who came to the U.S. as a child refugee.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/23/i-came-here-as-a-refugee-and-then-i-rebuilt-the-pentagon-after-911/
"I came here as a refugee. And then I renovated the Pentagon.
My work would be impossible without my fellow immigrants.
....
When World War II ended, my parents fled a repressive regime in Libya — just after the state of Israel was founded, as Libyan Arabs turned on Jews in their own neighborhoods. It was not until 1957 that they were finally able to acquire visas to enter the United States. Along the way, they lived in Tunisia and Italy — where my older sister and I were born — and within months of arriving in New York Harbor, they had their third child. My father was a tailor with a partial grade-school education, and it was only through the support of HIAS, a refugee agency that today continues its resettlement mission, that my parents were able to set foot in this country. To this day, I remember the excitement of my father’s first glance at the Statue of Liberty as our ship sailed into the harbor. I was only 6 at the time and still mourning the loss of the red two-wheeled bike we had to leave behind.
I know what you’re thinking. That immigrant story has been repeated millions of times, maybe even by your family: A poor and mostly uneducated family flees a hostile foreign country, the parents struggle to provide the best education they can, the children succeed to make their parents proud. And it is, in fact, a common story, told countless times in homes and offices all across the United States in conversations about the Trump administration’s executive orders on immigration and refugees. The anti-immigrant sentiment I feel today is nothing new to me. When my Jewish parents arrived in the United States just a few years after fleeing persecution in an Arab regime, it was as difficult for them to be accepted here as it is for Muslims now. But my parents went on to create a new home for me and my siblings, and the privileged life I’ve been allowed to live here has instilled in me a deep sense of gratitude and an obligation to give back to this great nation in the best way I can.
...
Today, as I watch the news and see families struggling to leave their countries and escape tyranny, I wonder who among them will make it to our shores and become part of the next generation of researchers, teachers, inventors, real estate developers and, yes, architects. My hope is that the Trump administration will take actions to ensure that the travel ban is indeed temporary, so that good,
hard-working individuals fleeing tyranny can find a new home as I did — and that each of them will be given the same opportunity to help build this great nation that I had."....(more)
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