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A cabbie's daughter, eye surgeon
Who drives the cabs
The passenger is a historian who heads a center at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and rides cabs up and down the Eastern Corridor. The drivers are almost always immigrants or poor Americans, and they tell him the same thing: they love it here, and Americans are the greatest people on earth.
A familiar path
Many describe a similar path. They took a second job, bought a house, built up some money, and watched a child go to school and become a doctor. The driver from Nigeria added that this does not happen everywhere, a place where everyone accepts that someone whose parents came from another country can work their way up. Each of them believes in it because they have seen it.
What neighbors say
The historian's neighbors in Philadelphia, many of them West African, are good to him, and they see him as a hardworking, law-abiding person. They tell him the trouble with a lot of Americans is that they do not realize how rare that is.
Why do immigrants' children often climb higher?
A 2021 study in the American Economic Review by economist Ran Abramitzky and coauthors linked census records across more than a century and a half. It found that sons of immigrants from almost every sending country climbed higher on the income ladder than the sons of US-born fathers with similar incomes. The authors traced part of the gap to the places immigrant families settled and to the work they took. The study covered fathers and sons across the years 1880 to 1940 and beyond.
Why is the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia?
Benjamin Franklin founded the society in Philadelphia in 1743 to promote useful knowledge. It is the oldest learned society in the United States. Members over the years included George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson served as its president from 1797 to 1815.
How did African immigration to America take off?
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished national origins quotas and set preferences for family ties and skills. That opened a path for people from Africa, whose entry had been small under the old system. The Immigration Act of 1990 created the diversity visa program, which allots visas to countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. Many Nigerians have come through family and student channels as well as that lottery.
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