Did the single chart on Billboard?

The individual track did not chart, but its parent album, The Hamilton Mixtape, debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 (week of December 24 2016).

Which award did the video win?

It received MTV’s inaugural Best Fight Against the System award at the 2017 VMAs.

Where were the proceeds from the video directed?

Proceeds supported the Immigrants: We Get the Job Done Coalition, a network of immigrant-rights nonprofits.

What languages are featured?

English, Spanish, and South-Asian street slang weave through the verses.

Has the song been recognized in protest-song lists?

Yes—Teen Vogue’s 2020 list of historic protest songs highlighted it for spotlighting immigrant struggles.

Immigrants Lyrics – The Hamilton Mixtape

Immigrants Lyrics

K'naan (Ft. Residente, Riz Ahmed & Snow Tha Product)

(Immigrants: We Get the Job Done)

[Intro: J. Period]
You know, and it gets into this whole issue of border security, you know,
who's gonna say that the borders are secure?
We've got the House and the Senate debating this issue, and it's...
It's really astonishing that in a country founded by immigrants,
"immigrant" has somehow become a bad word. So the debate rages on and we continue....

[Intro: "Yorktown" sample]
[Hercules Mulligan]
And just like that, it’s over, we tend to our wounded, we count our dead
[John Laurens]
Black and white soldiers wonder alike if this really means freedom…
[George Washington]
Not yet

[Verse 1: K’Naan]
I got 1 job, 2 jobs, 3 when I need them
I got 5 roommates in this one studio, but I never really see them
And we all came to America trying to get a lap dance from Lady Freedom
But now Lady Liberty is acting like Hilary Banks with a pre-nup
Man, I was brave, sailing on graves
Don’t think I didn’t noticed those tombstones disguised as waves
I’m no dummy, here is something funny, you can be an immigrant without risking your lives
Or crossing these borders with thrifty supplies
All you've got to do is see the world with new eyes

[Chorus]
Immigrants, we get the job done

Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
We get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants, we get the job done

[Verse 2: Snow Tha Product]
It’s a hard line when you’re an import
Baby boy, it's hard times
When you ain't sent for
Racists feed the belly of the beast
With their pitchforks, the rich chores
Done by the people who get ignored
Ya se armó
Ya se despertaron
It’s a whole awakening
La alarma ya sonó hace rato
Los que quieren buscan
Pero nos apodan como vagos
We are the same ones
Hustling on every level
Ten los datos
Walk a mile in our shoes
Abróchense los zapatos
I've been scoping ya dudes, ya’ll ain't been working like I do
I'll outwork you; it hurts you
You claim I’m stealing jobs, though
Peter Piper claimed he picked them, he just underpaid Pablo
But there ain't a paper trail when you're living in the shadows
We're America's ghost writers, the credit's only borrowed
It’s a matter of time before the checks all come
But…
[Chorus]
Immigrants, we get the job done

Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
We get the job done

Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants, we get the job—
Not yet

[Bridge: Snow Tha Product]
The credit is only borrowed
It’s America's ghost writers, the credit's only borrowed
It’s America's ghost writers
America's ghost writers
America's ghost writers, the credit's only borrowed
It’s America's ghost writers, a credit is only borrowed
It’s America's ghost writers, a credit is only borrowed
It’s America's ghost writers, a credit is only borrowed
It's

[Hook]
Immigrants, we get the job done
[Verse 3: Riz MC]
Ay yo aye, immigrants, we don’t like that
Na they don’t play British Empire Strikes Back
They're beating us like 808’s and high hats
At our own game of invasion, but this ain't Iraq
Who are these refugees
What did they do for me
But contribute new dreams
Taxes and tools, swagger and food to eat
Cool, they flee war zones, but the problem ain't ours
Even if our bombs landed on them like the Mayflower
Buckingham Palace or Capitol Hill
Blood of my ancestors had that all built
It's the ink you print on your dollar bill, oil you spill
Thin red line on the flag you hoist when you kill
But still, we just say, "look how far I come"
Hindustan, Pakistan, to London
To a galaxy far from their ignorance
Cos-

[Hook]
Immigrants, we get the job done

[Verse 4: Residente]
Por tierra o por agua
Identidad falsa
Brincamos muros o flotamos en balsas
La peleamos como Sandino en Nicaragua
Somos como las plantas que crecen sin agua
Sin pasaporte americano
Porque La mitad de gringolandia Es terreno mexicano
Hay que ser bien hijo e puta
Nosotros Les Sembramos el árbol y ellos se comen la fruta
Somos los que cruzaron
Aquí vinimos a buscar el oro que nos robaron
Tenemos mas trucos que la policía secreta
Metimos la casa completa en una maleta
Con un pico, una pala
Y un rastrillo
Te construimos un castillo
Como es que dice el coro cabrón?

[Chorus]
Immigrants, we get the job done

Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
We get the job done

Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants, we get the job done

Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants, we get the job done

Not yet

Last Update: July, 14th 2025

Song Overview

Immigrants (We Get the Job Done) lyrics by K'naan, Residente, Riz Ahmed & Snow Tha Product — The four MCs deliver the “Immigrants” lyrics from the hold of a box-car, sparks flying.

When Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton first hit Broadway, one throw-away quip—“Immigrants, we get the job done!”—regularly stopped the show. A year later that line spawned a full-length cypher on The Hamilton Mixtape (2016), uniting Somali-Canadian poet K’naan, Mexican-American firebrand Snow Tha Product, British-Pakistani polymath Riz Ahmed (Riz MC), and Puerto Rican word-smith Residente. Producer Trooko pastes a gun-cock sample over whirring subway ambience and a loop from “Yorktown,” turning a revolutionary aside into a post-2016 protest anthem.

The six-minute mini-film, released June 28 2017 as a fund-raiser for the Immigrants: We Get the Job Done coalition, racked up ten million YouTube views in its first week and later claimed the inaugural MTV Video Music Award for Best Fight Against the System.

Song Credits

Featured Artists: K’naan, Residente, Riz Ahmed (Riz MC), Snow Tha Product
Producer / Programmer: Trooko
Composer-Lyricists: Keinan Warsame, René Pérez Joglar, Rizwan Ahmed, Claudia Feliciano, Lin-Manuel Miranda
Release Date: December 2 2016
Genre: Protest hip-hop / Latin rap / grime
Instruments & Samples: “Yorktown” strings, pitched sirens, 808 kicks, accordion stabs, train-yard Foley
Label: Atlantic Records / Hamilton Uptown LLC
Mood: Defiant, urgent, multilingual
Length: 4 min 41 s
Album: The Hamilton Mixtape (Track 11)
Languages: English, Spanish, Urdu/Dari inflections
Poetic Meter: Mixed syllabic rap flows over 4/4 boom-bap grid
Copyright ©: 2016 Atlantic Records / Hamilton Uptown LLC

Song Meaning and Annotations

Box-car performance, Immigrants (We Get the Job Done) — Box car doors slide; verses cross borders.

The production creaks like steel tracks, echoing the box-cars that ferry migrants north. Each MC drags a different flag across those rails: K’naan recalls desert graves and studio apartments stuffed with roommates; Snow flips between English and Spanish, skewering “Peter Piper” bosses who underpay “Pablo”; Riz raps in jittery 5/4 cadences, indicting British imperialism; Residente closes in machine-gun Spanish, reminding “gringolandia” whose land it really is. The overlapping hook—“Look how far I come”—becomes both victory lap and warning shot.

Verse 1 – K’naan

We all came to America trying to get a lap dance from Lady Freedom
But now Lady Liberty is acting like Hilary Banks with a pre-nup

He turns the Statue of Liberty into a sitcom heiress, suggesting freedom now comes with fine print.

Verse 2 – Snow Tha Product

Peter Piper claimed he picked them, he just underpaid Pablo

A nursery-rhyme flips into labor critique—crop-picker to punch-line.

Verse 3 – Riz MC

Blood of my ancestors had that all built / It’s the ink you print on your dollar bill

Colonial receipts come due; his flow shreds into double-time internal rhyme.

Verse 4 – Residente

Nosotros les sembramos el árbol y ellos se comen la fruta

A farmer’s metaphor in Spanish: We planted the tree, they ate the fruit—profit without credit.

Miranda’s “Yorktown” sample whispers “Not yet” between hooks, insisting the revolution remains unfinished.

Annotations

“The ABC Café / Red and Black” sweeps us into Place Saint-Michel’s crumbling medieval alleys—Haussmann’s grand plans have left Paris’s poorest behind. The chanting beggars open with

“Look down and see the beggars at your feet,”

their melody echoing the toil of Toulon prisoners in “Overture / Work Song.” Suddenly, Gavroche appears—Éponine’s little brother, the slum-king who claims “these streets as my high society,” living off crumbs but ruling his corner with cheeky pride.

Les Amis de l’ABC: United in Idealism

Combeferre is the Revolution’s philosopher, balancing Enjolras’s fervent logic with the call for peaceful progress—“Revolution, but civilization.” His broader vision pledges that rebellion need not end in war.

Feuilly stands as the one true working-class insurgent: an orphaned fan-maker surviving on three francs a day, who taught himself history to champion global freedom. Hugo calls him “the man of the people,” his heart embracing struggles from Greece to Poland.

Courfeyrac brings youthful magnetism—he dropped his bourgeois “de,” outran his aristocratic birthright, and rallied comrades with wit that bridged privilege and passion.

Marius drifts in by friendship rather than cause. His shy confession—

“I have come to sleep with you.”

—reveals both his naiveté and the warmth of this impromptu brotherhood, even as visions of Cosette tug at his loyalties.

Joly, the group’s hypochondriac doctor, angles his bed to Earth’s magnetic currents and takes his pulse in storms—yet his eccentric rituals and buoyant laughter lighten every dark plan.

Grantaire, the eternal skeptic, scoffs at “rights of man” and “social contract,” his axiom—

“There is but one certainty, my full glass.”

—but when the barricade calls, his mockery gives way to steadfast loyalty to Enjolras, proving faith can wear many masks.

Jean Prouvaire is the gentle poet-scholar, torn between earthly compassion and cosmic wonder. By day he debates liberty and penury; by night he studies stars—yet in the climactic stand his quiet voice rises in a defiant “Vive la France!”

Lesgles (or Bossuet) lives under “falling tiles,” beset by endless misfortune yet greeting calamity with laughter—“Good day, Guignon.” His irrepressible humor turns disaster into daring inspiration.

The Call to Revolution

News of General Lamarque’s death—from Gavroche’s triumphant cry—transforms debate into action. Enjolras unfurls the banner:

“Red – the blood of angry men / Black – the dark of ages past.”

These colours promise rebirth through sacrifice and an end to entrenched injustice.

Their oath rings out:

“It’ll come, it’ll come / before we cut the fat ones down to size.”

Bound by unwavering faith in “the people’s power,” they believe,

“They will come one and all / They will come when we call.”

Epilogue in Song

“Do You Hear the People Sing?” becomes their meta-anthem—an ode to the spirit of revolt and the enduring force of music itself. When the barricade falls, their final chorus echoes as phantom voices around Marius, whispering that true revolution never dies, but lives on in every brave note.

Similar Songs

Thumbnail: Immigrants (We Get the Job Done) video — Official video thumbnail: sparks meet subway lights.

“Paper Planes” – M.I.A. (2007)
Both tracks weaponize immigrant stereotypes—gunshots as percussion for M.I.A., border sirens for the Mixtape—then flip them into anthems of survival and subversion.
“American Land” – Bruce Springsteen (2006)
Springsteen’s Celtic-rock catalogue of immigrant labor (“the hands that built the land”) parallels Residente’s line about planting the tree; folk fiddle meets hip-hop snare.
“This Land” – Gary Clark Jr. (2019)
Clark’s blues-rock roar shares the same righteous fury, confronting modern xenophobia with searing guitar instead of four MCs—but the refrain “This land is mine” echoes Residente’s claim on gringolandia.

Questions and Answers

Riz Ahmed on a shipping crate, Immigrants video — Riz Ahmed’s verse lights up the yard.

Did the single chart on Billboard?: No—only the Hamilton Mixtape charted, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in December 2016.
Which award did the video win?: It earned one of the first MTV VMAs for Best Fight Against the System on August 27 2017.
Where were the proceeds from the video directed?: Launch day linked viewers to the Immigrants: We Get the Job Done Coalition, a fund supporting over 15 immigrant-rights nonprofits across the U.S.
What languages are featured?: English and Spanish dominate, with Urdu-inflected slang in Riz Ahmed’s verse and Somali cadences in K’naan’s flow—mirroring four continents of diaspora.
Has the song been recognized in protest-song lists?: Teen Vogue’s 2020 roundup of the “13 Best Protest Songs of All Time” placed it alongside “Strange Fruit” and “Fight the Power.”

Awards and Chart Positions

MTV Video Music Awards 2017: Best Fight Against the System – Winner (tie, category honored all nominees).
Billboard 200: The Hamilton Mixtape debuted at #1 (week ending Dec 24 2016), helping propel the single’s visibility.
Cultural lists: Teen Vogue “13 Best Protest Songs of All Time” (2020).

Fan and Media Reactions

“Four accents, one mic—this track is Ellis Island compressed into 4 minutes.” – YouTube user @BicoastalBeats

“The VMA win felt bigger than a trophy; it was an immigration teach-in on primetime.” – Playbill columnist Ryan McPhee

“Snow’s ‘Peter Piper’ bar? That’s every under-table paycheck I ever earned.” – Twitter user @DACA_Dreamer

“Miranda turned a punch-line into the rap We Are the World—but grittier, and with receipts.” – NPR reviewer Andrew Flanagan

“My civics class now starts with this video; kids grasp immigration policy before I open the textbook.” – High-school teacher L. Chen

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