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SALT LAKE CITY -- For the first time, Salt Lake City and County leaders are encouraging the public to celebrate immigrants and refugees who have settled in Utah, as part of something they're calling "Welcome Week."
Italian-born Valter Nassi runs a five-star restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City. He says the area is treating him well.
"It is 18, 19 years I am here. I can tell you definitely that I love it," he says.
His start in America came in a New York hotel, but it wasn't until he came to Utah that he got into restaurants and found his calling.
"Everyday you are immersed in love," he says. "Why? Because of the sun, because of the beauty, because of the cleanness, because of the people!"
20 years later, and Valter's Osteria is a high-end Italian restaurant with dozens of pictures of famous patrons - everyone from Governor Herbert to Chuck Norris.
"America is spectacular," Nassi says, "but my America is Utah."
He isn't the only one to find home and success in the Beehive state. Statistics from the mayor's office show foreign-born families represent about $236 million in state and local taxes, and they start up more businesses than native-born citizens.
Filipino-born Eunice Jones-Lane says her parents knew she would have more opportunity here when they pushed her to accept a job in the United States more than 30 years ago.
"This [is the] chance of a lifetime," she told us. "I have to grab it."
Jones-Lane says she came from a very poor family and humble circumstances.
"I was born in a little village without electricity, without running water."
So when she left the Philippines, she says she didn't have much to bring with her.
"I just had a suitcase and 50 dollars when I came to America," Jones-Lane said.
Jones-Lane started off in Los Angeles, working her way up to a hotel sales job, then to Las Vegas, where she booked a thousand rooms a night. Eventually, she married and found herself in Utah, where the culture shock hit hard.
"From a big city to a big hotel…big big…all of a sudden I am in a smaller market," she said.
As small as Salt Lake City was compared to Las Vegas and L.A., Jones-Lane says she stuck out as the only Filipino around.
"Every time I went to [the] supermarket I would look for any Filipinos, any Asians! Nothing!" she said.
Now a high-end realtor with spots on Utah's hall of fame stretching back the last 20 years, Jones-Lane has spent the past two decades helping to build several Asian-Utah organizations and scholarship funds.
"This is how we are giving back," she says.
Both Jones-Lane and Nassi say they are trying to help bring more diversity to Utah, but when it really comes down to it, both believe we are not all that different. In fact, Nassi points out, at some point in time, we were all immigrants.
"And here you are," he says. "And here WE are!"
Welcoming Salt Lake kicked off on Monday and runs through Sunday, September 25.
