Bob, that is a nice immigrant story. You and Voytek undoubtedly have the talent and ambition and maybe a few good breaks along the way, to have made good successes of your lives.
Not all people of immigrant status have so much talent, wisdom, or find the great breaks, IMO. Many repatriate back to their homelands in failure.
And, there is a resident population that is an underclass that is without a tradition of ambition, talent, education, etc. I think most immigrants that are highly motivated by definition of their very successes that they did have high qualities of entreprenuership, ambition, talent and perseverance have no sympathy or time for the underclass here that simply are a conditioned class of under achievement and shiftless despair. Such class breeds drugs and crime, etc. You undoubtedly left an underclass of similar social group qualities where you imigrated from. You guys are the cream of the crop, the ones that can tell your stories with pride. You can hearld the opportunities that you found and created. You have the right stuff.
But, what of the millions of underclass that are dragging the system down? Why do they exist to such an extent in the first place? What mistakes were made along the way that perpetuates a large class of people that don't see opportunity, don't have educations, have hopeless drug and economic dependency for generations? Don't tell me it is just some sort of origin of 'socialist' ideas born of our depression era and Roosevelt New Deal policies that have been handed down to modern day politicians and governance. Because, you also then need to look at the first waves of imigrants. Slaves!!! Then, look at the mid 1800s large scale immigrations, and the abject poverty, discrimination against Irish, Italians, various 'cans', the expoitations of the newest immigrants, and see that many of them only got out of their immigrant poverty status through collective corruption, criminality, and outlaw 'hustle', ultimately translated to political clout.
Speaking for 'some' of my immigrant family experience, though somewhat embarrassing to say, criminality and skirting the law was very much a part of survival in the 20s-50s.
Good on you gents to achieve immigrant successful lives. But, thre are many sides to that American tale...