A record 125 foreign-born US citizens are billionaires living in the United States. They hail from 41 countries but became rich in America, according to Forbes.
Lebanese-born Armenian-American entrepreneur and philanthropist Noubar Afeyan has joined the likes of the world’s richest man Elon Musk, American investor and philanthropist George Soros, actor, businessman, former politician, and former professional bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger on the list.
Three of the 10 richest people in America (and the world) are immigrants, including the world’s wealthiest person: Elon Musk, 54, was born in South Africa and came to the US via Canada as a college student, and is now worth an estimated $393.1 billion. Google cofounder Sergey Brin, 51, is the second richest immigrant, with an estimated $139.7 billion fortune. Brin’s family moved to the US from Russia when he was 6-years-old to escape the anti-Semitism they faced in their home country.
America’s third richest immigrant, Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang, 62, was born in Taiwan and moved to Thailand as a child with his family. When Huang was nine-years-old, his parents sent him and his older brother to the U.S. to escape widespread social unrest in Thailand.
India is the birthplace of the most billionaire immigrants (12), followed by Israel (11) and Taiwan (11).
Flagship Pioneering founder and CEO Noubar Afeyan, 62, came to the US to study. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1962, to Armenian parents, he and his family fled the Lebanese Civil War to move to Montreal in 1975 before earning his Ph.D. in biochemical engineering at MIT in 1987 and putting down roots in Massachusetts, where he lives and where he cofounded and chairs Covid-19 vaccine maker Moderna.
“The immigrant mindset basically says, ‘I’m not owed anything, I’m not entitled to these things by birth, I’ve got to work for it and own making it better,’” Afeyan told Forbes. “The immigrant journey is often filled with adversity but the acquired resilience of taking that journey is an advantage if you choose to use it that way. The more expectant and demanding you become, the less immigrant you become and the more that advantage dissipates.”
This immigrant mentality is what has made America great, according to Afeyan. “I’ve seen a lot of different countries and cultures, and there really is no place like the U.S. as an ‘immigrant land,’” he says. “I think we need to do everything we can to protect it.”
