According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, 25 percent of practicing physicians in this country are foreign-trained, with many of them working in the nation’s most vulnerable areas — places like my city and in rural America. Rural counties overwhelmingly voted for President Trump; with his election, they may now lose their health insurance, and their doctors.

What our country stands to lose by walls and bans, in talent, drive, creativity and entrepreneurship, is staggering, but the personal toll is greater. In 1980, my family arrived here full of hope, trading a future of war, fascism and oppression for one of peace, freedom and opportunity. My parents are secular progressives, dissidents who opposed Saddam Hussein’s increasingly murderous and autocratic regime. A future in Iraq might have included imprisonment or death at the hands of the government. It is through these everyday-grateful immigrant eyes that I first saw our country as a 4-year-old and still see it today.

As a young immigrant, I may have been scared, and my school lunches looked and smelled different (no one knew what hummus or falafel was back then), but I was embraced in the suburban Detroit community where I grew up as one of the few brown kids.

The ban, and other equally ignominious limitations to immigration that may be on their way, ignore the contributions of our immigrants. Perhaps these limitations are an effort to return us to a make-believe “Leave It to Beaver” past. Whatever the motivation, my family and millions just like us are intertwined in the fabric of America. My mom taught English to recent immigrants, while my dad worked for General Motors as an engineer for 31 years, designing custom alloys. Together, they instilled in me and my brother an ethic of social justice and service-oriented work while providing us with a better life. The American dream was our reality.

Today, people still want to come to America, as it remains the epitome of freedom and prosperity, the richest country that ever was, and blessed by tranquillity. Immigrants know that the laws here shelter diversity, protect rights and property, and provide the opportunity for economic prosperity. America is as great as ever. And as immigrants we understand it is our obligation to continue making it great for all of us, no matter where we came from.