What If You Were An Immigrant?: Ben Huh at TEDxPortland

In this moving TEDxPortland Talk, Ben discusses what it means to be an immigrant and the importance around policy and awareness of who we are letting in and why.

Ben Huh is the founder and CEO of the Cheezburger Network. He's been credited with pioneering Internet culture as entertainment, crowd sourcing and mainstreaming Internet memes. His media company includes more than 50 online humor sites, receives 400 million page views monthly, has spawned two New York Times Best Sellers and inspired a TV series. He's a cofounder of Circa, an online journalism start-up reimagining the way we consume news. Huh holds a BSJ from Northwestern University and lives in Seattle with his wife, Emily.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

So, I'm not here to talk about something
that's funny.

I'm here to talk about something that's
really, really close to my heart.

In fact, it is so close I cannot escape
it.

It's because I came to this country as an
immigrant.

It's hard for some people to notice when
somebody's an immigrant.

I do things related to internet culture,
which is very American.

It is very internet-y.

You have to be in the zeitgeist.

It is a class of work that people who are
like me, do not do.

We run dry cleaners, grocery stores, nail
salons, 7-11's.

Maybe we get an H-1B visa and we work at
Microsoft.

But we do not go out and make
entertainment websites.

Because for that to occur, we must have a
connection

that is much more deeper than a career or
profession.

I must understand you, and your
background, and where you grew up.

But some how I ended up here.

And because I came here when I was 14, I

was able to understand what its like to be
a American, yet still be a immigrant.

If I came here when I was ten or maybe if I
was 21,

I may have missed that.

I may have been set in my ways as a

immigrant, or maybe I would've acted like
a second generation,

where I didn't remember where I came from.

But because I was 14, I remember, I
remember all these things.

I remember living in a one bedroom
apartment with my parents.

There was a mattress on the living room
floor.

My parents, I was an only child, my
parents gave me the

bedroom, and they slept out on the
mattress on the living room floor.

And I remember their horror.

And the shame on their face, when I
brought my friends home from school.

I remember that moment when I walked into
the door with the kids, and

my parents are like, "You didn't tell me
that you were gonna bring guests."

And that awkward moment when they were
trying to figure out

what to do with that mattress in the
living room floor.

And we had no place for my friends to sit.

Immigration is a very, very unfair trade.

I don't know if many of you have immigrant
parents, but they pay for everything.

They pay the costs, we the children reap
the benefits.

And as my parents like to joke, the
grandkids

will forget about it all, and they'll
become useless.

[LAUGH].

>> Probably because they spoil them but,
not my fault.

So, when I look at my immigration
experience.

I was 14, my parents brought me here.

We had relatives.

It isn't poverty.

Poverty is defined by the whole, by, by
the cold and the hunger of it all.

It is very Oliver Twist.

That is what I think of when I think about
poverty.

Many immigrants live in near, or in
poverty.

Many immigrants do not.

It is not a monolithic experience.

Yet many immigrants experience poverty in
its own way.

Yet the reason we believe in the immigrant
experience, is that the poverty is filled.

The lack of something and it, and it's...

And it is filled by dreams, it is filled
by hope.

So that when you are living in a one
bedroom,

when you can not pay the bills for your
phone...

We justify it by saying, there's a better
future for the next generation.

And the strangeness of it all, is that a
century ago,

immigration was very, very different.

A century ago immigration was defined by

something completely different than what
we experience today.

1912 steam ships, railroads.

No automobiles for people to criss cross
on

the high way, no internet, no access to
information.

The greatest suffering for immigrants was
caused by nature.

By the world that we live in, the physical
world itself.

Distance, illness, acts of God.

Being able to sail around the world to
reach America, was physically challenging.

Your ship could be ship wrecked.

You could run out of water.

You could die of thirst and disease, and
when you got into that train

to cross America, you had no idea of what
was on the other side.

But 100 years later, today, it is vastly
different.

The suffering immigration is caused by
man.

It is not nature.

For the most part, we have conquered
nature.

You can get on a plane right now, and in

12 hours be on the other side of the
planet.

Being served drinks and little cocktails
along the way.

Very different than a steam ship.

Today, the suffering of an immigrant is man
made by policy.

It is separation not distance.

It is, if I leave this country and I'm a
Canadian, let's

say, I may not be able to get back across
the border.

I may not be able to visit my friends.

Because what if they question my
immigration

status on the border and reject me?

This happens a lot more than what my
friends, Canadian friends like to admit.

It is bureaucracy.

People waiting 20 years to enter the
lottery to

receive a permit to migrate to the United
States.

Watching there relatives

and there nephews grow old and unable to
visit.

It is prejudice, it is reading about
yourself as

an immigrant in the papers, and knowing
that's not true.

It is easier to ship a box of bananas from
India, than

to reunite a child from there with her
parents in the United States.

The world has gotten small, though we have

erected barriers, to keep people
out.

Yet at the same time, if you ask everyone
in the United States, they

will almost certainly tell you, that this

country was built on immigrants and
immigration.

That we are all a nation of immigrants.

Yet for some reason, we are uncomfortable
with the idea of letting people in.

That while we recognize the value and have
erected a statue that says,

"Give me your tired, your poor, your
huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

We don't like to see the people outside
our boarders as people.

I'm not sure what drives this fear.

Most people aren't really afraid of me.

I post cat pictures on the internet.

[LAUGH].

>> Maybe it's because they believe that
there's

a finite number of jobs in the United
States.

That there 300 and something million

people and there's probably 150 million
jobs.

And if somebody takes my job, I'll never
get that job back.

Maybe we believe that the, that in order
for the economy to grow, that only

those people with skilled, intellectuals,
or laborers who

can do special things should be let in.

I came here as a 14 year old.

My only skill set, was annoying the shit
out of my parents.

[LAUGH].

>> Maybe,

and this starts to get a little bit more
uncomfortable....

Maybe we believe, that only a certain
people, that

look like me, should be let into this
country.

Maybe we believe, that only certain people
who come from countries

where we have historical immigration,
should be let into the country.

Strangely, our elected politicians do not
ask you what you believe in.

They set immigration policy, and we just
go along.

Immigration is usually debated in tight
political circles of people who are in

the know, who have experience, yet we all
claim to be descendents of immigrants.

Sadly, our view of immigration has always
been affected by race.

Chinese exclusion act, there's a reason
why almost every Asian

American that you see in the street has
been no, no before the 1960's.

That before the 1960s this country
outlawed people who looked like me.

I am Korean, by the way.

So, I don't take, really,
offense to that.

[LAUGH]
>> But, I'm kidding.

[LAUGH]

>> National Origins quota system.

Fancy words for saying we don't want

Eastern European immigrants back in the
1800s.

Arizona state bill 1070.

If you're brown, we stop you, and ask you
if you really belong here.

These are actual laws that this country
has passed

that is about immigration.

About keeping people out, and figuring out
who to let in.

Whatever label you put on them, whatever
fancy acronym you can put on them,

it doesn't hide the fact that we have
very, very

outdated views on immigration versus what
we actually believe in this room.

We don't wanna be racist, but somehow,

we keep letting our politicians pass these
bills.

And it turns out,

as I looked more and more into this, the
conclusion

that I drew, was not that immigration
itself is controversial.

In fact, one of the reasons why the United

States has a growing economy and a growing
population,

while the rest of the developed world has
a

birth rate that is declining and declining
to a point

where they're unable to sustain their own
social safety nets and tax base.

The reason this country continues to have
a population

that is thriving, that is diverse, is due
to immigration.

Most people, most generations who've been
in this country for more than three or

more generations no longer create babies
at

a rate that actually makes this economy
sustainable.

In fact, most of our population growth has
come from Hispanic migration.

If it weren't for them we'd have more
houses than you could fill people with,

more dollars and more retirees to
support,

that our working folks can actually
provide for.

The system is fragile.

Yet people wanna keep everybody else out,
without recognizing that the

system relies on immigration to continue
to grow and support itself.

So it led me to believe that it's

only certain kinds of people that it's
actually controversial.

Maybe it's not just race.

Maybe it has to do with origin.

Maybe it has to do with religion.

When I planned this talk with the Tedx
Portland folks,

immigration was kinda on the radar.

And if, and a week ago, two immigrants
det, detonated a bomb in Boston.

What was their race, what was their
religion?

Does it matter?

I don't know.

After coming to the United States, my father and
I worked as a janitor in office.

We were not skilled laborers.

There were plenty of Asians to go around.

We worked as a janitor.

And our suffering of working as an
immigrant making $2,000

a month as an entire family, was actually
made harder.

We were cleaning out trashcans.

The people who, in the office, that when
you

work late come in and empty out the trash.

That was us.

I remember collecting all the empty soda
cans that were in the trash.

It was, oh my god, it stunk to high
heaven.

But I remember putting that in a black
plastic bag

in the balcony of our, of our one bedroom
apartment.

And we had collected enough to like,
literally

I, we couldn't go out on the balcony
anymore.

And I remember trading that in.

It was like my allowance.

Empty soda cans.

We traded them in, and got $150. It was
amazing.

It was hard labor. I earned it.

I still remember the smell, that rotting soda.

It was $120 apparently.

The immigrant owners of the janitorial
business stiffed us.

A month of work, my mother and my father
and

myself, and all we had to show for was a
$120.

It's not that all immigrants are good.

I'm not saying that.

Some of us are good, some of us are bad.

In fact, we are probably more
of a reflection of the America

as it is today, than most people are
willing to admit.

But in some cases, in one generation,
between my parents and myself, we can go

from babies that were born in post-Korean

War, where they had no electricity, no
infrastructure.

My father graduated from middle school,
and didn't go back.

My mother has a high school degree.

We came to the United States, and I built
a internet technology business in Seattle.

I don't know if there's causation.

I don't know even if there's correlation.

I don't know
what drives that.

It feels random, but it happens over and
over again.

More than a third of all American

technology startups have at least one
immigrant cofounder.

I don't know why that is.

But what I wanna understand is, as the
number of people

who start to look at immigration rise as
we get closer to debating this bill.

They'll recognize that my story is not
unique.

They may also recognize, that there may be
more

terrorists in the immigration population
than they had recognized before.

That the good may outweigh the bad, that
we

do not actually know holistically who
these immigrants are.

That all these people, collectively, when
they show up on our borders,

we may not be able to judge the character

of these people by the passports that
they bring.

So then the question becomes, who do we
let in?

Somebody at dinner asked me last night, so
who do we let in?

What is the answer?

I don't know that it's important for me to

tell you my answer, because it doesn't
really matter.

At the end of the day I am one voter. One
naturalized American citizen.

But it's, it makes me...

We're missing an opportunity to have an

intelligent discussion about what we the
people want.

We are

We are letting other people, decide who we
let into this country.

This is the second time I've teared up at
the Tedx talk.

I don't know what's up with that.

[LAUGH]

>> Do not let this opportunity pass.

It doesn' matter whether you agree with me
or not.

It only matters that we actually talk
about who do we believe we should let in.

And that we tell people who are in the
office to

make these decisions and let them know,
that we believe in something.

That we will not let them make that
decision for us.

Thank you.