Thank God for Migrants

Context: Global cooperation and migration have worked its ways in the quick development of the vaccine, despite the environment of global non-cooperation trumped by the U.S. in recent times.

Instance of Non-cooperation:

• Withdrawal from a global treatise by the U.S.
  • Threatening to withdraw from the World Trade Organisation and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
  • Withdrawal from Paris Agreement.
  • Terminating its relationship with World Health Organisation (WHO) in the middle of pandemic.
• Anti-immigration stance:S. signed over 400 executive orders restricting immigration in past 4 years.

Significance of collaboration furthered through migration:

• Epitome of global successes:
  • First-generation immigrants in the U.S. account for a quarter of all Nobel laureates and a quarter of all venture capitalists.
  • Research chairs in Canada are 35% foreign-born, against 20% population share.
• In development of vaccine:
  • First Covid vaccine approved by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the product of collaboration between Pfizer, and BioNTech, a German biotechnology company.
  • Charles Pfizer, a migrant from Germany to the U.S., founded Pfizer in 1849 while its current CEO, Albert Bourla, is a citizen of Greece.
  • Moderna's CEO Noubar Afeyan is from Lebanon, country embroiled in decades-long civil war. Moderna co-founder Derrick Rossi is a Canadian stem cell biologist, and its CEO Stéphane Bancel is French.
• Contribution of Indian Diaspora:
  • Nobel laureates: Har Gobind Khorana for medicine (1968); Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar for physics (1983); Venkatraman Ramakrishnan for chemistry (2009).
  • Heads of top U.S. companies: Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sundar Pichai (Alphabet), Indra Nooyi (PepsiCo), Ajay Banga (Mastercard).

Conclusion: To 'Make America Great Again', immigration, global cooperation and trade are historically imminent.