Winning: Only in America

Terracycle does most of its production during the spring months and almost nothing during the fall and winter. "It's very hard for us to keep the same labor force all the way through," Szaky explained. "We just couldn't succeed and grow." The company gets school kids involved collecting the soda bottles that become Terracyle's packaging.

And even though Terracyle provides jobs for Americans and puts a good, environmentally-friendly product on the market, because Szaky isn't an American citizen, there's always the chance that he could be sent back to Canada. Szaku only has a temporary visa that he must renew every few years, a process that involves endless paperwork and legal fees. "It's always a little tricky because you could get a letter back that said you can't stay," he said.

"America is the best country that exists, and especially for what I'm doing. But it's sort of funny. … Our factory's in the inner city, we're employing all of these people, and I think to myself that there is a chance that, you know, in a month, I could not be here."

Employing Americans

Stuart Anderson of the National Foundation for American Policy said the United States should make every effort to keep people "who are creating jobs" in the country. "They're looking for an opportunity to create wealth and innovation. If we don't let them stay and innovate here, they're gonna go to other countries and create jobs and wealth in those countries," he said. Anderson points out that according to a National Venture Capital Association study, each year publicly traded immigrant businesses contribute more than $500 billion and 220,000 jobs to the American economy and over 400,000 globally.

Anderson said most of the highly skilled immigrants come from "India and China, but you also see them coming from Taiwan and Korea and Israel."

Restaurant mogul Andrew Cherng employs 17,000 Americans, many fellow immigrants among them. Cherng, who was born in China, came to America to study in 1966. He met his wife, Peggy, at college, and after graduation, he got into the restaurant business. In 1973, he opened the Panda Inn, an upscale Chinese restaurant in Pasadena, Calif. Cherng said his original goal was "to survive and to have a place that we could all have a job." But it was more than a job.The Panda Inn would become an American empire.