The Most Inspiring Immigration Stories Of 2021
The year 2021 saw many immigrants who made memorable contributions to America. Here are the most inspiring immigration stories of 2021.
Americans Welcome Afghan Refugees: In 2021, the collapse of the Afghan government put everyone at risk who worked with the United States, and Americans welcomed thousands of Afghans fleeing the Taliban. An early sign of the exodus came in June 2021, with the arrival in America of Maj. Naiem Asadi, “a celebrated Afghan fighter pilot trained by the American military, who hid for months with his wife and 5-year-old daughter from Taliban death threats,” reported the Wall Street Journal. “Maj. Naiem Asadi’s case came under the spotlight late last year after Washington reversed its initial decision to help him leave Afghanistan and live in the U.S. Maj. Asadi and his family left Kabul on Tuesday after the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) last month granted them parole—a temporary protection status for noncitizens in the country, according to his lawyer.
“During this period, he can apply for asylum, the lawyer said. ‘You can’t even imagine how happy I am,’ Maj. Asadi said on the phone from New Jersey on Thursday, his voice giddy with excitement and his daughter playing noisily in the background.”
As of November 2021, thousands of refugees evacuated from Afghanistan remained living on U.S. military bases, such as Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, where a “village” of temporary housing is called the Aman Omid (“peace and hope” in Persian). “The Afghans here are heroic and ambitious, say the military commanders and officials who run the camp, many of whom are themselves veterans of the war in Afghanistan,” reports Abigail Hauslohner of the Washington Post. “These Afghan guests have sacrificed much for America. I’d actually say that the majority of those in the village have risked more for American security than the vast majority of Americans have,” said Daniel E. Gabrielli, an Air Force brigadier general heading Aman Omid.
Retirees Show Appreciation for Immigrant Essential Workers and Help Them Become U.S. Citizens: In an example of civil society at work, the residents of Goodwin House, a long-term care facility in northern Virginia, raised $40,000 and tutored immigrant workers from Cameroon, Haiti, Jamaica and elsewhere to pass the naturalization test. The effort produced nearly 90 new American citizens among the immigrants.
“These residents decided to do something extraordinary for the migrants who take such good care of them, who treat their senior status with an honor and value that our youth-worshipping, throwaway culture too often neglects,” reported the Washington Post. “The residents raised their hands to volunteer. They tutored the health aides, housekeepers and cooks, drilling them on spelling, the constitutional amendments, the writers of the Federalist papers, the rights of U.S. citizens and other questions on the citizenship test that huge percentages of American-born citizens who call themselves patriots would flunk.”
Immigrant Saved Lives But Lost His Own in San Jose Shooting: An employee shot and killed 9 Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority workers in California on May 26, 2021. Immigrant Paul Delacruz Megia, who died in the shooting, is credited with saving the lives of other workers.
“‘Please don’t let anybody in,’ VTA employee Cecilia Crowder recalls him telling her before closing the door and leaving. Within a few minutes, she said, she heard gunshots. ‘I’m really sorry. Paul saved me,’ she said through tears, holding her palms to her chest. ‘I’m very blessed for him,’” reported the San Francisco Chronicle. “Megia was born in the Philippines and came to the United States as a child, where he was raised in San Jose, said Megia’s sister Julie Soriano. He moved to Mountain House in 2008, where Soriano said her brother was active as a coach and helped out with his son’s Little League baseball and youth football teams.”
The Mars Rover, the Pickup Truck and the Teacher of the Year: Linda Zhang, the chief engineer behind the new all-electric Ford F- 150, immigrated to America as a child from China. “She came here at 8, speaking zero English,” reported MSNBC. “She learned the first part of the alphabet, ABCDEFGH, the first eight letters of the alphabet, on the plane on the way over to America, but that was her entire knowledge of English by the time she landed. She learned quickly. By the end of her family’s first year here, she was fluent in English. Started to do great in school. She and her family were from China. Her dad had come over to be a grad student at Purdue in Indiana, and that’s how she and her family moved here when she was 8 years old.”
In March 2021, images of Mars from NASA’s rover captivated people on earth. An immigrant from Colombia played a crucial role in the mission. “When NASA's Perseverance rover successfully landed on Mars last week, aerospace engineer Diana Trujillo, who is a flight director on the mission, said it took her some time to process that it had arrived on the red planet,” according to CBS News. “The landing only marked the beginning of Perseverance's stop on Mars, but playing a leadership role in the historic mission to find life there was decades in the making for Trujillo. Her dreams of reaching space and wanting to understand the universe came as a young person in Cali, Colombia. Her parents were divorcing and as a 17-year-old, she decided to go to the United States, arriving with only $300 and not speaking any English. She worked housekeeping jobs to pay for her studies and later joined NASA in 2007.”
Diana Trujillo was not the only immigrant from Colombia recognized for her contributions to America in 2021. “A Colombian-born special education teacher [Juliana Urtubey] in a Nevada elementary school has been named the 2021 National Teacher of the Year,” reported Axios. “The 11-year classroom veteran teaches at Kermit R. Booker Sr. Innovative Elementary School in Las Vegas, where she serves as a co-teacher in pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade special education settings.”
The 97-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor: Hana Kantor, the grandmother of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor, survived the Holocaust and immigrated to America as a refugee after World War II. After the Nazis invaded Poland, she was forced into a Jewish ghetto and later a concentration camp. Her three brothers were burned alive in a camp with other prisoners only days before the war ended. “Almost your entire family was murdered by the Nazis, you lived through terrible trauma, but for most of your life, and my entire life, you have been one of the happiest people I know,” said Jodi Kantor on CBS This Morning. Hana Kantor’s outlook on life is clear: “I am happy. I am happy that I survived.”
In 2021, “Washington National Cathedral dedicated the fourth of the planned ‘quartet’ of human rights carvings in the building’s vestibule, honoring the late Elie Wiesel with prayer and discussion of the Holocaust survivor’s legacy of pursuing justice, hope and faith in the face of humanity’s darkest crimes,” reported the Washington Post. Wiesel, who died in 2016, immigrated to the United States.
An Immigrant’s Gift to the American People: Arturo Di Modica, an immigrant from Italy, known for placing his 3.5-ton bronze sculpture of the “Charging Bull” outside the New York Stock Exchange, died in February 2021. “Mr. Di Modica grew up poor in Sicily, and he bore an immigrant’s love for his adopted home,” according to the New York Times. “With the country—or at least Wall Street—still reeling from ‘Black Monday,’ the day in 1987 when the market dropped 20% in a single session, he wanted to give the country a get-well present, one that, he said, symbolized ‘the future.’
“What he did not have was permission to place his enormous sculpture outside the New York Stock Exchange, his intended location. Deciding that good intentions trumped petty matters like city permits, Mr. Di Modica spent weeks scouting Wall Street after midnight, taking note of how often police officers passed by. Then, around 1 a.m. on Dec. 15, he loaded his sculpture onto a flatbed truck and drove to Broad Street, next to the stock exchange, where about 40 of his friends were waiting.”
New York Stock Exchange officials were not pleased with the gift and carted the bull to a warehouse. However, the sculpture gained iconic status after it was placed at “nearby Bowling Green, a park at the foot of Broadway. . . . where it has remained for 33 years, perpetually poised to charge through the Financial District.”
Immigrant Sports Heroes: It was a notable year for immigrants in sports. Japanese-born baseball player Shohei Ohtani drew center stage at the MLB All-Star Game and earned the 2021 American League Most Valuable Player (MVP) award for his record-setting performance as a pitcher and batter. “Ohtani is the best player in baseball. Happy baseball voting gave him a very much deserved ‘Unanimous MVP’” tweeted Oakland A’s pitcher Chris Bassitt. “Ohtani donated the $150,000 he earned for participating in the T-Mobile Home Run Derby to Angels employees such as trainers, clubhouse workers and media relations staffers,” reported MLB.com.
The 2021 World Series MVP Jorge Soler, born in Cuba, traveled a difficult path to America to pursue his dreams. He hit three home runs for the champion Atlanta Braves in the team’s 6-game World Series victory over the Houston Astros.
“’It was six of us when we first got caught, first by a plane (sighting) and then from the (U.S.) Coast Guard when we were in the water,’” he told the Kansas City Star. “’They caught us before they sent us back after five days in the detainment process. Once (that happens) you get a target on your back and become a black sheep.’ More specifically, his father lost his job and Soler was suspended from the national team. Which only stoked their resolve.
“’We attempted it multiple times, but . . . we were always stopped a little before,’” he said, later adding, ‘For a lot of people, it depends (on) how many times (one attempts to leave).’ . . . After seven months and an unspecified number of additional attempts to defect, in 2011 they reached Haiti by way of a boat to the Dominican Republic. ‘At 18 years old, I was leaving everything I ever knew behind just to come,’” he said.
Giannis Antetokounmpo, an immigrant from Greece, was named the Most Valuable Player in the NBA finals after leading the Milwaukee Bucks to the NBA title. “This is awesome," Antetokounmpo said at a White House ceremony. “A kid from Sepolia, Athens, Greece—grew up from two Nigerian parents who were struggling every day to provide for us. . . . It's an unbelievable opportunity to be able to be in the White House meeting the president of the United States. I could not be as honored and happy that something like this—that I've accomplished something like this in my life.”
Immigrants and the children of immigrants contributed to America’s 113 medals—the most of any country—at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2021. “At least 34 of the TeamUSA Olympians were not born here, but made the U.S. their home and proudly represent this country,” wrote Michelle Waslin in The Hill. “Many other American Olympians are the children of immigrants. Notably, multi-medal winning gymnast Sunisa Lee is the first Olympian of Hmong descent.”
Tamyra Mensah-Stock, the daughter of an immigrant from Ghana, famously celebrated her gold medal victory in the women’s 68kg freestyle wrestling by bouncing up and down wrapped in an American flag.
“That American flag around your shoulders looks pretty good,” a reporter asked Mensah-Stock. How does that feel, to represent your country like this?”
“It feels amazing,” she said. “I love representing the U.S. I freaking love living there. I love it, and I’m so happy I get to represent U-S-A!” according to the Deseret News.
The most heartbreaking immigrant athlete story of 2021 involved Sang Ho Baek, a pitcher at George Mason University, who died after complications from Tommy John surgery, as reported in The Athletic by Stephen J. Nesbitt. “This is a story of determination, grit and just awful tragedy,” wrote Ali Noorani of the National Immigration Forum.
“It was the end of April in 2014 when the family of four immigrated from Seoul [South Korea] to Salisbury [Maryland]. Youth baseball rosters were full,” writes Nesbitt. “The week he arrived in America, Seong Han Baek [Sang’s father] left his shift at the poultry factory each evening and bicycled the streets of Salisbury, searching for baseball fields. He spoke little English, but he had a map and purpose. Pedaling from stop sign to stop sign, he rehearsed a line. Can my son play on your team? His name is Sang. He is a pitcher.”
Immigrant Nobel Prize Winners: Three of the four American winners of the 2021 Nobel Prizes in physics, medicine and chemistry were immigrants to the United States. “Immigrants have been awarded 38%, or 40 of 104, of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics since 2000,” according to an analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP).
Ardem Patapoutian, who shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in medicine with David Julius, fled Lebanon’s civil war and traveled to Los Angeles as a teenager after being “captured and held by armed militants” in Lebanon. Ardem Patapoutian is an example of how immigration can open up new possibilities and allow individuals to reach their full potential. In an interview with the New York Times, Dr. Patapoutian said, “I fell in love with doing basic research. That changed the trajectory of my career. In Lebanon, I didn’t even know about scientists as a career.”
America is a better place because Ardem Patapoutian, Naiem Asadi, Paul Delacruz Megia, Linda Zhang, Diana Trujillo, Hana Kantor, Arturo Di Modica, Giannis Antetokounmpo and other immigrants were allowed to pursue the American Dream.