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Key Fact

Lee Ohanian on the Importance of Immigration

“We have been fortunate enough to attract some of the most creative and innovative talent from all around the world. Talent that’s also been entrepreneurial. To sustain the economy of growth, we need to have constant inflow of new ideas and people who are willing to take the risk to try and implement those ideas in a competitive marketplace.

“You know, we can point to people such as [Hungarian-born] Andy Grove, who helped start Intel here in the valley, who developed microchip technology; Sergey Brin, Stanford’s own Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google, who came from the Soviet Union; and, if any of you came here in a Tesla, we have Elon Musk, who immigrated here from South Africa. And what’s interesting is that not only has this been very good for us, I think there’s a reason why these enormously talented people came to the United States. Because this is the place to be, where you can make ideas become not just reality but a remarkably big and important reality.”

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