2025 Episodes
LISTEN Link, Details, Facts & Acts
Episode TWO - Dec. 18, 2025
First Generation Generates Prosperity
Frank & Rosa and their family give our community more than food -- or even taxes. What brought Anabel, the first-generation daughter, home to the family business after a career in banking?
And what does Anabel have in common with landscaper Manny, just starting out with dreams of his own?
ACT:
Get to know our immigrant neighbors and their families through their business ventures.
To connect to businesses in Yavapai County, visit the Hispanic Business Association (affiliated with the Prescott Valley Chamber of Commerce). [Non-Hispanic members and visitors welcome.]
Expand your horizons, if you like, by checking out Visualizing Immigrant Phoenix, which has an Immigrant Business page featuring entrepreneurs from around the world.
Other resources include:
The Arizona Persian Yellow Pages and the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Arizona.
Enjoy your conversations!
FACT ONE:
Immigrants contribute more to Social Security than they take out, according to studies from places like the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
As the US population ages, and has fewer children, immigrants have become crucial to keeping the whole system afloat. In 2022 alone, undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion into Social Security—and here's the kicker: they're paying into a program they're cannot access themselves. Legal immigrants, of course, also contribute -- and many of them never collect because they won't meet the minimum number of years of contribution to be eligible.
Social Security's own actuaries have calculated that when immigration goes up, the trust fund deficit goes down (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities).
Other sources:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/22/a-look-at-small-businesses-in-the-us/ (Pew Research Center)
https://crr.bc.edu/increasing-immigration-can-improve-the-finances-of-social-security/ (Center for Retirement Research, 2025)
FACT TWO:
In 2023, immigrants, who make up about 13 percent of the population, comprised over 16 percent of the state’s workforce, 20 percent of entrepreneurs and earned more than 2 billion in business income. (America’s Voice 2024)
https://americasvoice.org/uncategorized/reality-check-immigrants-are-essential-to-arizona/
Episode ONE - November 18, 2025
Dora Rodriguez
Across the Border & Beyond
Dora braved the desert three times in her drive to escape civil war in El Salvador. She reached the US in 1980, one of 13 survivors found near death in the Sonoran Desert. The other half of her group did not make it.
Dora's interview moved us with her personal journey. She also inspired us with the more than 40 years she has spent saving lives along the border and working to help her new country live up to its promise.
Dora's full story is detailed in Dora: A Daughter Of An Unforgiving Terrain. Learn more at DoraRodriguez.org. The non-profit organization she founded, which provides humanitarian aid to asylum seekers, is Salvavision.
FACT ONE:
More than 13% of Arizona residents are foreign-born, making up about 16% of Arizona's labor force. Immigrants support the state's economy in many ways.
[They account for 22.6% of entrepreneurs, 19.6% of STEM workers, and 29.3% of the agriculture workers in the state.]
Source: American Immigration Council
FACT TWO:
On July 30th, 1975, university students protesting repression and occupation of the university by armed forces were attacked by Salvadorian government troops. Estimates are that at least 100 people, including students, teachers and staff, were killed and many more injured.
Sources:
ACT:
When you meet someone you think may have immigrated to the US from another country, start by learning their name.