and then worked as an au pair, uprooting her entire life for love in a foreign land. And my mother, a native of Hamburg, Germany, decided to leave her friends, family, and education behind after falling in love with my father, who was born in San Francisco. The one son they had-my grandfather (here’s his AMA)-volunteered to serve in the Second World War and married a French-Armenian immigrant. And though he and my great grandmother had four children, all born in the U.S., immigration continued to reshape their family, generation after generation. My great grandfather didn’t speak much English, but he worked hard, and was able to get a job at Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company in Binghamton, NY. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Thankfully they weren’t retained, rather they found this message: Many Armenians, including my great grandmother, found sanctuary in Aleppo, Syria-before the two reconnected and found their way to Ellis Island. Welcoming immigrants and refugees has been our country’s unfair advantage, and coming from an immigrant family has been mine as an entrepreneur.Īs many of you know, I am the son of an undocumented immigrant from Germany and the great grandson of refugees who fled the Armenian Genocide.Ī little over a century ago, a Turkish soldier decided my great grandfather was too young to kill after cutting down his parents in front of him instead of turning the sword on the boy, the soldier sent him to an orphanage. In the tech world, we often talk about a startup’s “unfair advantage” that allows it to beat competitors. We are a nation of immigrants, after all. President Trump’s recent executive order is not only potentially unconstitutional, but deeply un-American. this weekend, but as I got off the plane at LAX on Sunday, I wasn’t sure what country I was coming back to. An oppen letter to the Reddit community,Īfter two weeks abroad, I was looking forward to returning to the U.S. Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder writes,”And for all of you American redditors who are immigrants, children of immigrants, or children’s children of immigrants, we invite you to share your family’s story in the comments” and receives 32.000 responses in what has become one of the most polular posts in the history of the social news website.
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