Mr. Murdoch is chairmanexecutive
Give Thanks for Immigrants
And for a president who understands their importance to America.
BY RUPERT MURDOCH
When B.C. Forbes sailed for America from Scotland in 1904, he was following a course well worn by generations of Scots.
I know how the founder of Forbes magazine must have felt. The Murdochs originally hail from the same part of Scotland. Today, we are part of the most recent wave of immigrants attracted by the bright beacon of American liberty.
In a study on high school students released this past summer, the National Foundation for American Policy found 60% of the top science students, and 65% of the top math students, are children of immigrants. The same study found that seven of the top award winners at the 2004 Intel Science Talent Search were immigrants or children of immigrants. This correlates with other findings that more than half of engineers--and 45% of math and computer scientists--with Ph.D.s now working in the U.S. are foreign born.
The point is that by almost any measure of educational excellence you choose, if you're in America you're going to find immigrants or their children at the top. I don't just mean engineers and scientists and technicians. In my book, anyone who comes here and gives an honest day's work for an honest day's pay is not only putting himself closer to the American Dream, he's helping the rest of us get there too.
As Ronald Reagan said at the Statue of Liberty, ''While we applaud those immigrants who stand out, whose contributions are easily discerned, we know that America's heroes are also those whose names are remembered by only a few.''
Let me share some of these names with you.
Start with Eddie Chin, an ethnic Chinese Marine who was born a week after his family fled Burma. You've all seen Cpl. Chin. Because when Baghdad fell, he was the Marine we all watched shimmy up the statue of Saddam Hussein to attach the cable that would pull it down.
Or Lance Cpl. Ahmad Ibrahim. His family came to the U.S. from Syria when the first Gulf War broke out. Now Cpl. Ibrahim hopes to be deployed to Iraq--also as a Marine--to put his Arabic language skills in the service of Corps and Country.
Or what about Cpl. Jos?© Gutierrez, who was raised in Guatemala and came to America as a boy--illegally! Cpl. Gutierrez was one of the first Marines killed in action in Iraq. As his family told reporters, this young immigrant enlisted with the Marine Corps because he wanted to ''give back'' to America.
So here we have it--Asian Marines, Arab Marines, Latino Marines--all united in the mission of protecting the rest of us. Isn't this what Reagan meant when he said that the bond that ties our immigrants together--what makes us a nation instead of a collection of individuals--is ''an abiding love of liberty''? So the next time you hear people whinging about what a ''drain'' on America our immigrants are, it might be worth asking if they consider these Marines a drain.
Maybe this is more clear to businessmen because of what we see every day. My company, News Corporation, is a multinational company based in America. Our diversity is based on talent, cooperation and ability.
Such a policy would benefit us all:
Given the tremendous pressures on President Bush and the considerable opposition from within his own ranks, the politically expedient thing for him to do would be to drop it. But he hasn't, and I for one am encouraged by his refusal to give in.
Mr. Murdoch is chairman and chief executive of News Corporation. This is adapted from a speech he gave last Thursday, in acceptance of the 2004 B.C. Forbes Award.
By acceptance of the 2004 B.C. Forb
