6 Immigrant Stories That Will Make You Believe In The American Dream Again

Monte Burke, Forbes, Oct. 25, 2016- "Precisely 42 slots on The Forbes 400 belong to naturalized citizens who immigrated to America. That’s 10.5% of the list, a huge overperformance considering that naturalized citizens make up only 6% of the U.S. population. (If you add noncitizens, about 13% of American residents are foreign born, but there is also a slew of noncitizen billionaires, such as Chobani Yogurt king Hamdi Ulukaya and WeWork founder Adam Neumann, who by dint of their passports don’t qualify for the 400 but still live, and create jobs, in the U.S.)

For all the political bombast about immigrants being an economic drain or a security threat, the pace of economic hypersuccess among immigrants is increasing. Go back ten years and the number of immigrants on The Forbes 400 was 35. Twenty years ago it was 26 and 30 years ago 20. Not only is the American Dream thriving, as measured by the yardstick of entrepreneurial success, The Forbes 400, but it’s also never been stronger. The combined net worth of those 42 immigrant fortunes is $248 billion."