August 13, 2026 — The Great Blind Spot: Immigrants
Check out this week’s blog post by IP attorney, author Timothy Trainer, host of the podcast and video show Tim’s Travails • Follow Tim on Substack
Image: britannica.com/topic/Project-Paperclip
Today, immigrants are one of our greatest targets for blame and our great blind spot. Immigrants live among us, work among us, and do a lot of jobs that native born individuals don’t want to do. They are everywhere. Given the political rhetoric and how that rhetoric has been embraced by many, many would like to deport them, many overlook them, many sneer at them, and many have no clue that our current hypocrisy toward the issue of immigrants, legal or otherwise, makes little sense.
Indeed, the U.S. has embraced foreigners if they contribute the “right” way. We’ve overlooked and ignored some egregious wartime activity of enemies in order to benefit from what they have to offer. As World War II ended, the U.S. Government sponsored World War II immigration of German and Austrian scientists and technicians to exploit their knowledge for military and industrial purposes as part of Project Paperclip: Operation Paperclip | Definition, History, & World War II | Britannica.
Perhaps the most famous and well-known rocket scientist brought to the U.S. was Wernher von Braun. Wernher von Braun and the Nazis | American Experience | Official Site | PBS. He was a member of the Nazi Party and an SS officer. He and his team of rocket scientists developed the V-2 rocket used to target London, Paris and Antwerp. He and his team were part of the German war machine that killed thousands of people. Nevertheless, at the end of the war, the U.S. overlooked his war time activity in support of Hitler’s Germany to bring him and his team of over a hundred to the U.S. and employed them. Wernher von Braun – NASA. He contributed to the U.S. space program by working for both the U.S. Army and NASA.
Today, if one listens only to the political drivel from the Administration there are no positive contributors among the tens of thousands of immigrants coming to the U.S. The State Department reported days ago that it has revoked 175,000 visas during this Administration’s time in office. State Department Revokes More Than 175,000 Visas – United States Department of State.
With the anti-immigrant sentiment that pervades, it’s easy to ignore or be blind to the contributions many have made. The notion that immigrants from countries that Trump has identified as the worst type of place to be from could deliver exceptional individuals may be difficult to accept, but it happens.
Nigerian born Philip Emeagwali came to the U.S. to study computer science and mathematics. In 1989, emulating the bees’ honeycomb construction, this Nigerian born immigrant used 65,000 processors to invent the world’s fastest computer that performed computations at a rate of 3.1 billion calculations per second. He was awarded the Gordon Bell Prize – the Nobel Prize for computation. Dr. Philip Emeagwali: Inventor of the World’s Fastest Computer — Famous Black Inventors.
Fazlur Rahman Khan was Muslim and from Bangladesh. He specialized in building skyscrapers and pioneered a structural system of frame tubes and was considered by some in his profession as the Einstein of structural engineering. The Muslims who shaped America – from brain surgeons to rappers | Islam | The Guardian.
Pakistan born Dr. Ayub Khan Ommaya developed a device to deliver drugs directly to the brain. Because of its groundbreaking technology, it changed treatment of brain tumors and enabled medical professionals to administer medication with precision. The device Dr. Ommaya created is now known as the Ommaya reservoir. Dr Ayub Khan Ommaya (1930–2008): The eventful life of a revolutionary neurosurgeon – PMC.
Of course, not all those who are born abroad and come (or brought) to the U.S. contribute like those above. It’s well-documented that Melania Trump, the “First Lady” (Slovenia, Yugoslavia at that time of her birth) was a model. Where is Melania Trump from? | Britannica.
As the political re-election season heats up in the coming weeks, the current anti-immigration campaign is likely to be an important talking point for the GOP. The one talking point that won’t be heard is about Congress’s own inability to do the hard work of reforming the U.S. immigration legal structure, though they might provide funds for immigration judges to deal with today’s unworkable framework. While there will always be some bad individuals crossing the border and entering the U.S., the scorecard on how immigrants contribute appears to favor the country trying to keep them out.
There will be little or nothing said about the nearly $100 billion that undocumented immigrant workers paid in federal, state and local taxes. While politicians will accuse undocumented workers of denying citizens services, they won’t clarify the point that these immigrants’ payroll taxes fund Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance which they are barred from accessing. Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants – ITEP.
As the Administration works to deny entry, prevent entry, deport people and revoke visas, the question must be asked: As we attempt to protect our borders to keep the criminal elements out, have we inflicted another wound on ourselves. Have we discouraged a generation of great contributors from coming to our shores and injecting new ideas and thoughts that are necessary to refresh and encourage progress?
About the Timothy Trainer: Writing books is a passion for attorney Timothy Trainer, who for more than three decades focused on intellectual property issues in his day job. He has worked in government agencies and in the private sector, and his assignments have taken him to 60 countries around the world.
Tim found time to pen a few non-fiction tomes, including his first book, Customs Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights;the 15th edition was published in 2022. Thomson Reuters’ Aspatore Books published Tim’s next title in 2015, Potato Chips to Computer Chips: The War on Fake Stuff.
Fiction was a genre he always wanted to try. In 2019, Pendulum Over the Pacific, was released by Joshua Tree Publishing. “This political intrigue story is set in Tokyo and Washington, D.C., and centers on trade tensions between the U.S. and Japan in the late 1980s,” Tim explains.
In 2023, his first series hit bookstores: The China Connection.
In 2025, he published the sequel, The China Factor, which ranked #63 on the Amazon Asian Literature list in May.
