young engineers who were relatively free of the old communist mindset and eager to become capitalists.

It was like helping Sisyphus push rocks up a hill. Phones didn’t work. Electricity went on and off. Corruption was rampant. The Russian mob was scary. This was the gun-toting Wild West of the post-perestroika era.

But those new entrepreneurs did not quit. They were so determined to succeed that they usually did. And so did I.

After nearly two years, I came home with a new perspective. For the first time, I had a taste of what it was like to be an immigrant and an entrepreneur. I knew that surge of confidence that comes with being a stranger in a strange land.

I felt like I could go anywhere in the world and make something happen.

My intrigue with immigrants only grew. I launched my own immigration law firm, Richard T. Herman & Associates, with one employee, me. Today, my Cleveland law firm has four attorneys and six support staffers. Between the ten of us, we represent six cultures and speak 13 languages.

I think my colleagues are brilliant. But the people who really astonish me are the immigrant clients we serve. Not a week goes by that I don’t meet a man or woman who came to this country with nothing but a dream. They’re confused and cold and struggling with the language--just like me in Moscow. But they are determined to make it work here.

A year later, they show up back at my office asking for help licensing a business. Soon, they’re enrolling the kids in college. Always, they talk about America as a land of opportunity.

I kept asking myself, What’s going on? Most native-born Americans don’t achieve like this, not so quickly. . Do immigrants know something we don’t? I began to collect studies on immigrants and their rates of success. I learned things like:

I began to collect studies on immigrants and their rates of success. I learned things like:

A few years ago, I met Robert Smith, a journalist who covers international cultures and immigration for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. We began to compare notes and found that we were witnessing the same phenomenon.

Cleveland no longer attracted immigrants like it once did. But those immigrants who did come were doing amazing things. Finding two and three jobs in a lousy economy, sending their kids to college, and starting businesses where no one else did.

Bob used to say to me, “Rich, immigrants have a secret. And if we ever find out what it is, we should write a book.”

Bob and I share something else in common. We both married into immigrant families. His wife, Chul-In Park, came from Korea as a child and is now a first violinist for the Cleveland Orchestra. My wife, Kimberly Chen, came with her family from Taiwan and is now a doctor.

Both our wives are ambitious not only in their professions but in the way they raise our children. We watched as our wives inoculated the kids with the immigrant genes of self-discipline, hard-work, and dedication to education at the earliest ages.

Both in our personal and professional lives, Bob and I saw the connection between an immigrant background and a spirit of striving.

We agreed that too much of the civic discussion focused upon illegal immigration and the problems with immigrants. Few were talking about legal immigrants, their remarkable achievements, and how they were changing America. Our resolve to write this book intensified as the recession worsened and the country increasingly seemed lost.

The studies were beginning to flow from the think tanks on immigrant contributions to the New Economy and urban development. But we wanted to go behind the studies, to meet some of these new immigrants who were creating new technologies and new companies.

We decided to uncover their secrets. We decided to meet the men and women who were driving the New Economy and find out how they did it. What made them push so hard to achieve?

Our research took us from Boston’s Route 128 to California’s Silicon Valley, from tech clusters in Texas to depressed autoworker communities in the Midwest.

We met Desh Deshpande, the legendary Boston entrepreneur who built billion dollar companies, and Carmen Castillo, a student from Spain who basically started the high-tech consulting industry in her apartment. We peeked into the labs of Ric Fulop and Yet-Ming Chiang, immigrant entrepreneurs building a better electric car. And we sipped Turkish coffee and shared a limousine with Farouk Shami, a Palestinian immigrant whose company exports his BioSilk shampoo and other hair care products to over 50 countries.

What we discovered was not a secret but a culture: a culture of entrepreneurship. You could call it Immigrant, Inc.

We found that many of today’s immigrants arrive ready-made to perform in a knowledge-based, global economy. They’re often the best and brightest from back home, and they are certainly the strivers. They have the risk-taking personalities of entrepreneurs, and they dream big and work smart.

But the powerful message is this: their club is not exclusive. Today’s immigrants do not succeed by themselves. They work with the locals. They team up with American companies and with in-the-know American colleagues, and then they do something fantastic, like build a better solar panel or resurrect a neighborhood.

Anyone can join the culture because anyone can learn to think and act like an immigrant.

First of all, immigrant Americans are eager to share what they know. They are proud of their success and grateful to America. Secondly, it’s part of who we are. Our ancestors were the torchbearers of Immigrant, Inc., creating jobs, pushing the kids in school, and lifting the whole family toward something better.

We just forgot a lot of what they knew and learned.

The impact of the new immigrants--people who arrived after 1965--are undeniable. The implications for a business person, for a community, and for a nation are profound.

For a budding entrepreneur, the new immigrants offer success traits and trade secrets that can be studied and copied. For a struggling neighborhood or a Rust Belt city, they hold out hope for revival. For a nation resolved to be a leader in a global economy, they are America’s competitive advantage.

The new immigrants are exhibiting something very old and very American, a can-do spirit borne of the immigrant experience.

With the speed and fearlessness of a race car driver--let’s say Mario Andretti, an immigrant from Italy--the new immigrants are creating jobs now and designing the American jobs of the future. In the great race called the global economy, they are the nation’s competitive advantage.

With this book of stories, we’ll show you how.

Richard Herman
August 2009