I'm the daughter of two Indian immigrant doctors, and I have an older sister and younger brother, and none of us have pursued medicine as a career. We're all over the artistic side of things.
By the time I was 16, I was someone to reckon with. I was so eager to repudiate any connection with any immigrant race, I would go above and beyond. I was desperate to belong to something. That was my drive as a teenager.
Immigrants play a huge role in the founding and value creation of today's tech companies. We wonder how much more value could be created if it were easier to get a work visa.
I'm a first-born child of a Chinese immigrant family, I grew up on the East Coast. And I have to admit, I did not grow up around technology.
So I've got mates I've known since I was five years old. Their children know my children. There's something really lovely about it. When you're an immigrant - my parents were immigrants, their brothers and sisters lived all over the world, Florida, Jamaica, some in Europe - it's a grounding thing. That community is critical.
Although my family is originally from Jamaica, I grew up in a diverse community in south London. As my parents were immigrants they made every effort to integrate and we used to go to a wonderful church where we befriended families from all over the world.
I think immigrants, when they're stressed, think that there's something wrong with America, when it's really just difficult to leave a country and all that you know.
We are all human beings, immigrant or non-immigrant. We all feel fear. We all love and become confused when we don't act as well as we would like to. We all get depressed and have feelings of uselessness. All of these things are true and have always been true.
What motivated me? My mother. My mother was an immigrant woman, a peasant woman, struggled all her life, worked in the garment center.
Countries around the world have their own immigration laws and methods of dealing with a recurring theme: desperate people searching for peace from volatile parts of the world. And nations everywhere thrive and prosper from the contributions of immigrants and the children of immigrants - including right here in the U.S.
