigration alone. It means immigration belongs in an honest discussion about the workforce America needs and the economy it wants to build.
If the country needs more caregivers, skilled technicians, engineers, researchers, builders and entrepreneurs, it makes little sense to discuss immigration solely in terms of what must be kept out. We also need to ask whom we need, how we can attract talent, and how we can ensure that workers are treated fairly.
A Little Gratitude Wouldn’t Hurt
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the immigration debate is how easily human beings become statistics, stereotypes or political talking points.
Behind the statistics is a childcare worker helping parents stay employed. A nursing assistant helping an elderly patient. A farmworker harvesting food. A restaurant owner employing local residents. An engineer developing a new technology. An entrepreneur creating a company that may employ thousands of people.
These people are not all the same. They don’t all share the same background, beliefs or ambitions. And they don’t all contribute in identical ways. Like everyone else, immigrants are individuals, and their circumstances and choices vary.
But collectively, immigrants have helped shape America’s communities, workforce, culture and economy. Their contributions are visible in our neighborhoods, our businesses, our universities, our laboratories and our technology companies.
America has benefited enormously from people who came here looking for a chance to build something better. Many have done precisely that—not only for themselves and their families, but for the country that gave them an opportunity.
So perhaps we should spend a little less time treating immigrants as though they are an unwanted burden and a little more time recognizing the work, ingenuity and ambition they bring.
We can insist on sensible immigration laws. We can demand an orderly system. We can address genuine problems without abandoning our responsibilities to the people who live here.
But we should also remember what kind of country we want to be.
America’s success has never depended solely on where people were born. It has depended on what people are able to contribute once they get here.
And if nearly half of America’s largest companies have immigrant roots, while millions of other immigrants help keep our daily lives and essential industries running, perhaps the question isn’t simply what we would do without them.
Perhaps we should ask ourselves why we so often fail to appreciate how much they already do.