This according to a writer at the Mercury News.
According to the story, “[W]e should celebrate the presence of people like Elizabeth Blackburn, professor at the University of California-San Francisco. Blackburn was born in Australia and moved to the U.S. in 1975. On Monday, she and two other researchers learned they would receive the Nobel Prize for medicine and split the $1.4 million it brings.”
Immigration played different roles in the lives of many of the winners:
Charles Kao, who was born in Shanghai, and has both U.K. and U.S. citizenship.
William Boyle, of Bell Laboratories, was born in Nova Scotia and holds dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship.
Jack Szostak, of Harvard Medical School, was born in London, grew up in Canada and is now a U.S. citizen.
Pres. Barrack Obama was born in Hawaii. While his mother was from Kansas, his father was a foreign student from Kenya studying at the University of Hawaii.
In 2008, the American winners also possessed immigrant roots:
Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize in Economics): His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine. For what it is worth, in today’s world, two-thirds of those who apply for any kind of visa to come to the United States are denied by the United States Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Yoichiro Nambu (Nobel Prize in Physics): He was born in Japan. He naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1970.
Roger Y. Tsien (Nobel Prize in Chemistry): He was born in New York City but both of his parents were from Zhejiang Province, China.
Thanks in part to our long history of allowing immigrants to come to America, the USA has been the center for discovery and innovation on planet Earth for a very long time.