New People, New Ideas Made Us Great

The American mosaic is a history of continually adding new people and new ideas. Some of America’s greatest scientists and inventors - Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Charles Steinmetz, Enrico Fermi - were immigrants.

The inventor of artificial skin, Ioannis V. Yannas, came to America to perfect his invention, enrich our nation and share his knowledge. So too did Amar Bose, whose sound systems grace our cars and our homes.

You don’t have to be a Yankee to have Yankee ingenuity, the foundation of our national character and source of jobs. Often those with Yankee ingenuity are only adopted Yankees.

Unfortunately, in the current national debate, both parts of this equation are getting lost.

Immigrants are not just a burden on the national treasury. They often contribute to it and have made America what it is, culturally and materially.

More than 10 percent of the National Inventors Hall of Fame honorees are naturalized citizens.

Right now, the selection jury for the annual Lemelson-MIT Prize, the world’s largest award honoring American invention, is deciding which candidate will be awarded a half-million-dollar prize for distinguished careers in invention.

Among the nominees are naturalized citizens from Russia, Austria, the West Bank and Vietnam. Ideas and inventions don’t just pop up. They require investments in research and development as well as the education of people.

Cutting government research and development spending by one-third, as proposed in the budget bill working its way through Congress, and cutting off all aid to immigrants - legal and illegal - are simply marks of a society that has forgotten what made it great.

They are marks of a society that is not being true to its own history.

While we are a nation of many peoples, we all share a special set of values that celebrate and reward the risk-takers, the creators, the innovators and the entrepreneurs. After all, America itself is an invention.

But these values are not built into human genes. They have to be learned, both by those who are born in America and those who have come to America.

An environment and culture that invites the spirit of inquiry, discovery and experimentation has to be built.

This is not just a national character-building exercise: Ingenuity is America’s best job program. MIT students and faculty, for instance, have launched more than 640 companies in Massachusetts alone, employing thousands based on their inventions.

They have benefited from an infrastructure that rewards innovation and that must be shared with all our citizens.

This past October, two talented young inventors from MIT Tom Massie of Kentucky and James McLurkin of Long Island - shared their excitement and the rewards of inventing with 60 schoolchildren from the Patricia Robert Harris Middle School and the Ormond Stone Middle School in Washington, D.C.

The occasion was the Living Inventors Symposium at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian.

More than 30 percent of the students attending were the children of immigrants. One of them may be the Einstein of tomorrow.

Massie and McLurkin themselves are veterans of a program designed to recognize and reward ingenuity and innovation - the Lemelson-MIT Prize Program.

The Smithsonian program was also made possible by funding from the Lemelson Foundation.

Both programs are dedicated to preserving and nurturing the underlying spirit that has made this nation so inventive that the best and the brightest often come to America to set down their roots and let their creativity bloom.

These activities do not happen automatically.

They have to be nurtured and funded by private citizens such as the Lemelsons, but they also have to be nurtured and funded by government.

The real issue is not the size of the government deficit.

It’s too easy to cut those programs that are politically easiest to cut - future funding for research & development and aid for those who, often starting with nothing, quickly become contributors.

But are we as a society making the investments in the future - investments in education, investments in R&D, investments in infrastructure, investments in plants and equipment - that are necessary to the American dream for both those born in America and those who come to America?

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