“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
From “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus – 1883
An advocate for Jewish refugees placed the poem above on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty in 1903. In it, Lazarus saw the statue as a symbol representing hope, refuge, and opportunity for those oppressed and displaced immigrants coming to America. For the millions who came here seeking a new life, the Great American Dream became reality for them and their children, as they integrated into our culture.
More recently, however, affluent, educated immigrants are entering America with their alien ideologies and cultures and with no economic incentive or need to seek after the Great American Dream. Often, they retain their home country’s disdain for things American. Their highly educated first-generation sons, and often daughters, maintain their parents’ foreign roots, travel to their homeland, and often gain part of their education abroad.
With little knowledge and no allegiance to our nation’s founding principles, some of the best and brightest of these first-generation, hybrid-Americans are now entering the U.S. political scene seeking to replace our Constitutional Republic, based on individual rights. They would fundamentally transform America into some ill-defined and oblique form of Marxist authoritarianism.
Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El-Sayed, and Hasan Piker are newcomers to American politics who fit into this new category of first-generation immigrants who would rather radically change our system than enjoy American prosperity through the successful melting-pot model.
Zohran Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda, in 1991. His parents were of Indian descent, and his father was a professor of African studies. His mother is a filmmaker.
Indians were a small minority in Uganda, but they controlled much of the Ugandan economy. The Mamdani family were members of the Twelvers Islamic sect, whose members include most of the inhabitants of Iran, Iraq, and Azerbaijan, about half of the Muslim population of Bahrain, and sizeable minorities in the Middle East. Mamdani was given the middle name of Kwame Nkrumah, a revolutionary and politician from Ghana in West Africa.
Uganda was a British protectorate from 1894 until its independence in 1962. The Ugandan government was embarrassed during the murderous reign of President Idi Amin when Israeli commandos rescued 250 Palestinian Jewish hostages at Entebbe Airport in 1976, where its captured Air France flight had sought refuge. The brother of Israeli President Netanyahu led that raid and was the only Israeli soldier killed during the rescue.
The family lived briefly in South Africa before moving to New York City when Mamdani was seven. He had a privileged childhood, attended Bronx High School of Science, and graduated from Bowdoin College with a major in African Studies. He joined the Democratic Socialists of America. Running as a Democrat, he became New York City’s first Islamic mayor in 2024. With Ugandan birth citizenship, Mamdani became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018.
Unlike Mamdani, Abdul El-Sayed was born in the Detroit suburb of Rochester Hills, Michigan, in 1984 to Egyptian-born parents who immigrated from Alexandria, Egypt. His father and stepmother, who raised him, are engineers. El-Sayed was educated at the University of Michigan, Oriel College, a constituent of the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, and Columbia University in New York City. He is also Muslim and a progressive member of the Democratic Party. El-Sayed’s father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, is a major contributor to Abdul’s political campaign. Tayeb is the leader of the Islamic Society of North America, the largest non-profit Muslim organization in America, which has alleged ties to extremists and unproven allegations of terrorism financing.
Abdul El-Sayed is running in Michigan as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate in the November midterms.
Hasan Piker was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1991, but grew up in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey. His father was a political scientist and economist who was prominent among Turkey’s political and business elite. His mother is an art and architectural historian who teaches at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. His uncle is a commentator and co-founder of The Young Turks, a left-leaning news network. Piker graduated from Rutgers University after moving to the U.S. from Turkey.
Piker is a Muslim and has been politically identified as a leftist, socialist, and Marxist. The Atlantic has characterized Piker as having a worldview leaning toward “broad sympathy for China, Cuba, Russia, and authoritarianism in general”.
Piker’s political commentary, with 3 million paid followers, has supported far-left political candidates Mamdani, El-Sayed, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier.
Each of these three first-generation Americans is well educated, very articulate, and born to well-educated, affluent parents; however, by promoting Marxist ideology, nothing in their backgrounds suggests an appreciation for America’s founding history. They and other young leftist Muslims with foreign parentage are leading the socialist attempt to take over the Democratic Party and ultimately eliminate the U.S. Constitution.
New immigrants allowed into the United States must come here to become part of the Great American Dream; not transform it into the cultures and countries they left.
Americans, take notice!
TW3
August 27, 2026
John Whitmore Jenkins
www.jenkins-speaks.com
john@jenkins-speaks.com
