An evil man returned to the White House on January 20^th, primarily because he convinced 48% of voting Americans that immigrants are despicable and dangerous. As one-half of America cheers, the evil man orders the closing of our borders and deportation of our friends and neighbors to the same countries from which they had been driven out by ruthless tyrants or criminal gangs. This shameful transformation from America’s long-standing welcome hand to people seeking a better life takes me back 77 years, when my parents and I carried all we could in three suitcases and a bundle of blankets across another border. We, too, had escaped ruling despots.

Like most refugees, my mother, father and I came to America penniless, frightened, and with great expectations. Less than three years after the end of WWII, during which we lost twenty-five family members, the government of Czechoslovakia, was taken over by Kremlin-led Communists. Just like most terrorized refugees, my parents were faced with a choice: stay and face the loss of freedom, imprisonment, or even death—or flee. To a person fortunate enough to have been born in America, the choice may seem clear. But it isn’t. It takes an enormous amount of fortitude to leave behind one’s native land, material possessions, relatives, friends, language, and way of life to start from nothing in a strange land.

I spoke two words of English when we arrived in the summer of 1949. Three months later, I was the only immigrant in the eighth grade of Alexander Hamilton school in Morristown, New Jersey. Because the Nazis had not permitted me to attend school during the war, and since we had spent the past fifteen months in refugee camps, I had a total of two-and-a-half years of formal schooling, compared to my classmates’ eight or nine.

However, I don’t recall ever feeling sorry for myself, or even of considering myself inferior or inadequate. My father had spent more than five years fighting the Nazis, while my mother had suffered in a slave labor camp. After the war, they had a mere thirty months to recover our family’s properties and to enjoy freedom. When the Communists came, they gave up everything in order to accept America’s invitation to live in peace and to give their son, me, the opportunity to chase the proverbial American Dream. I could not disappoint them.

Fast-forwarding to recent years, nationalists and their cheering followers in the US and Europe have been on a warpath against immigrants and have worked to shut their nations’ doors to them. Here in our country, the evil man built his presidential campaign on the premise that we have too many of our own problems to be able to absorb thousands of refugees. The latter, he said, take jobs that should go to Americans.

My father did not take anyone’s job. Once the owner and CEO of a major Czech company, he began life here as a lowly pattern-cutter, a job no one wanted. My educated and sophisticated mother did not steal the job of a native when she started life in this country as a cleaning lady. Both took advantage of America’s generosity and liberality: when they retired, my dad was one of the top executives at the world’s largest sportswear firm and Mother was an associate scientist at an international pharmaceutical company.

I took no one’s job. I earned three degrees in engineering and, as an entrepreneur, I built companies that employed many people. As a venture capitalist, I helped others start and grow businesses that produced hundreds of jobs. I am not unique—not by any stretch. Immigrants are twice as likely as native-born to start new businesses. And 40% of Fortune 500 companies were formed by immigrants or their children.

The fact that immigrants are not a burden is not an exclusive American phenomenon. Everywhere they land, they pay more in taxes than they ever claim in benefits. They start new companies and thus create jobs for others. They enlarge the labor force and increase consumer demand. Those among them who are less educated and less skilled tend to work jobs that natives don’t want to take on, and their crime rate is less than half that of the native-born population.

I can only hope that things will change when those who have supported the evil man will begin to feel the effects of deportations and halted immigration: shrinking of the labor force resulting in decreases in tax revenue; less consumer demand leading to higher prices; inconvenience and distress due to vacancies in health care, home care, and hospitality. More importantly, I hope they will find compassion for those who are seeking a better future for their families in this land of opportunity.

In the meantime, what we really need is action from Congress. For the southern border, we need a sensible system for processing refugees applying for admission into the country, plus more border guards to enforce the law and many more judges to speed up the admission process. For more than eleven million undocumented people who live among us, there is no standardized process that leads to citizenship. This, too, must change through legislation. Unfortunately, with MAGA controlling both houses, such solutions to the so-called “immigration crisis” will have to wait until voters decide that mass deportations and border closings are indecent and unAmerican. I am somewhat optimistic because I am reminded of a comment by Winston Churchill: “Americans will always come to the right decision, after having tried everything else.”