Business Insider India has updated its Privacy and Cookie policy. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the better experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we\'ll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on the Business Insider India website. However, you can change your cookie setting at any time by clicking on our Cookie Policy at any time. You can also see our Privacy Policy.
Through a combination of ambition and hard work, many immigrants living in the US, such as Elon Musk (Tesla), Sergey Brin (Google), and Pierre Omidyar (eBay) have risen to be some of the richest people in the world.
Moving to a new country is a big risk. Beyond the obvious barriers of distance, language, and culture, new residents often face prejudice and worse when moving to a new country simply to survive - nevermind thrive. Who will be there to rescue you if you fail in a foreign land? What kind of safety net will you have?
Through a combination of ambition, skill, and luck (and, in several cases, a knack for computer science), many American immigrants have risen to the highest and most exclusive echelon of society.
Here are 15 immigrants who struck it rich after the big move:
The French Canadian pop star may not in the financial stratosphere as some of the tech giants on this list, the Las Vegas mainstay known for "My Heart Will Go On" has done pretty well for herself.
2. Bharat Desai
Net Worth: $1.2 Billion
Country of Origin: Kenya
Born in Kenya and raised in India, Desai came to the US to work for Tata Consultancy Services. He and his wife, Neerja Sethi, then started their own consulting firm, Syntel, in their suburban Detroit apartment with just $2,000.
3. Eren Ozmen
Net Worth: $1.46 billion
Country of Origin: Turkey
This self-made woman emigrated from her native Turkey to pursue an advanced degree at the University of Nevada. Since then, she has amassed a fortune from owning and running Sierra Nevada Corp., a private defense and aerospace company whose clients range from NASA to the U.S. Air Force, with her husband.
4. Kavitark Ram Shriram
Net Worth: $2.1 billion
Country of Origin: India
A former executive at the pioneering web browser Netscape, Shriram also gained wealth from his early investment in Google. The name of his venture capital company, Sherpalo, celebrates both his birthplace and his adopted home by combining the words "sherpa," and "Palo Alto."
5. Jorge Perez
Net Worth: $3 billion
Country of Origin: Argentina
Friend of Donald Trump (but fierce critic of the president's proposed border wall), Perez lived in both his native Argentina and in Colombia before moving permanently to Miami. The real estate mogul is head of Related Group of Florida, which has built both affordable and luxury housing units in the United States, as well as in Mexico and South America.
6. Do Won and Jin Sook Chang
Net Worth: $3.2 billion
Country of Origin: South Korea
Do you and your spouse have $11,000 and highs school educations? That's all the Changs had when they started the popular fast-fashion chain Forever 21 after arriving in Los Angeles more than 30 years ago. Despite the occasional copyright lawsuit, the fashion industry has treated them very well.
7. Peggy and Andrew Cherng
Net Worth: $3.3 billion
Country of Origin: Burma (Peggy), China (Andrew)
Before it was a staple at every shopping mall in the country, Panda Express was a small California Chinese restaurant that Andrew ran with his father. When offered a location inside a Los Angeles area mall, Peggy (an engineer who has worked at 3M and developed software for the U.S. Navy) and Andrew seized the opportunity. Thirty years and three billion dollars later, Panda Express is perhaps the most successful Chinese restaurant on the planet.
The world's most famous hedge fund manager fled from Hungary to England during the Cold War. After ultimately settling in New York, Soros might be just as well known for his philanthropy and support for liberal political causes.
12. Jan Koum
Net Worth: $9.1 billion
Country of Origin: Ukraine (then part of the USSR)
The co-founder of the world's most popular texting app, WhatsApp, and his mother left Ukraine shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. They came to California, where he swept floors to make ends meet and then enrolled, and subsequently dropped out of San Jose State University. According to Forbes, when Facebook bought WhatsApp for $22 billion, Koum signed the deal on the door of the building where he used to get food stamps.
Musk, a co-founder of PayPal, is known as something of a 21st-century Renaissance man. The Pretoria-born tech mogul has helped push electric cars, commercial space travel, and artificial intelligence further into the public consciousness.
With plans for rapid-transit tubes connecting cities and underground honeycomb-like structures to eliminate traffic, we can expect to continue to hear his name for some time to come.
15. Sergey Brin
Net Worth: $47.6 billion
Country of origin: Russia (then USSR)
Easily America’s richest immigrant, Brin and his parents fled the Soviet Union when he was only 6 years old. At Stanford, he and fellow student Larry Page developed what later became Google. He now enjoys a cushy gig as the president of the search giant's parent company, Alphabet, Inc. (but his old resume is still available for those interested).
