A FULL PAGE ad in the New York Times this week by the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships lists this year’s recipients of the foundations fellows. The fellowships program seeks to highlight and further the enormous contributions of new Americans — immigrants and children of immigrants == to the economy and culture of the United States. All 30 of the fellow have impressive qualifications, but I naturally focused on the ones from Latin America:

Cesar Lopez Angel, who has an MD and a Ph.D from Stanford, was born in Mexico and came to the US when he was 4 years old. He’s a graduate of Harvard and conducts research on the influece of age on T-cell function.

Marisol Leon got her JD degree from Berkeley. She was born in Los Angeles to parents who migrated here from rural mexico. She got a BA from Yale and her MA in Urban Education from Layola Marymount University.

Karina Gonzalez-Herrea got her Ph.D. in biological and biomedical sciences at Harvard. She was born in Guatemala and came to the US as a refugee when she was 11 and successfully fought a government deportation effort.

Mario Giron-Abrego received an MA in archeology at Cal State-LA. He was born in Guatemala and transited Mexico to enter the S at age 14. He studied May glyphs in Belize and specializes in hieroglyphic decipherment of Maya texts.

Pablo Barrera got his MA in East Asian studies at Harvard. He was born in Mexico and came to Texas undocumented. He worked for 8 years to support his family before getting a BA from Penn and becoming a Fulbright Scholar in Korea specialties.

Impressive accomplishments by impressive people who no doubt will contribute greatly to this country and help make our society better. Yet, if it were up to Mitt Romney, all these people would have been sent back to where they come from long ago.