Goizueta and his family fled communist Cuba in 1960 with only $40 and 100 shares of Coca-Cola stock. He had worked for Coca-Cola in Havana and landed a job with the company here, rising through the ranks to become its head in 1981.
Under Goizueta's 16 years of leadership, the value of Coca-Cola soared to $145 billion from $4 billion, an astounding 36-fold increase. Benefiting from this enormous creation of wealth, which was engineered by an immigrant CEO, were millions of native-born Americans who were stockholders, shareholders in mutual funds, or people employed directly or indirectly by Coca-Cola.
And they weren't the only beneficiaries of America's willingness to accept the Goizueta family into our society. Atlanta's Emory University and Agnes Scott College and other educational institutions endowed with Coca-Cola stock gained tremendously. That allowed them to provide scholarships to thousands of students. Charitable organizations and museums similarly benefited.
At the World Series we have seen other examples of people who are contributing to America after escaping Fidel Castro's regime: Florida Marlins' Livan Hernandez, winning pitcher in Game One, and Gloria Estefan, who sang the national anthem in Game Two.
One also can look at the work of people such as Costa Rican-born Franklin Chang-Diaz, who arrived in America as a teenager. He struggled through the first part of his senior year while taking classes taught in English. Yet by the end of the year, he had so excelled that he won a scholarship to the University of Connecticut and went on to earn a Ph.D. in physics. He later achieved his dream of becoming a NASA astronaut and became the first Hispanic American in space. Today he gives of his time encouraging children throughout the nation to learn science.
The achievement, wealth, and jobs created by immigrants such as these rarely are picked up in immigration statistics. A recent National Academy of Sciences report, however, found that immigrants return significant economic benefits to the country. Jim Smith, who headed the study, testified to Congress that ``due to the immigrants who arrived since 1980, total gross national product is about $200 billion higher each year.'' That means that recent immigrants will add approximately $2 trillion to the nation's GNP over the course of the '90s.
Not everyone needs to be famous or to create great wealth to make a contribution to America. My grandparents came to the United States from Lebanon about a century ago with virtually nothing in their pockets. They couldn't speak English. They faced many of the same challenges that immigrants face today. But they came, just as immigrants come today, to make a contribution. They wanted to live in a country that was free, that gave them opportunity. And they wanted their children to have more opportunities than they had.
America should remain the same kind of beacon of light that it was for my grandparents.
When Roberto Goizueta came to America, he did not know that he would become chairman and chief executive of Coca-Cola. Or that he would provide so much wealth and touch the lives of so many people in so many ways.
What makes America special is that he realized that it could happen,
that it might happen -- because this is America.
Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald