A former Belvedere, California resident, Michael T. Jackson guides SFG Asset Advisors, a single-family investment firm serving the San Francisco area since 2001. Born in England and raised in Ireland during his early childhood, Michael T. Jackson came to the United States at age 11. He worked his way through higher education and has a strong appreciation of the hard work ethic of first-generation immigrants.

A recent study at Brigham Young University revealed that having immigrants in the classroom improved academic performance among all students. Taking data sourced through the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment, which spanned 41 countries, researchers found that immigrants in countries that are relatively homogenous perform 15 to 20 points lower than their native-born peers.

However, in countries with a foreign-born population of 15 percent or higher, this gap narrows to 10 points, and in countries where the population is more than 25 percent immigrants, the gap is only five points.

Another core finding was that each 1 percent increase in immigrants in a country correlates with a 1.2 percent increase in overall math performance. The conclusion of the researchers is that “current sociopolitical narratives” pointing to the negative impacts of immigrants are “erroneous and misleading.”