Immigrants have a unique history of service in the U.S. military. By looking at the ways in which they have kept Americans safe and benefitted our country as service members, perhaps we can find solutions to problems the military faces today. For instance, the Army fell 15,000 soldiers short of its recruitment goal in 2022 in what leadership is calling “the war for talent.” Historically, foreign-born service members have made vital contributions to the military, filling desperately needed roles as highly skilled translators. In the face of struggles across the board with the U.S. labor force, the military could once again rely on immigrants to fill those boots that provide us with an invaluable service. 

If they played a larger role in the military, immigrants would continue to demonstrate bravery, selflessness and civic duty. A disproportionately high share of the immigrant population, four percent, have enlisted in the military after a rigorous vetting process. After completing their service, they continue to pay it forward to society as veterans. 

Over the last 100 years, more than 760,000 noncitizens have enlisted and gained U.S. citizenship, with more than 158,000 doing so in the last 20 years. Examples of foreign-born military heroes go back even further. 

During the Revolutionary War, Prussian American volunteer Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben whipped the Continental Army into shape as the Inspector General appointed by George Washington, while volunteers like English American essayist Thomas Paine built a revolutionary spirit with rousing pamphlets. During the Civil War, immigrants and their sons made up more than 40 percent of the Union Army and were instrumental in the Union victory against the Confederate Army and institutional slavery. For more information on immigrants’ accomplishments throughout history, we encourage you to consult our Teaching U.S. Immigration Resources catalog. 

The tendency of foreign-born Americans to excel in military service has continued throughout modern American history. One need look no further than the examples of World War II veteran Pedro Cano and Vietnam War veteran Jesus S. Duran, who were awarded posthumous Medals of Honor by President Obama. The only justifications for their not having received it earlier were their ethnicities and backgrounds as immigrants. Despite this history of discrimination, foreign-born Americans account for 20 percent of all Medal of Honor recipients. These sacrifices for national security and their fellow countrymen have carried through to this day. 

The fact that immigrants speak languages other than English and have experience with other cultures have made them very important in overseas operations such as the Iraq War, when Farsi and Arabic speakers helped ease tensions between the military and local civilians. These linguistic and cultural skills are highly sought after and are exceedingly difficult to cultivate without foreign-born service members. 

The knowledge and expertise that immigrants bring to the military on a technical level should not be understated either. Hedy Lamarr, a well-known actress, was behind innovations in communications technologies that military GPS still relies on today. Immigrants also played a part in the invention of submarines, helicopters and ironclad ships. These technologies have been a central part of the U.S. military’s success on the world stage. 

As mentioned earlier, the U.S. military is experiencing recruitment shortfalls across the board, which might ultimately result in 12,000 positions being cut. Immigrants could be a part of filling this gap, as they are already valuable members of the military. 

There are an estimated 45,000 immigrants actively serving in the U.S. military, which requires them to be permanent legal residents and can offer a path to citizenship. Around 5,000 permanent residents enlist each year, though fewer immigrants have gained citizenship through military service in recent years. This comes as a direct consequence of government policy requiring mandatory wait times for citizenship paperwork.  

Looking at service records also highlights the contributions of immigrants to the military. As an example, noncitizen recruits were found to stay in military service longer than average as a result of low attrition rates. On average, four percent of noncitizens leave service after three months, 16 percent after three years and 18 percent after four years. These figures are lower than the military-wide average.  

Immigrant servicemembers also excel academically. They are more likely to be college graduates and less likely to be high school dropouts. Immigrant veterans have higher rates of educational attainment than non-veteran immigrants, gaining knowledge to apply to high-skilled work upon completing their service. 

The U.S. government has enacted immigrant recruitment programs before, and these programs have proven to be effective ways to attract new recruits. Most recently, the Army undertook a program aimed at attracting language and medical specialists. They did so by offering immigrants the opportunity for a fast track to citizenship. 

Immigrants have contributed a great deal throughout our history and will remain a vital part of our collective safety, but the life of a servicemember does not end when they are discharged, and the contributions of immigrant veterans are also worth considering. 

It should be said first that veterans as a group are exceptional individuals. Not only do they serve their country during their prime working years, but they also go above and beyond non-veterans in public service, education, entrepreneurship and civic participation. Veterans are more likely to serve in state legislatures, more likely to vote, more likely to obtain all types of degrees and save businesses money due to tax incentives. 

There are currently 530,000 immigrant veterans, and the majority, 83 percent, are naturalized U.S. citizens. Foreign-born veterans speak English at higher levels than foreign-born non-veterans, and immigrant veterans participate in the civilian labor force at higher-than-average rates, with 58 percent of veterans working in essential sectors of the economy. 

Despite evidence pointing to the fact that immigrants diligently serve in the military and make positive contributions to society upon leaving military service, there are laws in place that make it easier for them to be deported, namely the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Estimates vary, but data show that at least 94,000 veterans have been deported because of this law, which gives fewer opportunities to those who have made the U.S. safer. Take the case of Manuel and Valente Valenzuela, two brothers who fought in the Vietnam War. Decades after completing their service, they were deported for minor misdemeanors committed long ago. Since the 1996 bill was passed, veterans have been deported for misdemeanors such as disorderly conduct. 

These stories all show that immigrants are a vital part of a strong and capable U.S. military. They make extraordinary efforts to save human lives and build their communities. Their contributions speak for themselves, and they should be treated with respect and human decency. The problems that immigrant veterans and servicemembers face, such as discrimination against translators, show that their contributions are undervalued and hidden from view. We should shine a light on these American heroes. 

People from Latin America have contributed deeply to the United States since its founding. From activists to performers to entrepreneurs to astronauts, exceptional foreign-born Latinx Americans have played vital and often overlooked roles in the history of the U.S. The Immigrant Learning Center has created this list of famous Latinx immigrants to share a small piece of that history. After learning more about these nine people, we encourage you to continue to explore this important legacy.

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, Historian / Activist, 1874 – 1938

When Arturo Alfonso Schomburg was a child, his schoolteacher told him that Black people had “no history, heroes or accomplishments.” Schomburg spent the rest of his life proving that teacher wrong. Born in Puerto Rico, before it became a United States colony, to a Black mother and white father, Schomburg studied “Negro literature” at St. Thomas College in the Danish Virgin Islands. He moved to New York City by himself when he was 17. Working under the principle that “The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future,” he embarked on an extraordinary career of civil rights activism and Afro-Latinx historical research, including the creation of the Negro Society for Historical Research in 1911.

Schomburg made it his personal mission to collect and preserve the writings of Black and Afro-Latinx historical figures. In the process, he became a part of that history himself as a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote articles for prominent Black publications, and his collection of historical writings grew to contain more than 10,000 items. His personal collection, which included correspondence by Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture, poems by enslaved poet Phyllis Wheatley, letters written by Frederick Douglas, the journals of abolitionist Paul Cuffe and much more, was eventually purchased by the New York Public Library (NYPL) for $10,000. The purchase led to the formation of the NYPL’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which is an active and thriving research library to this day.

Gabriela Mistral, Poet / Diplomat, 1889 – 1957

Chilean American Gabriela Mistral turned childhood hardship and early heartbreak into gorgeous poetry, becoming the first Latin American and the fifth woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Mistral wrote on universal themes of loss, faith and love, making her a beloved icon in Chile. Despite this, she always had a conflicted relationship with her country of origin, opting to join the country’s diplomatic service in 1926 and spend her life traveling. She eventually settled in the United States with her longtime companion Doris Dana, where she continued to write poems and political essays with a feminist and international perspective.

Mistral’s often melancholy poetry and apparently lonely life created a public image of the poet as a tragic and solitary figure. Chile’s autocratic Pinochet regime held her up as an ideal Chilean woman, “a symbol of social order and submission to authority.” This perception was transformed when her personal letters were published, revealing a passionate side to the poet and her relationship with Dana. The pair were romantically involved for almost 10 years before Mistral’s death. This revelation has led to reinterpretations of her writing and elevated her status as an early queer writer.

Oscar de la Renta, Fashion Designer, 1932 – 2014

What do Jacqueline Kennedy, Taylor Swift and Oprah Winfrey have in common? All have worn clothing designed by iconic Dominican American designer Oscar de la Renta. De la Renta’s family encouraged him to pursue his artistic passions from a young age, funding a trip to Spain to study art from the Royal Academy of San Fernando. When the fashion sketches he did for pocket money proved popular, he switched his focus to the world of fashion.

De la Renta moved to the U.S. and rose quickly through the ranks. He made his name at Arden, a fashion brand founded by Canadian American entrepreneur Elizabeth Arden, then moved on to run the popular Derby fashion line while still in his early 30s, and eventually joined Balmain, making him the first Dominican designer at a French fashion house. By the time he was 40, fashion enthusiasts were referring to him as the “Grandfather of Fashion.” De la Renta’s brand was known for elegant and romantic looks, an aesthetic he connected to his Latin American background. Over the course of his career, he dressed five First Ladies and countless stars like Nicole Kidman and Cindy Crawford.

He was quick to turn his professional success into philanthropic ventures. The orphanage he founded in the Dominican Republic still serves hundreds of children yearly. He also extensively supported arts organizations in the United States. His work has been recognized with two Coty awards, known as the “Oscars of fashion,” a Carnegie Hall Medal of Excellence, and a series of stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service that celebrated his designs. Though he passed away from cancer in 2014, his influence on the world of fashion lives on to this day.

Franklin Chang-Diaz, Astronaut / Entrepreneur, 1950 –

As the child of a poor Costa Rican-Chinese family, Franklin Chang-Diaz looked up at the stars and knew he wanted to join his hero Buzz Aldrin among them. His path to becoming the first Latinx immigrant and first naturalized citizen astronaut at NASA wasn’t smooth, though. He knew he needed to go the U.S. to achieve his dream, which required staying with extended family in Connecticut to complete high school, learning English very quickly, wrangling scholarships to attend college and successfully competing for an elite PhD program in applied plasma physics at MIT.

In 1980, Chang-Diaz’s hard work came to fruition when NASA selected him to train as an astronaut. Over the next 25 years, he flew seven missions on the Space Shuttle, which included almost 20 hours of spacewalks, and ran the Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center from 1993 to 2005. Not content to rest on his already extraordinary achievements, Chang-Diaz founded Ad Astra Rocket Company after retiring from NASA. The company is a leader in the field of plasma rocket propulsion technology and has partnered with NASA to advance space exploration. In recognition of his incredible work, his childhood hero Buzz Aldrin personally presented him with the “Buzz Aldrin Quadrennial Space Award” in 2014.

Gloria Estefan, Singer / Songwriter / Entrepreneur / Actor, 1957 –

As a teen in Cuba, Gloria Estefan used music as her only escape from the stress of caring for her ill father and younger siblings. Hours spent practicing alone in her room paid off after her family fled to Miami in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution. She joined the band Miami Sound Machine, drawn to the group by the keyboardist, Emilio Estefan, whom she later married. The band enjoyed success in Spanish-speaking countries before recording some breakthrough English-language hits that expanded their appeal and brought them fame in the United States.

In 1990, her career was almost ended by a touring bus accident that left her with a broken back. Despite warnings that she might never walk again, she returned to touring within a year and performed at the Super Bowl halftime show a year after that. Estefan’s tenacity led to a remarkably successful and long career. She has achieved 38 number one hits on Billboard charts, a Kennedy Center Honor, three Grammy and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Outside of music, Estefan has also been successful in philanthropy and business. The Gloria Estefan Foundation supports spinal cord research to help people like Estefan who experience serious spinal injuries, as well as funding no-kill animal shelters, homeless shelters, and Latino cultural organizations. Gloria and Emilio Estefan’s business empire, Estefan Entreprises, includes music production and a chain of Cuban-themed restaurants. In 1993 she received an Ellis Island Medal of Honor, which recognizes exceptional naturalized U.S. citizens, and in 2015 she was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Jorge Ramos, Journalist, 1958 –

Jorge Ramos, the “Walter Cronkite of Latin American television,” first came to the U.S. after an editor in Mexico quashed a story that Ramos had written because it was critical of the Mexican government. He has taken full advantage of the freedom of the press that he found here. Since 1987, Ramos has co-hosted Noticiero Univision, the most popular Spanish-language newscast in the United States. Over the course of his nearly 40-year career in broadcast journalism, he has developed a reputation for hard-hitting, trustworthy reporting. Ramos has covered five wars, interviewed every U.S. president since President Bush Sr. excepting President Trump, and won 10 Emmys along the way. Ramos also produced the documentary Hate Rising in 2016 in response to the expansion of hate groups in the United States.

His long and influential career has led to Ramos being consistently ranked as one of the most influential Hispanics in the United States, alongside Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayer. Univision is ranked with the Catholic Church among the most trusted institutions in Latino communities. In 2015, he was named on Time’s list of “The World’s 100 Most Influential People.” Ramos’ success is credited for paving the way for countless other Latin American journalists in the United States.

Luis von Ahn, Entrepreneur, 1979 –

If you have solved a CAPTCHA or learned some new vocabulary from Duolingo recently, you probably have Guatemalan American entrepreneur Luis von Ahn to thank. A childhood gift of a computer sparked von Ahn’s interest in coding and computer science, but his passion for productivity and education has shaped his career. After studying cryptography, he co-created CAPTCHAs, anti-spam filters that distinguish between humans and bots. When Von Ahn discovered that people were collectively spending 500,000 hours per day solving CAPTCHAs, he created reCAPTCHAs to put that time to use. ReCAPTCHAs test users by asking them to transcribe snippets of difficult to decipher text from actual documents supplied by Google Books, The New York Times, and other organizations that have archives in need of digitization. The arrangement has made countless previously inaccessible documents available to the public.

His passion for making knowledge more accessible is clear in his current venture, Duolingo. The program is one of the most popular language-learning tools available. Duolingo offers free lessons in more than 40 languages, engaging more than half a billion users around the world. Von Ahn says he’s motivated to make language learning available to everyone, explaining, “From my upbringing in Guatemala I’ve seen that education is the key to opportunity and equality, but I’ve always felt it’s unfair that the best education is often only available to those with money.”

Jordi Muñoz, Entrepreneur, 1986 –

When Jordi Muñoz first moved to the U.S. from Mexico, he wasn’t permitted to work or continue his university studies while he waited for his green card, but he wasn’t prevented from learning. He decided at age 20 to obtain what he calls a “Google PhD” in aeronautics and computer science. Drawing on information available for free online and the shared wisdom of fellow drone enthusiasts, he managed to build a homemade drone using a modified Nintendo Wii console as its controller. His work caught the attention of Chris Anderson, one of his fellow drone enthusiasts with more resources, and the pair co-founded 3D Robotics.

The startup expanded rapidly, and today it’s the largest drone company in North America and the second largest in the world. His company has created more than 200 jobs and brings in more than $5 million in revenue, but Muñoz hasn’t abandoned his collaborative roots. All of the company’s software is open source, a model that encourages crowdsourced, cooperative improvement of the software. Muñoz has also found creative uses for his drones, including discreetly tracking the migration paths of animals and inspecting archeological sites without damaging them. The same drive that led him to build a drone in his garage has had positive effects on countless fields. In an interview, Muñoz also credits the encouragement he received in the United States for his success, saying, “It really is a land of opportunities. So it doesn’t matter what is your background. If you work hard and do the right thing, and you’re honest, you can always do what you want in the U.S.”

Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, Activist, 1987 –

As a transgender, Jewish, indigenous, adoptee from Honduras, Raffi Freedman-Gurspan is used to being “the first” at whatever she does. She was the first openly transgender staffer in the Massachusetts State House and the first transgender appointee in the White House. Freedman-Gurspan has not sought the spotlight. Instead she has quietly dedicated herself to activism and political work on behalf of all marginalized people.

She began her career in local politics, working first as the LGBT liaison for the mayor of Somerville, Massachusetts, then as the legislative director for a state representative, where she helped pass one of the first transgender civil rights bills. Freedman-Gurspan spent a year as a policy analyst for the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) before being tapped by President Obama’s administration to become the White House’s LGBT liaison. She helped the White House to respond to both national tragedies like the Pulse nightclub shooting and incredible triumphs like the legalization of marriage equality. After leaving with the outgoing administration, she returned to the NCTE, saying, “I realized we got to defend all the things that we just accomplished.” When asked about her motivation for her extensive public service, she cites the influence of her parents, both of whom worked as social workers, and the Reform Judaism tradition that she was raised in. In an interview, Freedman-Gurspan explained, “There’s so much suffering in the world, and if I can help alleviate that, I feel like, as we say in Hebrew, I’ve done a mitzvah.”

These influential figures are just a few of the countless Latinx immigrants who have shaped the United States. Our Immigrant Entrepreneur Hall of Fame features more Latinx founders who have created jobs in the U.S., including Marcelo Claure of Brightstar Corp., and William and Rafael Cruz of TradeStation Group Inc. Our immigrant entrepreneur video interview series includes many interviews with Latinx immigrants, including co-founder of CERO Coop Josefina Luna and co-founder of Guardian Healthcare Jose de la Rosa, as does our JobMakers podcast. 

Immigrants and refugees from all over the world have brought their unique, diverse traditions to popular holidays in the United States. Some, like the Swahili names of Kwanzaa candles and the Scottish New Year’s Eve song Auld Lang Syne, have obvious international roots. Others, like mistletoe at Christmas, jack-o-lanterns at Halloween and chocolate bunnies at Easter, may surprise you with their origins. Read on to learn just some of the ways immigration has shaped our celebration of Labor Day, Halloween, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Eve and Easter. 

Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, is an ancient Jewish holiday that commemorates the rededication of a Temple in Jerusalem after winning it back from the Greek occupiers in the second century BCE. Historically Hanukkah had been considered a minor event in the Hebrew calendar, but for modern American Jews, it can be one of the biggest celebrations of the year. The largest waves of Jewish immigration to the United States took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, fueled by both economic concerns and an increasingly hostile environment in Europe. New Jewish Americans were eager to show their enthusiasm for their adopted homeland, and the subject of hard-won religious freedom seemed particularly relevant. Hanukkah is now celebrated by millions of Americans each year and has become one of the most valued traditions of North American Jewish communities. The holiday became a perfect opportunity to participate in American holiday-time feasting and gift-giving while keeping their traditions and building stable Jewish communities.  

It was also an opportunity to resist forced assimilation. Some rabbis saw emphasizing the Hanukkah holidays, particularly the food and gifts aspects, as an opportunity to keep Jewish children from being drawn into Christmas celebrations. In the mid-20th century, Jewish children were often pressured into celebrating Christmas in their schools. Jewish parents presented Hanukkah as an alternative tradition for their children to participate in.

Food traditionally associated with the holiday varies across Jewish cultures. U.S.-born people may be most familiar with the potato latke, but Jewish Hungarians traditionally fry up a cheesy version. Cheese is associated with the holiday due to the lesser known Hanukkah story of an Israeli woman named Yehudis, who was said to ply the leader of an occupying Assyiran force with salty cheeses to encourage him to drink himself into a vulnerable stupor. Jewish Italians also enjoy a fried or baked cheese pancake, called a “cassola” and made of ricotta. Italian Catholics have since adopted the dessert as a Christmas dish. Jewish Syrians prefer a variation on the latke called “kibbet yatkeen,” containing bulgur and pumpkin. For Jewish Israelis, jam-filled doughnuts called “sufganiyot” has gained popularity over the latke. Some Jewish Indians enjoy “gulab jamun,” a deep-fried, doughnut-like sweet dipped in a sugary syrup. Jewish North Africans make a similar dessert called “debla,” traditionally shaping the dough into a rose. The exact origins of Hanukkah gelt, a type of small, foil-wrapped chocolate coins, are unclear, but it may be linked to a Yemeni tradition of giving Jewish children a coin every day of Hanukkah to buy sweets.

European colonists brought Christmas to North America in the 1600s. Their observations were strictly religious, with few of the treats and trappings familiar to modern Americans. Many of the Christmas traditions that Americans cherish in the 21st century originated elsewhere, were brought here by immigrants and became American as they passed from generation to generation.

• In the 1800s, Germanic immigrants brought the traditions of Christmas trees. Christmas trees’ appeal expanded dramatically after the Industrial Revolution allowed for ornaments and special candles to be mass produced in Europe and shipped to the United States. Similarly, gift-giving began as a German tradition and increased in popularity as the price of everyday goods fell.
• Christmas cards were popularized in the U.S. by Louis Prang, a Prussian refugee and artist. After successfully selling his elaborately designed holiday cards in the United Kingdom, he introduced his new product to the United States. He saw his cards as a way to share fine art, as well as a substitute for the more time-consuming tradition of the Christmas letter. 
• The classic Christmas tune White Christmas was written by Irving Berlin, a Russian immigrant who practiced Judaism.
• Joel Roberts Poinsett may have been an American diplomat and amateur botanist, but the “flor de la noche buena,” better known as a “poinsettia” in English, was native to Mexico before Poinsett sent cuttings home.
• Mistletoe played a significant role in both Norse and Celtic druidic mythology before evolving into a modern symbol of holiday love.
• Burning a Yule log began as a Scandinavian tradition, meant to bring luck or protection to the family in the coming year. These days, celebrants are more likely to enjoy a “bûche de Noël,” a style of cake shaped and decorated to resemble a Yule log that was popularized by Parisian bakers.
• Saint Nicolaus, or Sinterklaas, as he was known to the German, Dutch, Ukrainian and Swiss immigrants who originally celebrated him, was expected on December 6 not the 24th. He is still celebrated on that date in communities throughout the U.S.
• The first mall Santa, a beloved figure for many children, was created and popularized by Scottish American department store owner James Edgar.

Some communities continue the Christmas celebration into January. After weeks of gatherings and feasts, Christians from South and Central America have a final celebration on January 6 known as Three Kings Day or the Twelfth Day of Christmas. Christians from Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Greece, Israel, Russia and several other Eastern European countries follow the Julian calendar and therefore celebrate Christmas on January 7.

Kwanzaa is the newest year-end holiday. It is the only December holiday to start in the United States, and it is now celebrated by millions around the world. It was created in the 1960s to reconnect American descendants of enslaved Africans with their heritage. Unlike other immigrant groups who could choose which aspects of their cultures and histories to preserve and which to let go, African Americans were forced to give up their traditions. After police brutality sparked the Watts uprising in 1965, Black Studies professor Dr. Maulana Karenga was inspired to create an opportunity to bring the Black community together. He researched harvest traditions across Africa to create a pan-African celebration, which became Kwanzaa. 

For seven days, observers of Kwanzaa celebrate their heritage and reflect on shared principles. The name comes from the Swahili phrase “matunda ya kwanza,” which means “first fruits of the harvest.” The extra “a” was added to make the word seven letters long, a number with symbolic significance in the tradition. The seven candles in a “kinara” symbolize the “seven principles” that Karenga assigned to each of the seven days of the holiday: Umoja (Unity), Kujichagulia (Self-Determination), Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility), Ujamaa (Cooperative economics), Nia (Purpose), Kuumba (Creativity) and Imani (Faith).  

Traditional Kwanzaa foods are drawn from both African and American Black communities. Groundnut stews from Ghana and “doro wat” chicken from Ethiopia are common, as is soul food or Creole dishes like black eyed peas and jambalaya. The diverse feasts tell the history of Africans and of their descendants in the Americas. On the final day, December 31, celebrants hold a traditional African feast called a “Karamu.” Kwanzaa is a secular holiday and celebrated by people of all spiritual backgrounds alongside other religious traditions. The food, greetings, symbolism and tales shared during Kwanzaa tell a story of forced migration and hard-won rights for African Americans and also build connections to the rich history and cultural traditions of Africa.

The dawn of each new year is celebrated across the globe. Perhaps the most famous observance, the annual Times Square Ball Drop in New York City, was created by an immigrant. Prior to 1904, New Yorkers celebrated New Year’s Eve with fireworks, a tradition adopted from Chinese New Year celebrations. However, early 20th century fireworks were fast becoming a safety hazard in crowded cities. A solution was offered by Adolph Ochs, a German-born, Jewish newspaper magnate and publisher of The New York Times. Ochs collaborated with the city to start a new, safer tradition at Times Square, which had been renamed in honor of the new Times headquarters. Ochs’ idea took hold, and the ball drop has become the grand finale to New Year’s Eve celebrations ever since. Observers often toast the new year with a fizzy glass of Champagne. Clever French advertisers in the late 1800s attempted to tie the drink to a number of occasions, but it was the association with New Years that stuck. Genuine Champagne was made in the Champagne region of France and imported to the United States for the occasion, often to be sold by French immigrants.

Classic New Year’s song Auld Lang Syne was an import from Scotland by way of Canada. Scottish poet Robert Burns penned the version of the song we know today, drawing on an old Scottish folk tune. The song gained popularity in the British Isles before making the jump across the pond in 1929, when Canadian-born immigrant Guy Lombardo led an orchestra in a televised New Year’s Eve broadcast that concluded with a rendition of the song. It quickly gained popularity across the country. He would go on to end his annual broadcasts with the iconic New Year’s tune for decades after.  

The story of the Easter Bunny was brought to the United States by German immigrants. The mythical bunny known as an “Oschter Haws” would lay eggs outside the homes of well-behaved children. Children began creating “nests” to encourage egg laying. Later, as the number of gifts left by the bunny increased, the nests evolved into the contemporary Easter basket. Chocolate bunnies, originally handmade in rabbit-shaped molds, were also imported by German immigrants. 

Many traditional Easter treats were brought to the United States by immigrants. Russian American Sam Born founded the candy company that created Peeps, the chick-shaped marshmallow that many children (and some adults) enjoy around Easter time. Another immigrant entrepreneur, Bavarian-born William Schrafft, founded Schrafft’s Candy Company and is credited with the popularization and possibly the invention of the jellybean. Jellybeans themselves are likely a cross between Turkish Delight, a classic Middle Eastern delicacy, and Jordan almonds, an Italian treat with roots in Ancient Rome. 

Easter lilies, a flower so associated with the holiday that they share a name, came to the United States from Japan by way of Bermuda. After a Japanese missionary to Bermuda gifted some lily bulbs to a local friend, the plant took off on the island. From there, the beautiful flowers found their way to the United States. Traditionally, the lilies are significant to Easter because their growth from a dormant bulb to a full flower echoes the resurrection of Christ and the return of spring. 

Labor Day celebrates the proud tradition of the labor movement in the United States. Immigrants have made tremendous contributions to these efforts since the movement began, and foreign-born workers have often formed the backbone of unionization efforts. One example of their early influence is the constitution for the first construction workers union in 1903, which was published in English, German and Italian. 

Here are just a few of the many immigrant labor activists and immigrant-led union efforts in United States’ history. 

• 1870s – Spurred by personal and financial catastrophes, Irish American Mary Harris “Mother” Jones became a fiery labor leader in middle age to protect others from the struggles she faced. 
• 1900 – Eastern European Jewish immigrants launched the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. 
• Early 1900s – Throughout the early 1900s, Spanish-born Santiago Iglesias led labor rights activism in Puerto Rico, founding multiple newspapers promoting the cause.  
• 1933 – Polish American labor activist Rose Schneiderman became the only woman appointed to the post-Depression National Recovery Administration Labor Advisory Board, where she fought for the rights of women workers. 
• 1930s and ’40s – Guatemalan-born Luisa Moreno created pan-Latin American solidarity among workers and built alliances with Black workers.  
• 1960s – Mexican American immigrant laborers led farmworker campaigns for better treatment and wages. At the same time, Filipino American labor activists Philip Vera Cruz and Larry Itliong built solidarity with the Mexican American campaigners and ensured Filipino farmworkers would not be left out of the effort.  
• 1990 – Salvadoran American janitors led the Justice for Janitors campaign that sparked the modern fight for the $15 minimum wage.
• 1990 – Guatemalan American poultry workers drew on Mayan pride movements to organize their dangerous workplaces.  
• 1993 – Guatemalan, Haitian and Mexican American farmworkers launched the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to fight abusive conditions in Florida agriculture.  

American labor unions have a spotty history when it comes to immigration issues. Historically, American-born workers exposed to misinformation about immigration and jobs have been pitted against foreign-born workers, and labor union policy has sometimes reflected that. Fortunately, the 21st century has shown more unions embracing all workers, regardless of immigration status, as demonstrated by this statement from the AFL-CIO. Solidarity between different immigrant groups and U.S.-born workers has produced strong results that benefit all workers to this day. 

The United States’ spookiest holiday has its roots in an ancient Celtic festival known as “Samhain,” during which people would build bonfires, don animal skins and celebrate the harvest. The Christian holiday All-Soul’s Day, contributed other traditions to Halloween, most notably trick-or-treating. On All-Soul’s Day, poor families in England went door-to-door to beg for “soul cakes” in exchange for a promise to pray for the household’s departed family members. As time went on, the practice evolved to include children from any background going door-to-door in search of treats, money and even ale. All-Soul’s Day, widely observed in England, and Samhain, primarily practiced among Celts, effectively merged to form Halloween. 

Early Protestant immigrants to the United States didn’t approve of the holiday’s mischief-making or pagan connections. It wasn’t until waves of Irish immigrants arrived in the 19th century, particularly in the wake of the Irish Potato Famine, that the holiday gained traction in the United States. Early Irish celebrants of All-Soul’s Day would carry a hollowed turnip with a face carved into it and a candle placed inside to ward off evil spirits. When Irish immigrants reached the New World and gained access to far more easily carved pumpkins, these turnips turned into the modern-day jack-o-lanterns. According to some accounts, the practice of dressing up in costumes began as a ruse among European Christians to confuse wandering spirits. The tradition was revived among young Scottish and English immigrants who wanted to add a little mischief to the festivities. 

Many popular Halloween candies can be traced to the innovations and confectionary skills of immigrant entrepreneurs. As noted in the section on Easter traditions, both jellybeans and Peeps were invented by immigrant entrepreneurs. Samuel Born, the Peeps inventor, also designed the machine that allowed candy companies to manufacture sweets on a stick. Almond Joy and Mounds bars were created by the Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company, a division of Hershey’s that was founded by six immigrants from Armenia. Bunte Candy Company, founded by German American immigrants, is credited with the first chocolate-coated candy bar. Prussian American immigrant entrepreneur Paul F. Beich gets credit for Laffy Taffy, Austrian American Leo Hirschfield created Tootsie Rolls, German American Gustav Goelit sold the first candy corn and English American Edward Dee brought Smarties to the States. In short, whatever your favorite Halloween treat is, you probably have an immigrant to thank for it! 

Immigrants have a long, impressive history of serving in the United States military. Immigrants’ track record of contributions in this arena dates to the Revolutionary War, when heroes like Prussian American Baron Friedrich von Steuben organized the ragtag American army and English American Thomas Paine wrote influential essays in favor of independence while he fought his former homeland. Perhaps the most famous of these foreign-born heroes is Caribbean American Alexander Hamilton, whose story of immigration, war and triumph was immortalized in the popular musical Hamilton.  

Immigrants have been highly represented among military heroes of the 20th and 21st century as well, numbering one in five Medal of Honor recipients. These foreign-born service members’ contributions have not always been recognized. In 2014, President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to 24 veterans, several of them immigrants, who had previously been denied the honor due to their racial or ethnic backgrounds. One, Mexican American WWII veteran Pedro Cano, was awarded the medal for singlehandedly destroying several Nazi machine guns while under heavy fire. Another, Mexican American veteran Jesus S. Duran, was recognized for risking his life during the Vietnam War to turn back enemy forces, saving the lives of several of his comrades.  

One reason immigrants are valuable members of the military is their diverse backgrounds give some immigrant service members language and cultural skills that are more difficult and expensive to develop in U.S.-born Americans. During the Iraq War, for example, the military has actively recruited native Arabic and Farsi speakers, many of them immigrants, to provide vital translation services for military personnel. While wartime has sometimes led to suspicion of foreign-born individuals in the United States, immigrants have made incalculable sacrifices as part of the U.S. armed forces. 

Immigrant families have brought many unique twists to the traditional Thanksgiving table. The classic centerpiece turkey has been reinterpreted countless ways. In the industrial age, some manufacturers who employed high numbers of immigrants handed out turkeys before Thanksgiving to encourage the newcomers to embrace the holiday. The birds didn’t come with instructions, so many immigrant families leaned on their culinary backgrounds to create their first American Thanksgiving

Contemporary immigrant families continue to put their own spin on the dish, including Italian American citrus-infused turkeys, Senegalese American tamarind turkeys, Chinese American Peking-style turkeys, Indian American tandoori turkeys, Mexican American chile-flavored turkeys, Lebanese American rice-stuffed turkeys, Cuban American pepper and adobo turkeys and Israeli American walnut and pomegranate turkeys.

Many popular Thanksgiving dishes themselves have immigrant origins. Pecan pie was first concocted by French immigrant chefs in New Orleans. Pumpkin pies fill English pastry shells with a main ingredient native to the United States. Apples were brought to the New World from Europe, as were the Dutch and English recipes for apple pies and French recipes for cider. English Americans are credited with mashed potatoes and immigrants from many European countries brought their nations’ preferred variation on stuffing. Tamales, which have gained prominence in recent years as a festive Thanksgiving side dish, originated in Latin America.

Those are only a handful of the ways that American holiday traditions have been influenced by cultures from around the world. You can find out more about less popular celebrations held in immigrant enclaves or how the original New Year’s resolutions were introduced in ancient Babylonia or simply make a point of participating in the many celebrations held in your community. For more information about how to celebrate our diverse history during the holidays, check out some of the resources below.

Celebrate Diversity During the Holiday – ideas and lesson plan for teachers.

Celebrate! Holidays and Anti-Bias Education

Creating an inclusive holiday environment for employers

Thoughts on building tradition as a multicultural family

Immigrants from Asia and Pacific Islands are a diverse population of more than 130 ethnic groups from a geographic area that spans 16 million square miles. Their dreams and talents are as diverse as they are and, despite the challenges and discrimination they have faced, they have made extraordinary contributions to the United States. The Immigrant Learning Center has compiled just 13 of their stories, including those of an Olympic athlete, an HIV/AIDS activist, a U.S. senator and an astronaut.

Lue Gim Gong, Horticulturalist, 1860 – 1925

The $6.7 billion Florida citrus industry owes a lot to Lue Gim Gong’s mother. She taught her son pollination techniques while raising him in China. As an adult in the United States, he would use those techniques to breed so many valuable new varieties of fruits that he gained the nickname the “Citrus Wizard.”  

American farmers almost missed the opportunity to benefit from Gong’s expertise. The Chinese Exclusion Act barred him from entering the United States, but he managed to get around it with forged documents and the support of a family farm in Florida. There he focused on cultivating plants that were resistant to early Florida frosts that could wipe out a farmer’s livelihood. He developed tomatoes with higher yields and grapefruits that dropped at optimal times, but he is best known for developing an early-ripening variety of sweet orange that bears his name. The Lue Gim Gong variety of the Valencia orange is still popular more than a century later and has saved the industry millions of dollars.  

Gong’s citrus success did not enrich him personally. His scrupulous honesty, unwillingness to self-promote and habit of handpicking all his oranges to ensure quality didn’t translate to business success. Nonetheless, his impact on the agricultural industry won him widespread recognition, including the first Silver Wilder Medal to be awarded by the American Pomological Society for a citrus fruit. 

Duke Kahanamoku, Olympic Athlete, 1890 – 1968

Duke Kahanamoku was a five-time Olympic medal winner in swimming, but his greatest legacy was popularizing the sport of surfing. Kahanamoku became an American in an untraditional manner. He was born in Hawaii in 1890 and became a United States citizen when the island chain was annexed in 1900.   

Kahanamoku grew up surfing, a sport that was popular among indigenous Hawaiians but was not well-known in the continental United States. He entered the 1912 Olympics as a swimmer, winning a gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle and a silver in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay. At the 1920 Olympics he took gold in both events, and in 1924 he took silver in the 100-meter freestyle.

Between accumulating Olympic medals, Kahanamoku traveled the world to perform in swimming exhibitions, including fundraisers to contribute to the war effort during WWI. He mixed in surfing exhibits, frequently introducing the sport to his audience for the first time. Kahanamoku often made his own surfboards by hand. When he used his surfboard to save eight fishermen after their boat capsized, news of the dramatic rescue popularized not only the sport but the use of surfboards by lifeguards. He moved to the mainland United States to act in several Hollywood movies before retiring to Hawaii, where a statue was erected in his honor.

Bhagat Sing Thind, Soldier / Activist / Spiritual Leader, 1892 – 1967

Bhagat Sing Thind has the possibly unique distinction of becoming a United States citizen three times. After coming to the U.S. from India, Thind applied to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. The law held that only “white” and “African or African-descended” people could become citizens but hadn’t yet settled the question of whether Indian-born people were “white.” His first citizenship, granted in 1918 while he was serving in the U.S. Army, was revoked after just four days. When Thind tried again, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Indian Americans, including Thind, weren’t white and must be stripped of their citizenship. It wasn’t until 1935 when Thind reapplied under a law that offered citizenship to all WWI veterans that he received his citizenship for the third and final time.

Thind made remarkable accomplishments outside of his ongoing battle for citizenship. As a practicing Sikh, he was the first turbaned officer in the United States Army. He advocated for Indian independence from Britain, which was weighed against him in his fights for citizenship, and served with distinction in WWI, which was weighed in his favor. After his first two unsuccessful attempts at naturalization, he remained in the U.S. and earned a PhD in theology and English literature. Thind went on to become a spiritual leader and lecturer on metaphysics, and his writing was published in two volumes posthumously.

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Suffragist, 1896 – 1966 

Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was a committed champion of women’s rights, particularly the right to vote. When Lee was a child, her family came to the United States from China to perform missionary work. By the time she was just 16 years old, Lee was involved in the New York City suffragist campaign to give women the vote. She helped lead a parade on horseback through the streets of Greenwich Village in 1912 and gave speeches at both women’s and Chinese groups while she obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Barnard College. In her most famous speech, “The Submerged Half,” she described women as a suppressed pool of talent and drive that neither China nor the United States could succeed without.  

Lee was an outspoken leader despite knowing that her status as a Chinese immigrant would prevent her from voting even if American women won the right to vote. Women won the right to vote in 1917 in New York and in 1920 across the country, but the Chinese Exclusion Act prevented women from China from voting until it was repealed in 1943. It is unknown if Lee ever gained her citizenship or was able to vote. 

Lee became the first Chinese woman to earn a doctorate in economics in the United States when she earned her PhD from Columbia University in 1921. Lee went on to create the Chinese Christian Center, a community center that offered English lessons, a health clinic and a kindergarten. The center is still in operation today. In a 2018 ceremony, United States Postal Service renamed Manhattan’s Chinatown Post Office the Mabel Lee Memorial Post Office in recognition of all she achieved.

Philip Vera Cruz, Labor Activist, 1904 – 1994

Philip Vera Cruz worked shoulder to shoulder with Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez to shape the farmworker labor movement that fought for and won better treatment for a predominantly immigrant workforce. As a young immigrant from the Philippines, he worked long shifts in the California fields, sometimes nine to 10 hours a day in 110-degree heat. This inspired him to fight for more labor rights and better wages. Filipino Americans were sometimes overlooked in the labor struggle, but Cruz worked hard to ensure that they maintained a seat at the table.

He was an early leader of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, which organized a strike in 1965 when grape growers in Delano, California, refused to pay fair wages to their workers, who were primarily Filipino. The National Farm Workers of America, who were primarily Mexican immigrants, joined the strike. Cruz was key to the organizations’ merger to form the United Farm Workers (UFW), creating  unprecedented solidarity between Filipino and Mexican farmworkers. To support the strike, Cruz traveled across the United States, calling for boycotts of nonunion grapes in churches, schools and community centers. The Delano grape strike was a landmark success, attracting international attention and leading to union contracts and better pay for more than 10,000 workers. 

In his new position as the vice-president of the United Farm Workers, Cruz fought hard for the inclusion of undocumented farmworkers. Cruz went on to oversee Agbayani Village, a retirement community for farmworkers who retired without savings. He was relentless in his activism, even marching at 87 years old to protest the acquittal of the police officers accused of beating Rodney King.

Katherine Sui Fun Cheung, Aviator, 1904 – 2003 

Katherine Sui Fun Cheung was the first Chinese woman to be granted a pilot’s license in the United States. She initially came to the U.S. intending to pursue a career in music, but she quickly fell in love with aviation. She began taking flying lessons at 28 years old. After just 12 hours of practice, she executed a perfect landing. 

It was the start of a groundbreaking aviation career. Cheung soon obtained her pilot’s license, joining the one percent of license holders who were female at the time. She began learning tricks, including death-defying barrel rolls, spiral dives, acrobatic loops and even flying upside down. Cheung wowed crowds at county fairs and airshows and competed in long-distance races. She was invited to join Amelia Earhart’s “Ninety-Nines,” a group of elite female aviators. Becoming a U.S. citizen enabled her to obtain a commercial pilot license. 

Cheung focused on performing in cities with large Chinese populations, and the Chinese community returned her loyalty. When she wanted to enter a seven-day cross-country race, a group of Chinese Americans raised $2,000 to purchase a plane up to the task. They raised money for another plane after Japan invaded China and Cheung wanted to open a flight school in China to train pilots for the war effort. Tragedy struck when her cousin crashed the new plane while testing it and died, and Cheung ultimately did not return to China for many years. Her groundbreaking career has been celebrated in many ways, including induction into the Aviation Hall of Fame and the International Women in Aviation Pioneer Hall of Fame, and a bronze plaque on the Flight Path Walk of Fame. 

I. M. Pei, Architect, 1917 – 2019

I. M. Pei, born Ieoh Ming Pei in China, is one of the most recognized architects in the world. He migrated to the United States through Angel Island in 1935. He came to study, but he was motivated by Hollywood depictions of American life. Fortunately, student visas were among the very few exceptions to the Chinese Exclusion Act at that time. Just as today, immigration officials were concerned that foreigners could become a “public charge,” so Pei’s visa expressly stated, “full [financial] support is to be provided by applicant’s father, Tsuyee Pei, manager of the Bank of China, who is very well fixed financially.” 

During World War II, he decided to put off launching his career as an architect to help the National Defense Research Committee design bombs that would be effective against Japanese homes constructed from wood and paper. This service did not protect him from discrimination. While traveling, Pei was sometimes turned away from lodgings by people suspecting he was Japanese.

After the war, Pei embarked on a series of major projects that won him significant acclaim. He was known for his versatility, working on both commercial skyscrapers and famous art museums. Among his most famous achievements are the renovation of the Louvre in Paris, including the construction of the iconic glass and metal pyramid, Mesa Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, and the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. Pei continued to consult and work on projects into his nineties, including starting a scholarship fund for other Chinese international architecture students to follow in his footsteps.

Haing S. Ngor, Actor / Activist, 1940 – 1996

While living in Los Angeles, he was scouted for the role of Dith Pran in the film The Killing Fields. The fictional character Pran mirrored Ngor’s own horrific experiences under the Khmer Rouge and Ngor’s portrayal won him his Academy Award. He was determined to use the film to raise awareness of the horrors of the genocide, saying afterward, “I wanted to show the world how deep starvation is in Cambodia, how many people die under communist regime. My heart is satisfied. I have done something perfect.” 

Ngor also wrote a memoir of his experiences during the war, Surviving the Killing Fields: The Cambodian Odyssey of Haing S. Ngor, to spread his story further. He continued to act in television shows and films, often in stories of war set in East Asia. Ironically, he survived the Khmer Rouge but not Los Angeles gangs. Ngor’s life was tragically cut short when he was killed in a robbery. His family carried on his legacy of human rights activism and work on behalf of the Cambodian community through The Dr. Haing S. Ngor Foundation.

Mazie Hirono, Senator, 1947 –

Mazie Hirono is a woman of many firsts: first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Hawaii, first Asian American woman in the Senate, first Japanese-born senator and first Buddhist to serve in Congress. Before she could achieve all this, Hirono had to overcome many obstacles, the first being the split up of her family at age seven. Escaping an abusive husband, her mother brought Mazie and one son to Hawaii in the steerage of a battleship. The younger son had to stay behind with grandparents because he was too young for school, and there was no money for childcare in their new home. In many ways, this painful experience shaped much of Hirono’s life. In particular, it gave her perspective and motivation to speak out against family separation policies. In an interview, Hirono said, “I always tell my mom there is nothing I can do—hard as it is to be in politics . . . harder than what she did.” 

In 1959, when Hawaii became a state, Hirono became a U.S. citizen. Her interest in politics started as a psychology student at the University of Hawaii protesting the Vietnam War. She threw herself into working on political campaigns. After earning a law degree at Georgetown University, one of the state legislators she had campaigned for tapped her as his replacement. She served more than a decade in the Hawaii State House and then as Lieutenant Governor. She entered the national stage in 2006 by winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and in 2012 by becoming a U.S. Senator. In 2017, she was diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer, but that did not slow her down. In fact, it fueled her fight for affordable health care. She is also known for strengthening consumer protections, public education, affordable housing and digital literacy. In 2021, she shared her story in the book, Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter’s Story. 

Yo-Yo Ma, Cellist, 1955 –

Yo-Yo Ma may be the best-known classical musician in the world. Ma began playing the cello as a toddler and was performing for U.S. presidents by the time he was seven years old. He was born in France to parents who had immigrated from China. Ma came to the United States as a teen to advance his schooling and career. He has performed for nine United States presidents, most recently at President Biden’s inauguration, as well as the fictional President Bartlet in an episode of The West Wing. Ma is known for his versatility, performing American bluegrass, traditional Chinese music and Argentinian tangos alongside classical orchestra music. This versatility has enabled him to produce almost 100 albums, including 18 Grammy winners. 

When interviewed about how immigration affects people’s work, Ma said, “That immigrant imagination allows them to see further into possibilities that don’t really exist yet.” When tensions rose along the U.S.-Mexico border, he performed a free concert on the border to promote a message of unity. While live performances were mostly shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic, he hosted a series of pop-up performances for essential workers. He also treated the health care workers at his vaccine appointment to an impromptu performance. Among his many accolades, Ma has received the Presidential Medal of Honor from President Obama, the National Medal of Arts from the U.S. Congress and the title “Sexiest Classical Musician” from People magazine.

Kalpana Chawla, Astronaut, 1962 – 2003

Kalpana Chawla was fascinated with airplanes and flight long before she became an astronaut. As a child in India, she would visit flying clubs to watch planes overhead. When Chawla chose to study aeronautical engineering at Punjab Engineering College, she had to override the objections of professors who thought she had no future in the field. She came to the United States to obtain her masters and PhD in aerospace engineering. After completing her doctorate, she successfully applied for a competitive research position at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

She left NASA for a few years to build her skills as a research scientist and flight instructor at a private company while working toward her ultimate ambition of going to space. In order to fulfill that ambition, Chawla also had to obtain her U.S. citizenship. Once she became a naturalized citizen, she applied to join the NASA Astronaut Corps and was selected among thousands of applicants. When she served as the mission specialist and the prime robotic arm operator for the successful Space Shuttle Columbia flight STS-87, she became the first woman born in India to enter space.

Tragically, her second trip on the Columbia ended in disaster when the shuttle broke apart while re-entering the atmosphere. Chawla, along with the rest of the crew, was posthumously given the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. In India, she is considered a national hero.

Cecilia Chung, Activist, 1965 – 

Cecilia Chung is a longtime advocate on behalf of LGBTQ+ communities, immigrants and people living with HIV/AIDS. Chung came from Hong Kong to the United States as a teenager with her family in 1984. When she came out as a transgender woman in 1992, she paid a heavy price. Her family rejected her and she lost her job. Chung became homeless, turned to sex work, self-medicated with drugs, endured physical and sexual violence, and contracted HIV. After a life-threatening injury landed her in the hospital, her family reconciled with her and her life stabilized. 

Chung began working as an HIV counselor. She also joined the San Francisco’s Transgender Discrimination Task Force to document widespread mistreatment of trans people. “We weren’t just fighting for our rights, we were fighting for our lives by demanding treatment and more research. We were also demanding to be seen as human beings,” Chung says. Her accomplishments include being the “architect of the nation’s most ambitious publicly funded program addressing economic justice within the transgender community.” She helped found the Trans March, one of the biggest annual transgender events in the world. Chung continues to fight for the rights of trans people and immigrants to this day.

Roy Choi, Chef / TV Star, 1970

After spending his late teens and twenties struggling with depression and addictions to drug, alcohol and gambling, Korean-born Roy Choi credits an episode of the cooking show Emeril with turning his life around. It reinvigorated his love of food and started him on a path that brought him to the forefront of United States food culture.  

After finding his calling as a chef and training at the Culinary Institute of America, Choi worked steadily in kitchens until he hit a rough spot in his career. In 2008, he decided to strike out on his own with a Korean-themed taco food truck. At the time, food trucks got little respect, but the runaway success of his “Kogi” trucks sparked a renaissance of the mobile restaurants. Choi built on his success, opening multiple brick and mortar locations and touring the country. 

As his popularity grew, he brought his food philosophy to television. Chef Show on Netflix celebrates what Choi proudly calls, “food that isn’t fancy.” Broken Bread on PBS is more focused on food activism, including issues like food waste and food insecurity. He has also promoted the plant-based food movement, innovating with new meat-free dishes at his restaurants. When Choi made the 2016 TIME list of 100 Most Influential People, famed chef and TV host Anthony Bourdain wrote, “Chef, activist, film producer, restaurateur and author of a superb memoir, L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food, Roy Choi has put it all on the line to improve the quality of life for people few others seem to care about. It’s not a pose, it’s not a cause: it’s who he is.”

Celebrating All AAPI Immigrants

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (AAPI), but as these stories demonstrate, they are an important presence in American society all year round. To learn more, check out The ILC’s lists of the best books and TV shows and films featuring immigrants, which both include more narratives of Asians and Pacific Islanders. Our Immigrant Entrepreneur Hall of Fame features many AAPI immigrants who have created influential organizations, including co-founder of YouTube Steve Chen and co-founder of Pacific Trading International Mei Xu. The book Immigrant Struggles, Immigrant Gifts details the histories and experiences of 11 immigrant groups. You can find the chapter on Chinese American immigration by Dr. Erika Lee as part of a set of free resources from The ILC to counter misinformation and AAPI hate.

Immigrants play an outsized role at every level of the United States health care system. Immigrants make up 13.6 percent of the U.S. population, but 28.0 percent of the country’s 958,000 physicians and surgeons, and 37.9 percent of the 492,000 home health aides. The latter group is especially key for meeting the needs of the United States’ rapidly aging population. Geriatric care is one of many areas where the U.S. health care system is facing worker shortages. Immigrant workers are especially likely to serve where the need is greatest, filling a disproportionate number of jobs where shortages are especially acute. Without immigrant workers, these gaps in care in underserved and rural areas would be far worse.

Immigrant workers have been particularly vital during the COVID-19 crisis. The huge role they play in the home health aide industry has kept many disabled and elderly people out of institutional care facilities, which have been hit very hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. They also make up one in eight respiratory therapists, one in 20 emergency technicians and more than half of geriatric medicine specialists. Immigrant contact tracers have helped track the spread of the virus among vulnerable populations, using multilingual and multicultural communication to obtain data that might otherwise have been lost. 

Immigrants have also been crucial to the development of COVID-19 vaccines. The history of these vaccines can be told through the stories of immigrants in health care. Katalin Kariko, a Hungarian immigrant who pioneered mRNA science, struggled for funding and respect for years before making a breakthrough crucial to the development of the vaccine. Derek Rossi, a Canadian-born immigrant scientist and entrepreneur, saw the commercial potential of Kariko’s breakthrough and built on it, ultimately cofounding biotech company Moderna (“Modifying-RNA”). Noubar Afeyan, an Lebanese-born immigrant entrepreneur and investor, was Moderna’s first investor and champion. Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, married immigrant scientists and founders of BioNTech, also developed new innovations based on Kariko’s work. When COVID-19 first appeared, BioNTech reached out to Pfizer, a health care company that was itself founded by German-born immigrant entrepreneur Charles Pfizer, and partnered with them in developing a vaccine. Moderna and the BioNTech-Pfizer partnership were the first two organizations to get COVID-19 vaccines approved. This chain of events would not have occurred without the work of immigrants at every link.

Visa and licensing requirements often hinder immigrants’ abilities to fully contribute to the United States’ health care system. There are programs and policies that help foreign-born health care workers overcome these obstacles that could be expanded to improve outcomes for all Americans in the future. For example, the Conrad 30 waiver program allows foreign-born medical students on J-1 visas to bypass the requirement that they return to their country of origin for two years if they agree to serve in rural and underserved communities. It’s a true win-win for foreign-born and U.S.-born Americans that is currently only available to 30 medical professionals per state.

During the COVID-19 crisis, multiple states loosened visa restrictions and licensing requirements to allow immigrant medical workers to serve in the places and positions where they were most needed. In doing so, the states eased some of the health care worker shortages and reduced “brain waste,” which occurs when foreign-trained medical workers cannot work in their field because of the struggle to get their credentials recognized in the United States. With more initiatives like these, the already impressive contributions of foreign-born Americans could expand.

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the deep connection between the well-being of U.S.-born and foreign-born Americans. The latest research report from The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute, Immigrant Essential Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic, shows that much of the weight of the pandemic in the United States was born by immigrants who received little to no support from policymakers in return. The report draws on interviews with more than 30 policy experts and immigrant essential workers across the country. The report also features in-depth research on the extraordinary challenges and contributions of immigrant essential workers. We can learn from their experiences to better prepare for the future, rejecting policies that failed frontline workers and building on effective local initiatives.

Immigrant essential workers’ contributions during the COVID-19 crisis have been crucial and oversized. Foreign-born people make up just 14 percent of the U.S. population but 18 percent of the essential workforce. While 65 percent of U.S.-born workers are essential workers, 69 percent of all immigrants in the U.S. labor force and 74 percent of undocumented workers are essential. To name just a few essential occupations, 36 percent of home health aides, 29 percent of physicians, 31 percent of meat processing workers and 48 percent of fast-food workers are immigrants. Despite the often dangerous conditions, our report shows that foreign-born frontline workers have remained committed to supporting their communities through the pandemic. As one interviewee working in health care reflected, “I didn’t think that quitting was an option. I am healthy and it is the right thing to do.” While many people were instructed to “stay home,” essential workers stepped up.

Despite their indispensable role in keeping the economy and society afloat, immigrant essential workers have often faced unnecessary hardships, including lack of access to aid. Many of the resources offered to U.S.-born people were unavailable to immigrants. An estimated 6.2 million essential workers were ineligible for relief payments under the CARES Act, either because they were one of the 5.5 million undocumented immigrant essential workers in the U.S. or in mixed-status families, many of whom had U.S. citizen children. Language and cultural barriers also sometimes put assistance out of reach. In one survey of immigrants in Minnesota, 90 percent of respondents found it difficult to locate information on available aid. Even when aid was provided, it did not always reach the essential workers on the front lines. One immigrant farmworker explained, “I am aware that the agricultural industry has received billions of dollars in COVID-19 legislation, yet no one in our family or in our crew has received masks … Not once has our employer screened us for symptoms.” High rates of COVID-19 infections among immigrant workers kept them out of the essential workforce and increased risks for their entire communities.

Licensing and visa restrictions also prevented immigrants from filling positions in fields where they were badly needed. Burdensome licensing requirements kept many skilled foreign-born health care workers out of jobs that would fully utilize their capabilities. While 1.5 million immigrants are serving as doctors, pharmacists and registered nurses, another 263,000 are out of work or working in positions that do not utilize their health care expertise. Others have visas that allow them to work in health care but forbid them from shifting job locations to combat regional surges in COVID-19. Limited visa options also prevented migrant farmworkers from filling agricultural jobs. These bureaucratic barriers worsened the labor shortages created by widespread COVID-19 infections, contributing to empty grocery store shelves and understaffed intensive care units.

While the federal government did little to support immigrant essential workers, state and local governments and even individuals launched successful initiatives that could be expanded to counter the next public health crisis. Community organizations and churches have been vital frontline public health messengers throughout the crisis. Reaching immigrant essential workers with accurate health information and creating workplace protections is necessary to prevent outbreaks like the ones that devastated meatpacking facilities. Sofia, an advocate for migrant farmworkers, reported that mobilization efforts also pushed city councils and local governments to create benefits, including health care resources, for immigrant essential workers.  When the federal government didn’t provide aid to non-citizens in the CARES Act, some states and city councils allocated direct aid payments to the excluded groups. A number of states reworked licensing requirements or created programs to more quickly allow foreign-trained health care workers into the essential workforce. These effective interventions provide a roadmap for ensuring that immigrant essential workers are adequately supported in the future. Protections for immigrant essential workers would benefit communities as well as workers by strengthening immigrants’ ability to continue working and lightening the strain on our health care systems. 

All Americans rely on immigrant essential workers. When they harvest produce during wildfires, staff hospitals through waves of COVID-19 and much more, we all benefit. When they were forced to leave their essential occupations due to unsafe conditions and kept from fulfilling their potential by outdated bureaucracy, we all felt the ill-effects. As the United States struggles to get clear of this crisis and prepare for the next one, valuing and protecting immigrant essential workers is a matter of national urgency. Please read and share The ILC’s research report to learn more about this important issue.

Rates of unaccompanied minors crossing the border have been rising significantly, and so are the chances an unaccompanied minor will join your classroom. These young people have strengths, challenges and needs that are distinct from immigrant children as a whole. They are being housed in households across the country, so it’s worthwhile to prepare to welcome an unaccompanied minor wherever you are located.

For more tools to teach unaccompanied minors, explore our comprehensive, searchable Teaching Refugee, Unaccompanied Minor and SLIFE Students resource page.

While almost all unaccompanied minors cross the southern border, not all are Latinx. They are typically teenagers who speak little to no English and may not even speak Spanish. Youth from indigenous communities in South and Central America may exclusively speak one of 560 indigenous languages, making it hard or impossible to access a translator in the immigration system. Once apprehended at the border, unaccompanied children are usually held in detention facilities. They have the legal right to learn while in long-term detention, but facilities generally provide inadequate education and care. This may not be the first interruption to their education. If they are fleeing war, unrest, poverty, gangs, a natural disaster and/or other traumatic conditions in their country of origin, they might have attended school irregularly or dropped out of school altogether.

When minors are released from detention, they are put in the care of temporary caregivers, who are more likely to be family members than unrelated foster parents. These caregivers can be located anywhere in the country, so it’s not just teachers working along the U.S. southern border who might be receiving them into their classrooms. You can see how many minors have been placed with sponsors in your county between October 1, 2020 and August 31, 2021 here and in previous years here. Unaccompanied minors are also simultaneously placed into deportation court proceedings. It is possible, therefore, that they won’t be your student for a long time, but this doesn’t mean that they can’t be educated and supported while in your classroom.

Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital Trauma and Community Resilience Center have developed a “core-stressors” model that can help educators understand and support unaccompanied minors. The model identifies four central stressors facing unaccompanied minors and offers strategies for addressing them. These four stressors are acculturation, resettlement, trauma and isolation. All these challenges have been exacerbated by COVID-19. This article will describe the model, section by section, to explore how teachers can address the needs of unaccompanied immigrant and refugee minors in classrooms. To apply the model in more depth, you can explore the accompanying toolkit created to guide teachers through supporting their students. 

Acculturation is the process of adapting to a new culture. There is more information on the topic in this blog post on immigrant trauma. Unaccompanied minors may face more challenges in their acculturation process than other immigrant students. They are often coming from detention centers where they were very isolated from the rest of the United States, limiting their options for exploring and adopting new cultural practices. They may not speak any English and may be unable to communicate with those around them, especially if they are placed with a foster family. 

Placements with both biological families and foster families carry challenges and benefits. Biological families may have their own complicated relationship with acculturation. Immigrant parents sometimes feel their child is becoming “too American,” too quickly. If the unaccompanied minor students are new arrivals and their sponsor family has become more “Americanized” while in the United States, the opposite may occur. Foster families may not understand an immigrant’s culture or country of origin. Students may also experience cultural conflicts or misunderstandings with peers. While teachers cannot resolve all the acculturation challenges facing their students, they are well situated to help. 

You can reduce the “othering” of your students by setting clear classroom guidelines for both foreign-born and U.S.-born students. Creating ground rules for respectful conduct and language will make your expectations of your students clear, and make it easier to hold students accountable if they say something inappropriate. Give opportunities for students to share their own cultures in a positive context. Hosting an “International Day,” organizing a show-and-tell where students share an object that represents their families, and similar activities are ways to make students the “teacher” of their backgrounds.  

It’s vital to provide openings for students to share their unique experiences without singling them out and making them feel “othered.” All students have interesting cultural backgrounds to share, not just unaccompanied minors in the process of acculturation, so there are benefits to encouraging all students to embrace and share their backgrounds. As will be discussed in the section on trauma, pressuring students to share their stories may trigger unpleasant or even harmful memories. Students should be given opportunities, not mandates, to speak up. Let your students acculturate to the degree they desire and at the pace they choose. For example, avoid giving your students anglicized nicknames. Names can carry tremendous cultural or familial significance, and teachers shouldn’t try to “improve” them on their students’ behalf. By the same token, don’t discourage your students from adopting conventionally American names if they choose to do so. Allow unaccompanied minors to decide how much they want to change as they adapt to their new community. 

It’s not uncommon for educators to feel anxious or insecure if there’s a cultural divide between them and their students that they don’t know how to bridge. Fortunately, there are effective ways to overcome those divides. If there is a substantial local community of people who share your students’ cultures, teachers can improve their own cultural understanding by engaging with it openly and fully. Attending local cultural events can help improve your cultural fluency. Learning to speak the native language of your students, even conversationally, is a tough but highly effective way to make them feel welcome. Even learning a few simple phrases can demonstrate to students that you’re invested in engaging with them.

Unaccompanied minors can face significant struggles with the resettlement process, which includes accessing basic resources like medical care, including mental health care, affordable housing, and legal and financial assistance. Their families might not be equipped to connect unaccompanied minors with the resources they need, particularly if they are the child’s biological family and struggling with resettlement themselves. 

Unaccompanied children and their families are often low-income. Minors may be expected to work, help pay rent and even send money to family in home countries. This can interfere with their ability to thrive in or even attend school. Financial and language barriers can also make it harder to access resources in their community. Their legal status might bar them from some forms of government assistance. Poverty and immigration status can create challenges that overlap and compound each other. An inability to afford or access medical care or legal services is especially dangerous for immigrants who are more likely to have unaddressed physical and mental health needs, and often desperately need legal help.  

Educators cannot meet all of their students’ needs, but they can help connect them to organizations that might be able to assist. Unaccompanied minors are generally not entitled to legal assistance, but there may be free or low-cost legal resources available in your community. This is especially important since unaccompanied minors are far more likely to win their deportation cases when they have legal representation. Connecting students with cultural organizations can help them integrate into their communities, something explored further in the section on isolation. Many not-for-profits offer legal, financial and medical assistance to immigrant and refugee families, but families must know that they exist in order to take advantage of them. With a little research, you can bridge the gap between your students and helpful organizations and resources in your area. Here is a list of organizations supporting unaccompanied immigrant children across the country that could get you started.

There are also a number of ways that school systems are legally obligated to support unaccompanied minor students. Teachers may need to research their students’ rights to ensure they’re being met. Schools must enroll unaccompanied minors promptly, have English language learners assessed quickly and provide materials in home languages, among other responsibilities. A more comprehensive list of unaccompanied children’s rights is available here. Unaccompanied minors also have the right to be placed into mainstream classes as much as possible, not funneled into adult education programs. Know-Your-Rights trainings are helpful for both students and teachers who may not know about the resources the students are entitled to.  

Engaging families, particularly if the unaccompanied minor has been reunited with their biological family, can also help students’ resettlement processes. If parents grow more confident and capable of engaging with their children’s school, the student will receive more support. Our blog post Engage Families to Support Immigrant Students details how to reach out to immigrant parents and involve them in their student’s academic success. 

Trauma is very common among unaccompanied minors. Being separated from their families itself is a form of trauma. Trauma responses often surface after students have resettled, when the immediate stress and danger of their journey has ended. Our blog post on immigrant trauma goes into depth on the topic. Pre-migration, migration and resettlement trauma could all be present. Students may be fleeing oppression, war, gangs or extreme poverty. Rates of sexual assault, abduction, trafficking and other forms of violence are very high on journeys to the U.S. Rates of abuse and neglect can be high in immigrant detention facilities in the U.S. as well. 

Trauma may show up as hyperactivity, truancy, withdrawal, mood swings, irritability and other “problem” behaviors. Responding with empathy and support rather than punishment is vital. One simple strategy to help students process their experiences is to encourage them to write, talk or even create art about their stories. It’s important to make sure these activities are voluntary. Pushing students to relate or relive painful experiences can cause trauma to resurface in harmful ways.  

Some ways to address trauma in unaccompanied minors can also help address other stressors, like resettlement and isolation. You can research mental health resources available to students, both in and out of school. Connecting students, and potentially their families, to these resources can close the gap between them and the mental health care that they need. For example, without orientation, foreign-born students may not understand how a school guidance counselor can help them. 

Preventing or ending isolation, which is addressed further in the section on isolation below, can also ease the effects of trauma. Creating strong connections with peers and with the school itself can improve students’ mental health. General trauma-informed teaching principles also apply to unaccompanied minors. This resource has detailed suggestions for trauma-informed teaching practices. Some strategies include offering students as much autonomy as possible, setting predictable schedules, engaging with students outside of academics, and giving students opportunities to demonstrate competencies and strengths. It benefits all students to approach them with an open, empathetic mind and stay attuned to signs that they are in distress.

Using cultural sensitivity when addressing trauma is vital. One simple way to be more culturally sensitive when supporting students is to ask students, “What do you do at home that makes you feel better?” Let their answer guide how you express support. Using family liaisons can help you connect with students and families on comfortable ground, making it easier to raise concerns around trauma and mental health. 

By definition, unaccompanied minors have spent time separated not just from their community but also their family. Some unaccompanied minors have long journeys to the United States that conclude with being shuffled around multiple shelters with high turnover rates among residents, leaving them cut off from any sense of community for a long time. This is particularly concerning because research shows that lack of family or community support is a high-risk factor for mental health problems for immigrant and refugee children. On the other hand, close family ties and social support from peers help protect students from mental health problems. 

Feelings of isolation may persist for unaccompanied minors even if they’ve been reconnected with biological family. It can be hard to rejoin a family after a long separation, particularly amid traumatic and stressful circumstances. Family members who have been separated for a long period of time may struggle to adjust to living with relatives who have grown older and changed during their absence. Unaccompanied minors may have new stepfamilies or younger siblings, which can lead to intra-family conflict. If unaccompanied minors are placed with a host family, they may not know anyone who speaks their native language or understands their culture. Unaccompanied minors are often more independent than average, setting them up for conflicts with caregivers with different expectations of minors’ autonomy. Your students might face bullying and discrimination, both in and out of school, which will prevent them from feeling meaningfully engaged with their new community.  

As a teacher, you are best situated to help your students feel connected to their classmates and their school community. One strategy is to create a buddy system with other students, ideally pairing newly arrived unaccompanied minors with multilingual students. You can also organize activities like clubs, lunch groups and other social opportunities that encourage interpersonal connections. If your school has a large group of students who share an unaccompanied minor’s background, starting a club focused on celebrating their culture can be especially meaningful. Encouraging students to participate in community and cultural groups both in and out of school will help them form connections.  

It is valuable for students and their families to feel connected to their school in addition to their peers and community. Thorough family engagement can help with this. Family engagement works best when it’s linguistically and culturally sensitive and conducted through a cultural broker, someone who is part of the student’s cultural community and can speak to students and families on their terms. Ensuring students and families have access to translated materials, which they’re legally entitled to, is also vital to breaking through isolation. Schools should have interpreters or translation programs available to communicate with students and their caregivers. A fuller review of the rights of multilingual families is available here. 

• For more resources on trauma-informed teaching, explore our curated resources on Immigrant Trauma and Mental Health. 
• The four core stressors model is the basis for a toolkit that allows teachers to evaluate their students’ needs and challenges. 
• This resource provides a comprehensive accounting of unaccompanied immigrant minor students’ educational legal rights. This resource shares the rights of English language learner families. 
• This video from our recent Immigrant Student Success online workshop features social worker Laura Gardner sharing more information about unaccompanied immigrant minors and strategies for supporting them. Gardner also wrote a blog post, 10 Things Educators Need to Know about Unaccompanied Minors, summarizing many of her findings.  
• Watch The ILC’s Pandemic, Politics and the Future: Tackling Immigrant Anxiety and Trauma webinar to learn more about addressing anxiety and trauma in the immigrant context. 
• The Anti-Defamation League’s Kira Simon discusses resources for fighting anti-immigrant discrimination in the classroom. Teaching Tolerance’s Julie Bradley and Amy Melik discuss how to tackle bias in schools.