Immigrants too busy for self-pity

Published January 7, 2001 In Orlando Sentinel

By Charlie Reese

I watched a biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger recently and was reminded of how successful so many immigrants have become simply by setting goals, working hard, and saving and investing their money.

Schwarzenegger is the son of a police chief in a small Austrian town. As a teenager he discovered bodybuilding and set the goal of winning the Mister Universe contest. He said that he looked forward to every trip to the gym because he knew that each lift, each squat, each bench press was taking him closer toward his goal. He eventually achieved it.

Then he set another goal, to become a successful businessman, and he achieved that one, too, including earning a degree in business. Then he set the goal of becoming an actor, and he achieved that one. Today he's a multimillionaire.

A dear friend, Grand Master Y.K. Kim of Orlando, arrived not only dead broke but without knowing how to speak English. He had been asked to take over a tae-kwon-do school, which consisted of one heavy bag, and about 10 students. He would walk for miles at night, putting fliers under windshield wipers of parked cars, and then return to sleep on the floor of the dojo.

He won my heart one day when he asked my son to call the home of a young black boy who had stopped coming to classes and find out why. My son reported back that the boy's father had lost his job and that they no longer could afford the instruction.

"Call him back," Y. K. said. "Tell him to come anyway. I'm a tae-kwon-do man. I don't care about the money."

That was at a time when he didn't have enough money to rent a cheap room. But, like Schwarzenegger, he set goals, worked hard and achieved them, one by one. He went from a small school to a big school to a chain of schools. He not only learned English, but he has written several books and now does inspirational speaking. He has a nationwide business that helps other tae-kwon-do schools with their marketing and accounting.

You could write a ten-volume set of books about nothing but the stories of immigrants who have come to this country -- most often with no money, often with no language skills -- and who, through setting goals and working hard to achieve them, have become prosperous citizens.

That's perhaps why I am less of a compassionate conservative than our new president. It seems clear to me that all people can succeed, no matter how bad their circumstances, if they set goals and work hard to achieve those objectives. None of the immigrants whose success stories I know ever took a dime of welfare. They achieved their success the old-fashioned way: They earned it.

There are, of course, genuine cases of hard luck and misfortune. Most of the poor, however, did it to themselves. They weren't willing to work 18-hour days. They lacked the discipline to set goals and work to achieve those goals. They lacked the discipline to save their money and eventually to invest it. They never understood that, from day one, the promise of America never was success but merely the opportunity.

The immigrants I have known -- whether they are Cubans, Arabs, Hungarians, Italians, Vietnamese or Korean -- are patriotic as heck. They know, from their own personal experience, what America means. Those of us who were lucky enough to have been born here would do well to use them as role models.

And, yes, they faced prejudice, but they didn't let it stop them. Nor did they ever indulge in self-pity. They were too busy.