Absolutely Fobulous

Ten years ago, it was unheard of for immigrants to ditch their highly-coveted US passports.  But now, as the US enforces tax collection overseas, many wealthy Chinese immigrants are following the footsteps of Eduardo Saverin, the Brazil-born Facebook investor, who renounced his US citizenship earlier this year.  Last year, 1,780 Americans renounced citizenship.  In 2006, the number was a mere 280.

US law requires citizens and permanent residents to pay taxes on income, even if you don’t live in the US.  For rich mainland Chinese who immigrated to the US but have since returned to their homeland, the weighty tax bill often causes sticker shock.

“I regret it to death, all of my friends regret it to death,” said Wu, a 31-year-old housewife, about choosing to get US citizenship. “I’m never going back.”

Wu, who is only willing to disclose her last name, was unaware of tax implications when she got her US citizenship after graduating from college in the US.  She now lives in China and hasn’t been back to the US in 10 years.

It’s interesting to consider what’s causing this trend of repatriation for US immigrants.  I think part of the story is that some wealthy immigrants were admittedly overly casual about taking out US citizenship, which was, as the South China Morning Post put it, “the ultimate status symbol in China.”  On the other hand, the trend also reflects the growing economic power of China, a powerful incentive for Chinese immigrants to return home.

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If you haven’t read Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas’ vulnerable and daring piece for the NY Times, you really must. Written with groundbreaking honesty, Vargas, an immigrant from the Philippines, “comes out” through a piece in the international newspaper about his undocumented status.  For me and Emily, the article moved us deeply.  While we’re grateful that we’re not undocumented, Vargas’ story was one we related with.  It’s a story of resilience, fear, courage, loneliness and adaptability—one that every immigrant faces.

I loved how Vargas poignantly captures the immigrant experience of adapting to survive in a frighteningly unfamiliar country.  His story sums up why fobs are strong, adaptable visionaries.  Vargas’ parents sent him here in the hopes of a better life; like many immigrants, his journey was one driven by a vision for something better, despite inevitable and seemingly indomitable hurdles.  Emily and I have had many impassioned discussions about what we call “fob hunger.”  It’s the drive for something more, whether it’s for ourselves or for our children, that moves us out of our comfort zones, out of our home countries.

Amy Chua a.k.a. Tiger Mother puts it really well as she tells of a time when she reprimands her daughters for making fun of someone’s accent.  “Do you know what a foreign accent is?  It’s a sign of bravery,” she writes in her book.  “Those are people who crossed an ocean to come to this country.  My parents had accents — I had an accent.”

I don’t know what Vargas’ public confession will bring.  Will he get deported?  Will he, after 18 years, finally get to see his mother?  (His mom couldn’t get a visa to join him in the US, and he couldn’t visit her since he didn’t have a passport.)  Will his story bring new energy to the DREAM Act?  The DREAM Act would grant legal status to undocumented young people who, like Vargas, came to the US as kids and now want to attend college or join the military.  The bill failed to pass in December 2010.

I’m not saying that Vargas and his family are not without fault.  I recognize that their actions were illegal, and that Vargas lied to countless friends, coworkers and employers.  It’s a powerful paradox, that Vargas, a former Washington Post reporter, whose duty is to serve as watchdog for the people and ferret out the truth, has spent his life hiding the truth about himself.

“In April 2008, I was part of a Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings a year earlier. Lolo died a year earlier, so it was Lola who called me the day of the announcement. The first thing she said was, ‘Anong mangyayari kung malaman ng mga tao?’

What will happen if people find out?

I couldn’t say anything. After we got off the phone, I rushed to the bathroom on the fourth floor of the newsroom, sat down on the toilet and cried.”

Immigrants often endure deep emotional, and sometimes ethical, struggles.  I have asked myself, “Should I stay in the US while my family is all in Asia?”, “Should I tell my employer about my visa status, even though I know it will negatively affect my chances of getting hired?”

But one thing I know, and which Vargas’ piece reinforced, is that fobs fight on.  We adapt, we’re visionaries, and we’re survivors.  My friend once told me that if he were to start a company, he’d prefer to hire immigrants because we’re hungry to succeed.  I completely agree.  Vargas wrote this piece to give reprieve to his confused identity and conflicted conscience, but he’s shown that even in his most vulnerable state, he continues to face his fears.

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OK, so I will admit that Li Ning’s logo kinda looks like a fake Nike swoosh.  But this Chinese shoe company is hoping to make genuine waves here in the US.  For any fob who has ever been interrogated by a customs official at an airport (cue AbFob girls raising their hands), Li Ning’s commercial below will be particularly cute and funny. The humorous low budget ad is apparently a take on real events, when a shipment of F2s that got stuck in US customs because the shoes, which are made almost entirely of rubber-like foam material, didn’t look real.

Li Ning’s trying hard to break into the lucrative US market, with NBA star Baron Davis modeling their shoes (check out Baron’s signature shoe on the left).  What do you think — will the Chinese sports brand make it here?

(Thanks, Hubie!)

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I think we’ve got a soft spot for fobby shoe gurus.  Check out one of our early Fobby Heartthrobs of the month, Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com!

For kids of undocumented immigrants, being born in the US might not mean automatic citizenship.  Conservative state lawmakers have outlined plans to end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants.

Some say it’s crazy talk — particularly since the 14th Amendment of the Constitution explicitly states that citizenship is a right granted to anyone born on US soil.  That’ll make the bill pretty hard to pass, but the NY Times calls the issue “the next immigration battle.”

The bill has stirred an uproar, with some blaming birthright citizenship for the country’s influx of undocumented immigrants, and others saying that the bill will create a “modern-day caste system.”

But my all-time favorite quote is from Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican state representative from Pennsylvania.

“We want to bring an end to the illegal alien invasion that is having such a negative impact on our states.”

Did you hear that, people?!  Aliens are invading!

But really, beyond all the extraterrestrial talk, the debate is actually pretty thought-provoking for me personally.  I was born in England, but the Brits made it really hard for kids of immigrants to get citizenship and so I’m still from the motherland, Hong Kong.  I wonder if my life would have been any different if I were of British citizenship…

Read the heated back and forth among NY Times readers here.

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Immigration issues always gets Emily, Amy and I talking.  Read about green cards for international students, the startup visa for fobby entrepreneurs, and my thoughts on Arizona’s anti-fob laws.

Some people are deathly afraid of foreigners stealing jobs from Americans, but immigrant small business owners and tech entrepreneurs are actually creating plenty of jobs in the US.  According to TechCrunch, 52 percent of startups have co-founders or founders who are immigrants. The impressive list includes Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder; Andrew Grove, the co-founder of Intel; Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!, and more. As you can see, we might be losing out on some brilliant minds by impeding the startup visa legislation, which allows foreign-born entrepreneurs to reside in the US.  Further, we might even be shrinking the potential pool of new jobs.

This kickstarter project shines a light on the many hurdles immigrant tech entrepreneurs face to stay in the country to build their dream companies, which, if successful, would lead to more jobs for everyone. There are about eight days left on the clock and this immigrant kickstarter project has reached a little over half their quota of $2,000. Therefore, in the name of fobulousity, I’m going to donate a few of my dollars!

To find out more about our passion for immigration, read our coverage of the startup visa, how a job innovation expert suggested giving greencards to foreign students to boost job creation, and how looking like a fob can get you deported in Arizona.

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Wow, I mean I knew living in America was a privilege, but apparently 15 million other fobs heartily agree and want “in” as well. According to the Wall Street Journal, this year saw a record number of foreigners applying for the greencard lottery, an immigration lucky draw for those hoping to attain permanent resident status here in the US. That’s 25 percent up from last year’s drawing.

Funny, I was actually talking about this with someone on Saturday night at our AA +A Bloggers’ Mixer, which Suzie and I organized. Even though the phrase, “America is the land of opportunities,” is trite and all, it still rings true for us and the immigrant hopefuls. To me, it’s a country in which an individual can succeed through hard work and merit, which isn’t really the case in countries like Japan, where hierarchy is still very much deeply rooted in society.

I can go on about the reasons why I love living here, but I want to hear from you — do you consider yourself lucky that you’re living in the US and what do you love about it?

For more on immigration, read about Arizona deporting fobs,a young guy putting on an old man’s mask to enter Canada illegally, the startup visa for entrepreneurial fobs, and giving greencards to international students to amp up innovation.

Beware the next time you sit next to a suspicious-looking elderly Caucasian man on the airplane — it could be a young Asian dude. Recently, an unidentified Hong Kong man boarded an Air Canada flight AC018 bound for Vancouver from Hong Kong, disguised in an old-man mask and carrying a boarding pass of a U.S. citizen born in 1955.

Unfortunately, suspicion arose around the fact that his hands looked surprisingly young.  Later during the flight, he was seen going to the bathroom and emerging as an Asian male in his early 20s.   Border Services agents took him into custody when the plane landed in Vancouver. It is unknown what his motivations were but he definitely took the creative approach to illegal immigration.

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(Thanks, Rich!)

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What caught my eye in Friedman’s “Start-Ups as Graduation Gifts” op-ed piece last week was a quote by one of the country’s top experts on innovation, Robert Litan. He is the Vice President of Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation. Litan gave a number of suggestions that he thinks would help inject more innovation into the economy; there was one in particular that stood out to me:

“Litan said he’d staple a green card to the diploma of every foreign student who graduates from a U.S. university and push for a new meaningful entrepreneurs visa (the current one, the EB-5, requires $1 million of capital that few foreign entrepreneurs have). It would grant temporary residence to any foreigner who comes here to establish a company and permanent residency if that company generates a certain level of new full-time jobs and revenues.”

Litan makes a really bold statement, but it’s a plan that makes a lot of sense. Foreign-born entrepreneurs have been a constant contributor to the economy, co-founding many of the nation’s biggest companies. Even Forever 21–every American girl’s one-stop shop for fashion–was started by a Korean immigrant couple who opened their first store in the K-town of Los Angeles. There is a movement that’s pushing for a less restrictive startup visa for entrepreneurs who are non-US citizens, but since the Obama administration is not making the growth of start-ups a priority, there’s no telling how long it will take for the proposal to pass.

Read my piece on the startup visa to learn more.

(Thanks, Lu!)

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Three cheers for a step towards hair equality! The southern city of Xiamen in China is removing the ban on bald people applying for “one-year multiple-entry permits.” Apparently, Chinese authorities thought that bald people were shadier because “it was easier for bald people to disguise themselves” because of their wigs.

What’s with Asia and hair discrimination?

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Jessica Alba’s “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us!” is just one of the many awesome immigration-related lines in the upcoming movie “Machete.” The Robert Rodriguez-directed film features Machete, a wronged undocumented immigrant who was framed by a politician with an anti-immigrant agenda. Machete fights back with a vengeance, and the film promises to deliver lots of gore during the process.

I love the special dedication to Arizona–way to capitalize on one of the most heated political debates currently going on in the country!

(Thanks, Lu!)