WhatsApp, Chobani, Immigrants

America is a nation of immigrants. If you are not a native American, either you or someone in your family earlier moved to the country from somewhere else. Putting aside the issue where the line must be drawn: legal, illegal or various technicalities, we know immigration is one of the key things that have made America unique.

Immigrants have created jobs and brought in revenues from overseas markets. Chobani, Greek-yogurt maker, founder Hamdi Ulukaya moved from Turkey to the US at age 22 and started the company by acquiring a closed down factory by Kraft, which laid off 55 employees then. Chobani has over 1,200 employees today.

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum moved from Ukraine to the US at age 16. WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook at $19 billion in February with 450 million users worldwide while its Chinese competitor, WeChat had 300 million. Unlike Chobani, the mobile messaging company had 55 employees.

While America is not perfect and needs to solve multiple serious issues such as widening income inequality, obesity, health care cost and budget deficit, it is unheard that immigrants have been such a success story in any other countries. And some of them have really created jobs.

Since Japan Radiation, Global Eco-System, Food

It was Mar. 11th, 2011 when the most powerful earthquake ever to hit Japan triggered a tsunami with waves that reached as high as 144 feet. But it is rarely an event in the past: about the Nuclear Nation from The New Yorker this week. China’s shocked that Japan’s nuclear plant was still leaking radioactive water.

No one knows how much impact the event would have had on the global eco-system and food poisoning. Some think Japan radiation might have been poisoning America:

“Vast amounts of sea stars are melting off the west coast of North America.

Killer whales are dying off the coast of British Columbia.

There is an epidemic of sea-lion deaths due to starvation along the California coastline…

Polar bears, seals and walruses along the Alaska coastline are suffering from fur loss and open sores.

Along the Pacific coast of Canada and the Alaska coastline, the population of sockeye salmon is at a historic low.

Something is causing fish all along the west coast of Canada to bleed from their gills, bellies and eyeballs.

Experts have found very high levels of cesium—137 in plankton living in the waters of Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the west coast, affecting the food chain in a process…”

The truth is that we don’t know what we are eating: either antibiotics, GMO or radiation poisoning.