Mary Skafidas on immigration
From American Immigrants and Their Stories | Andrew Tisch & Mary Skafidas | Talks at Google · · Talks at Google
“Well, I think we wanted to raise awareness of the issue. And we wanted to do it in a way that didn't alienate. I mean, right now there are sides in immigration. We didn't want to alienate either side. We really just wanted to remind people of what makes America great, and that we're all immigrants.”
On , Mary Skafidas, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations & Communications at APTARGROUP INC, spoke about immigration during American Immigrants and Their Stories | Andrew Tisch & Mary Skafidas | Talks at Google on Talks at Google.
About Mary Skafidas
Mary Skafidas, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations & Communications at Aptargroup, co-authored the book "Journeys: An American Story" with Andrew H. Tisch, published in 2019. In September 2019, she participated in two events to promote the book: a Talks at Google interview and a discussion at Cornell Law School. Skafidas stated that the book aimed to raise awareness about immigration "in a way that didn't alienate" either side of the political debate, and to remind people that "we're all immigrants." She described the book as a collection of 72 essays from a diverse group of contributors, including celebrities, business leaders, and undocumented immigrants, with blank pages at the end for readers to write their own family stories. During the events, Skafidas expressed concern about the reduction of refugee admissions to 30,000, noting that the number was over 100,000 in the late 1990s, and called this "not the way that we do things here." She also discussed the separation of children from their mothers at the U.S. border in 2018, stating that about 700 children had still not been reunited with their parents at the time of the talk. Skafidas argued that the U.S. needs immigrants for economic reasons, citing full employment and the reliance of programs like Medicare and Social Security on a broad working population. She described the U.S. as a "mosaic" rather than a melting pot, with a shared sense of ideology and opportunity as the "grout" that binds different groups together.