Definitely some selection bias. Many wealthy people in the US are immigrants. Also, many wealthy people probably choose to immigrate to the US to start their business because of lower barriers to entry.
EDIT: Also, if this [1] is correct, 13.7% of people in the US are immigrants. So how many people are immigrants OR first-gen? And since ANY of the founders can be immigrants/first-gen, more founders means higher likelihood that it fits this criteria.
"Many wealthy people in the US are immigrants. Also, many wealthy people probably choose to immigrate to the US to start their business because of lower barriers to entry."
The data shows the opposite effect: immigrants usually come to this country with lower levels of wealth and income, but catch up within 20 years because of higher saving rates and educational attainment:
If there's a selection bias, it's likely in other characteristics. Immigration selects for risk-taking, for example, because moving to another country is inherently a risk, and it also selects for people willing to work hard without a safety net. Both of these are characteristics shared with successful entrepreneurs.
There is selection bias (and other issues) not only in this study, but in which stories are promoted as well. E.g. this story presenting immigration positively gets to stay on the front page for some time, while a (admittedly anecdotal) story of Indian immigrants showing racist in-group preference at Intel (https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/07/19/korean-american-softw...) is flagged and killed.
Yup. By this criteria, if I (an adult-aged Canadian) decided to take my startup to Silicon Valley, it would be an 'immigrant' founded startup. My situation would also be completely unlike the scenarios that are dominating the immigration debate in the US at the moment.
I have a hypothesis related to this. I believe that surviving being a child refugee in America is something that really brings out the grit in a person. Seeing the things your family goes through to provide a normal life for you in a strange and new place, overcoming ethnic biases, language barriers, and life on government assistance really brings out the attitudes of drive and perseverance toward reaching one's goals.
I'd be curious to see how the likeliness of refugees to reach higher income brackets over their lives compares to native-born Americans.
I was just speaking from my own experience; but I'm sorry about how I phrased my comment. I never mentioned that in my comment and it can be easily read as referring directly about Andy Grove (who I know almost nothing about).
He may have acquired his grit through other means, in his words:
> By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis' "Final Solution," the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint... [where] many young people were killed; countless others were interned. Some two hundred thousand Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them.
I'd be really curious about his viewpoints on the current US political landscape, considering he experienced real, actual fascism and not the label everyone throws around willy-nilly trying to tar and feather each other. Personally, whenever I hear the terms racist or fascist thrown around, racism and fascism never actually enter my mind, or at least extremely rarely. I just think "Oh, another person who disagrees with someone else," because that's how the words are used in modern day politics. The words have lost their actual meaning to me due to their incorrect usage, and over saturation of their usage. You can only cry wolf so much.
If the only time you can recognize fascists is when they already have power, then you are completely helpless at preventing fascists from attaining that power.
There are always fascists. Some people who "throw around" that word have correctly identified them, perhaps others are mistaken. Surely it is up to you to figure who's figured it out if you would like to prevent fascists from seizing power.
That's a little difficult given that he died in 2016. There are not so many people left alive who remember the hard end of WW2-era fascism.
The one I always refer people to, written in 1995 but applicable to any time, is Umberto Eco's "Ur-Fascism". http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf - written from his personal experience as a young boy in fascist Italy at the time of its liberation.
The full essay is long and detailed, and interestingly contrasts Italian fascism with Nazism; Eco's view was that Nazism was a specific philosophy and programme that was capable of clearly delineating what it was about, while fascism was much less intellectually coherent.
> Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one
or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from
fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have
the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism
(which never much fascinated Mussolini) and you have Ezra Pound. Add a cult of Celtic
mythology and the Grail mysticism (completely alien to official fascism) and you have
one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola.
But he ultimately distils it down to fourteen characteristic points. It is up to the reader to apply them to modern movements and see how well the resemblance holds.
(cult of tradition; rejection of modernism; irrationalism; disagreement is treason; appeal against intruders; appeal to middle class; obsession with a plot against the nation; feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies; life is permanent warfare; popular elitism; heroism as death cult; machismo; selective populism & anti-parliamentarianism; and "newspeak")
People losing their minds over this would sound a lot more sincere and principled if they'd been even half as upset about Obama placing kids in actual cages with a much higher per capita death rate. Now they just sound like ideologues grinding a political axe.
The policy before Trump was to hold children who arrive unaccompanied at the border and find their family to reunite them with. The policy under Trump is a zero-tolerance separate all children from their parents policy. Trump HHS currently cannot account for around 6000 children they have separated. This is new. The new rules around immigration seem to be focused around overwhelming the system's capacity for processing people fairly and with proper oversight.
Obama's immigration policies were criticised by liberals (as were many other aspects of his presidency, or are we going to rewrite history to state that OWS was just a public Obama fan-club gathering?). They were even outed by left-leaning publications and subject to a documentary on PBS.
Back on the topic of the comment you shifted away from - "deporting" in US-speak means sending people to a private prison where detainees are effectively forced to work, but without even allowing the accused their fair time in court. At some point after that they might get sent back to another country.
If you call them concentration camps, if you call them private prisons, if you call them anything besides detention facilities, you likely haven't thought about it much, because only a detention center will allow you to sign up to be let go back at the border. "Hey, I've decided this sucks, I'd like to head back home," is something you only say when being processed at the border in a queue.
Are you actually free to say "Hey, I've decided this sucks, I'd like to head back home?" My understanding is that they aren't, and that to leave the detention center, they need to have their application for "voluntary departure" approved by an immigration judge and pay for their own transportation out of the country:
I saw a lot of people called racists because they disagreed with the implementation, if not the goal, of the US ACA health care reform. Now I see nearly every single presidential political candidate dumping on the ACA - whom I assume will shortly be labeled racists by all right thinking people.
I think his family had to do a great deal of adapting when their whole life was turned upside down. From his Wikipedia Biography:
> When he was eight, the Nazis occupied Hungary and deported nearly 500,000 Jews to concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Its commandant, Rudolf Höss, said at his trial that he killed 400,000 Hungarian Jews in three months.[9] To avoid being arrested, Grove and his mother took on false identities and were sheltered by friends.[7] His father, however, was arrested and taken to an Eastern Labor Camp to do forced labor, and was reunited with his family only after the war.[10]
> During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, when he was 20, he left his home and family and escaped across the border into Austria. Penniless and barely able to speak English, in 1957 he eventually made his way to the United States. He later changed his name to the anglicized Andrew S. Grove.[1][11] Grove summarized his first twenty years of life in Hungary in his memoirs:
> By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis' "Final Solution," the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint... [where] many young people were killed; countless others were interned. Some two hundred thousand Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them.[1]
Or maybe those people feel grateful to escape hell they experienced home and take advantage of all the opportunities America provides for them? That's surely true for part of my family that emigrated to US.
You kinda feel you get a new shot at life if you suddenly find yourself in a country so rich, full of opportunities and free as USA, especially if you came from war zone or a communist country.
Fundamentally practically every US-citizen is an immigrant or of immigrant descent. They came in, slaughtered the natives and are now claiming nobody else can come in. The endemic racism and xenophobia looks to the outsider mostly like a complex, affirming that they definitely do belong while trying as hard as possible not to consider that other people belong just as much as they do.
It isn’t only about founders either. How many immigrants have worked or invested on these companies to become what they are today and that’s one of the biggest advantages that drives US tech faster than any other country. Those skilled workers are often educated and grown up outside the US, which means government didn’t spend any subsidies to have them ready to work. That’s why H1B is a gold mine.
The way they handle companies with > 1 founder is a bit weird. If there is at least one immigrant / 1st gen American it's counted in the "founded by" category. And then the 45% is taken by looking at things just at the company level.
I think it would tell a clearer picture to count the total number of founders and count the percentage of people who were immigrants / 1st gen americans. Then, to give context, you would want to compare this number to the % of people living in the US who are immigrants / 1st gen Americans.
The article also appears to count companies as “founded by immigrants” if they’re the result of a merger where one of the original companies was founded by immigrants. United Technologies, for example, is a huge conglomerate. I have no idea who the immigrant founder is supposed to be.
Moreover, a quarter of America’s population fits into the category of “immigrants or children of immigrants.” At the time many of these companies were founded, it was closer to 40%. If you count # of immigrant founders / # of non-immigrant founders, as you suggest, it could very well be that immigrants are underrepresented.
Agreed. It makes me think they might have used that selection criteria specifically in order to provide an out-sized visualization about the impact of immigration on the founding of US companies. Seeing the actual numbers on the the founder-level would be more informative and probably also let me shed my doubts about whether or not those who created the study were doing it a biased manner.
I also think it's weird that Amazon was counted as "child of an immigrant". He was adopted as a child by his immigrant step-father after his mother's marriage - but he definitely would have been in America regardless of immigration policy...
> The way they handle companies with > 1 founder is a bit weird. If there is at least one immigrant / 1st gen American it's counted in the "founded by" category. And then the 45% is taken by looking at things just at the company level.
Ah! I saw the 45% number and immediately wondered if this particular statistical slight of hand was being used. Thank you.
Compare the level of critique a study with a very disagreeable conclusion has (specifically a study whose conclusion is disagreeable to the majority of people regardless of political affiliation) compared to one which has an agreeable conclusion.
As someone else called it, these statistical slights of hand are selectively tolerated and are one reason that science, especially social sciences, have a lower level of trust than one would have initially assumed.
The publisher of this "Study" is from New American Economy, a think tank "fighting for smart federal, state, and local immigration policies that help grow our economy and create jobs for all Americans."
So I don't think it is 100% neutral in terms of its view on immigrants.
Serious question: what does a neutral view on immigrants look like? How does one take a view on immigrants without aligning with one side of the debate?
You bring up a valid point in identifying the authors of this study. I'm just not sure what a truly neutral position in that debate would look like.
There's a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt out there. Everything from "immigrants commit crimes" to "I work at companies that treat H1Bs terribly" to "no country has ever had open borders." At the end of the day many of these statements are provable or disprovable by facts, which is what a neutral position would look like.
I agree that those statements are demonstrably false, but you’d be immediately accused of pro-immigration sentiment by elements of the right for taking such a position, which is why even discussing this issue is difficult.
Facts no longer drive these conversations, and it’s pretty unsettling to watch.
> Serious question: what does a neutral view on immigrants look like? How does one take a view on immigrants without aligning with one side of the debate?
Maybe we should distinguish between an article being neutral vs. a person holding a neutral view.
IMO, an article would be neutral if it provided the strongest arguments from all relevant viewpoints, including supporting data.
I'm not sure what a neutral view would be, though. Aside from taking a stance of agnosticism / uncertainty, but I don't think that's what we're talking about here.
to be honest, I read CATO for a view that seems to favor issues with both sides of the issue. Example, they are very quick to point out that crime does not increase with immigration, illegal or not, nor are the same used to smuggle drugs. However they are quick to support the idea that illegal immigrants to this country should be benefits of the welfare state.
What it all comes down to is that like the rest of the world, the US needs to manage its influx of those seeking to immigrate here and yes, it should be able to reject any number of them.
But, think tanks exist to explore specific issues within their realm of concern.
An "economic think tank" that did a bunch of research into, and then published a study on, immigration, would then be an "economic and immigration think tank."
Frankly I'm annoyed that an organization can't declare itself "concerned with" a subject without people leveling claims of bias. Why would they do the study if they didn't care about studying immigration?
If there's an issue with the research, find it and argue against it. But "they're biased," nah, I don't bite.
In my experience, most articles that advocate for a particular action or policy make unstated assumptions about metaphysics / ethics. I'm not sure economics or social-policy articles would be an exception.
For example: It's pretty uncontroversial to say that ${N} persons cross the Mexican-to-American border, not at official government checkpoints, annually.
It's slightly more controversial to claim that ${M} of them are doing so illegally, because matters of law are complicated and matters of judgment.
But when we get to actual policy decisions, we have competing concepts of what's good and worth attempting. For example, how do we balance competing concepts of justice? How do we balance justice and mercy? What's the proper balance for the U.S. government regarding protecting immigrants vs. current residents?
Personally, I haven't found any good, reasoned way to argue about those metaphysical issues. I have personal preferences, and I know which things rub me the wrong way more than others. But in the end it seems like a matter of taste, so I'm not even sure it's worth trying to persuade others.
>Personally, I haven't found any good, reasoned way to argue about those metaphysical issues. I have personal preferences, and I know which things rub me the wrong way more than others. But in the end it seems like a matter of taste, so I'm not even sure it's worth trying to persuade others.
One approach is to try and adopt a system that has a minimal amount of assumptions and inconsistencies. This is the approach taken by economics. The core idea is that, if somebody is willing to exchange their labour/product of their labour for something, then they demonstrably value that thing more at that time than all other possible things for which they could have exchanged their labour/product of their labour. A surprisingly large body of reasoning is built upon this and little else.
This is why most economists, mainstream or otherwise, support immigration. The immigrant wants it, their employer wants it and their landlord wants it, otherwise none of them would have agreed to it, so preventing this arrangement prevents them from realising their top preferences at that time, forcing them to settle for a less desired outcomes. What about the fact it might put a local out of a job? That argument requires some kind of assumptions that how much somebody "deserves" a job depends on where they're born; it's hard to justify without adding extra axioms, and certainly not self-evident (many people argue it's unjust to descriminate based on place of birth). Similarly, what about the argument that immigration destroys cultural homogeneity? This requires some kind of assumptions to justify why cultural homogeneity is desirable, which are hard to even specify, as it requires first clearly defining the concept of culture.
This tool is based on a brief [1] which is basically an update of a study [2] they released in 2011. Neither goes into much detail on methodology but the original study at least has an appendix identifying the immigrant founder(s).
But do you suspect the methodology, the results, or the conclusion were "faked" or inaccurate? Or do you consider it an accurate piece but suspect the reasons behind publishing it?
...And suddenly a wave of downvotes in less than 2 minutes. No justified concerns attached to them though.
> But do you suspect the methodology, the results, or the conclusion were "faked" or inaccurate?
Yes. As other commentators have noted, the methodology is terrible (counting a single immigrant cofounder as a "company founded by immigrants" even if the other 8 cofounders were all non-immigrants, counting a merged company as founded my immigrants if any of the companies that merged were founded by immigrants, even if those founders didn't have any role in the post merger world) and seems to have been chosen to give a specific conclusion.
Looking at the biases of the author usually gives a good heads up to these sorts of methodology problems.
>But do you suspect the methodology, the results, or the conclusion were "faked" or inaccurate?
Selective definitions were used. They weren't hidden for anyone willing to look into the details, but if this was a political move (I'm not saying it was, but if it was) then the people who did it would know full well that the headline would have far more penetration than any statistical critique with how terms were defined. Another poster here used the term 'slight of hand'. One could describe it, if it was a political move, as a form of deceit without being an outright lie.
Forming an opinion based solely on the title or the (perceived) author's bias without ever reading the content is a problem no matter where you stand. Which is why I asked OP to help me understand their reasoning behind discrediting the author, suggesting a conclusion but not even attempting to discuss the content. How is this different from anybody responding to a comment solely by attacking the person who wrote it and their political affiliations rather than attempt to discuss the actual content?
Would you question a reply like "Please keep in mind that this opinion came from [a member of party X] / [a supporter of cause Y] so I don't think their opinion is neutral [period]" to one of your comments or remarks? And that's not even going into the whole "what's a 100% neutral opinion".
And so many downvotes for a question that was not leading in any way (offered both alternatives as equally probable) also suggests a bias to consider only the arguments that support your own views and react "aggressively" to anything that seems to clash with their beliefs.
>Forming an opinion based solely on the title or the (perceived) author's bias without ever reading the content is a problem no matter where you stand.
First impressions matter. A job posting for an elite JavaScript ninja with 15 years of ES6 experience is going to have the creator of the job post judged very harshly, even if no other information is viewed. Sometimes that will be wrong, but it will be right often enough to be reasonable.
As for this particular case, an analysis of how they calculated the number has already been done by other who have posted under this same article. If you feel there is a flaw in their logic, you can reply to them directly.
>How is this different from anybody responding to a comment solely by attacking the person who wrote it and their political affiliations rather than attempt to discuss the actual content?
Because it is based on both the author and the content, and the nature of the disagreement is that the content is wrong for reasons that are only incidentally related to the author.
The argument isn't 'study is bad because author is bad. The argument is 'the combination of the author's own stated goals and the creative statistical freedom taken when calculating the figure leads me to believe there is significant bias in and behind this'. There is also a known issue of political groups injecting favorable bias in the work they do.
>Would you question a reply like "Please keep in mind that this opinion came from [a member of party X] / [a supporter of cause Y] so I don't think their opinion is neutral [period]" to one of your comments or remarks?
Well, I don't think any opinion is neutral (at least on matters of politics) to begin with and would overall trust someone who recognizes their biases more than someone who doesn't, even if that is stereotypical of me.
Its strange to see Amazon on the list. Bezos was born to American parents but after they divorced his mother remarried to a Cuban immigrant. I dont think that makes him the son of immigrants.
Especially not when the study itself is clearly intended to be used as evidence to support a particular position on immigration policy. Makes it seem a bit cherry-picked.
In case it's unclear from the title, the study showed that 45% of Fortune 500 companies had at least 1 founder that was an immigrant or child of an immigrant. For example, Facebook is considered "founded by an immigrant" in this categorization, which sort of surprised me at first.
The title is a bit misleading.
I get the sense that the data analysis is pretty biased toward proving a point. Having a single founder who is a second generation immigrant is not equal to having all founders being third generation + immigrants. Taking the total percentage of all founders of Fortune 500 companies might be more reasonable.
Agreed. I had to double check to see if Zuckerberg was an immigrant. He's not. But at least one of Facebook's founders is. You're right - it is misleading.
For everyone claiming bias, it's pretty clearly stated in the first sentence:
>...according to a new study by New American Economy, a bipartisan pro-immigration group.
What I'm not seeing much of in the comments is how the debate around immigration has come to a very alarming place, with most of it having nothing to do with what actually occurs in reality. In my honest opinion, that discussion is far more important than the specifics of this study.
I think problem is not in immigration but in type of immigration.So it would be nice not to stop by just say immigrants founded companies.It should be examined how many of that immigrants are highly educated and have parents like that and how many just enter USA in uncotrolled immigration.
I remember one of the first time the company I work for had a "First gen in tech" event. We had a funny discussion about how, technically, I was part of the target audience. I'm as much of a white western dude as they come, but I'm technically on a green card, my parents are not in the US, I'm the first of my family to be in tech. Checks all the boxes.
In practice I'm definitely NOT the kind of person these things are aimed at. Being a white Canadian dude who just moved a few hours south because the job market was more interesting isn't exactly a life changing experience or even challenging.
Still, if I founded a company, I'd be on that list. Worse, if my children were to found a company, they'd be on that list too, even though they wouldn't have an ounce of hardship (at least from birth situation) or diversity in their bones.
That's fine, you're still a valid part of the immigration discussion. For example as an American when I go to Canada I get more hassle than when I'm in Europe. If anything I'd assume it would be easier to go between Canada and the U.S. which are a lot more culturally similar than say Germany and France.
Fascinating. Ill admit I've never traveled to Europe. What part is easier? My wife (an American citizen) has gone to Canada fairly frequently and clearing the custom is a quick formality. My narrow minded self can only imagine that short of not having a customs at all, it can't get a whole lot easier.
In Europe it's one or two questions (e.g. "how long are you staying?" and "why are you coming here?"). In Canada it's dozens of questions for 5-10 minutes. TBH as an American the same thing happened whenever I came back home to the US so who knows maybe I'm on some kind of list. At least in the US it's stopped now that I have Global Entry.
I would expect that the type of immigrants who typically enjoy lots of economic success are from middle to upper socioeconomic groups with cultural values that encourage discipline, hard work and getting ahead. In many cases it appears that children that succeed are from success oriented immigrant groups that maintain cultural cohesion in the US. Cultural cohesion is difficult to maintain through the second and third generation amid the corrosive effects of US mass culture. Nobel prize winners show the same pattern.
Some of the companies are quite old and have a complicated history of mergers and acquisitions. For example both AT&T and Verizon are descendants of Bell Telephone Company, established in 1879.
Come on, let's add then grandchildren, friends, lovers, people from the same middle school etc. Most of the time those kids are 100% Americans, who often might not even know the language of their parents.
Source: I'm an immigrant, and the situation: "kids are speaking Russian with me, but between themselves they prefer to speak English, and don't ask me about their writing skills in Russian" is very common among my circle.
Unless 55% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by Native Americans, I would expect the percentage of companies founded by "immigrants or their children" in the US to be much higher than 45%
> Someone should interview those founders and ask them about their views on illegal immigration.
An important distinction the media never makes. To actually get at the real controversy, they should study how many of these founders jumped a fence and used a fake social security number.
Exactly. It's offensive to put legal immigrants (at least to my family and people we know) in the same category as illegal immigrants, and use our success to justify illegal immigration.
> Maybe it had taken some more time but, locals would have ended up setting up these either way.
We're not talking about some local businesses. These are pretty much global companies with exceptional success. If Alphabet/Google was founded in the EU, it didn't matter how many small competitors would pop out elseware as they are currently.
Japan, Korea, Germany are also in line and also India (with successful space program without immigrants). There are many countries which are successful without immigrants, some of them are even democracies.
>Japan, Korea, Germany are also in line and also India (with successful space program without immigrants).
This is just plain wrong, in the case of Germany. Germany has a huge immigrant population, and has since WWII when they brought in tons of Turks to be laborers there. There's an enormous Turkish population in Germany, and it's not new. Germany probably would not be where it is now without them.
Japan and Korea don't have many immigrants, it's true, but they were both occupied by the US for some time (and Japan still is, in a way, as is Germany).
I hope your not including India in your list as an example of ethnic uniformity, are you even aware of the vast number of different cultures and languages spoken in India? India stands as the original melting pot since ancient times. Oh and it also has the one of the largest immigrant population in the modern world.
The legal process is a very movable barrier and has changed over time to make it much harder. It might be interesting to ask "how many of these people would, if they had applied under the current rules rather than those of the time, have been turned away?"
~750K family based immigrants with no requirement for education and wealth requirements in the range of being slightly above poverty for some categories.
~120K refugees, with no requirements
~30K asylees, with no requirements
~50K diversity, with high school education requirement
vs
140K employment based, who you might call educated and/or affluent as it includes investors and people with advanced degrees.
I'm not sure that this actually contradicts what I said.
I follow the subreddit r/IWantOut. Every day, someone asks about coming to the US, and we tell pretty much all of them "better get a Masters in Engineering first." The fact is, most people who would like to immigrate to the US are not refugees or related to US citizens. For most of them, the bar actually is that high. That we accept a lot of people from categories that not many people fall into, including ones that I would barely count as immigration (eg. "Child of a US citizen"), doesn't have much impact on the general case.
Additionally, I think it's important to consider the practical barriers in the system, not just the text of the laws. From what I've heard, the paperwork and fees involved can cost thousands of dollars, and the regulations are so complex that you need either top-notch English reading skills, or a lawyer.
You said "In most cases, don't you still have to educated and/or affluent?", I read this as a question and provided you with data showing, that the answer is negative. Most immigration cases do not require either education or wealth.
Let's not compare unchecked immigration with what the US has been doing for many decades. H1B is a very selective process, it filters for the educated and the active. It's no surprise so many of them succeed in the US.
Sure, my family emigrated here: my father, who was born here as a first generation American--was just that; an American. He had No trace of an Italian accent (altough his parents barley spoke intelligible English), and in fact he forgot how to even speak Italian. He fought in WW2 as did his brothers (who were also American and spoke flawless English). They (my father and his brothers all got together and started a business after the war--though not a Fortune 500 company they earned an above average mid income living).
I contrast this with literally dozens of people I know, some good friends of mine who are here to only make money so they can return back to the native country--they do not consider themselves to be American, nor do they consider America their home, and indeed still refer to their native land as "my country". American can function as a Nation with some residents having this visitor attitude--but Not with 10s of millions of people who simply reside here. It's common sense.
Is it broken down by origin, class, etc? If we parametrize financial success then it may make sense to prioritize certain countries, classes, etc for immigration while filtering out the less successful, for the sake economy, because that's what's important of course.
I don't think it's fair to assume that the economy is the main thing that's important. A lot of conservatives would say that the main issue is culture, not economics. On the flip-side, I think migration is a human right, and this discussion is sort of like arguing about whether abolition would hurt the cotton industry.
Bold move - to use the positive results of pre-1965 immigration policy that selected for educated and affluent Europeans - as if it's an argument for a /more/ open immigration policy. Incredible and stupid.
I care less about what anyone thinks is likely and care more about the actual data.
My parents were immigrants. My mother raised kids while my dad had two jobs that paid minimum wage. My annual comp at my day job is > $400K. My older sibling is a medical doctor. My family certainly came from no privilege at all. The only advantage we had was my father getting the opportunity to immigrate to the US.
Saying that 45% is all “cream of the crop” is a pathetic level of mental gymnastics.
One issue with this method is that the Fortune 500 has companies in it that are hundreds of years old. Only 26 of them were founded this century[1]. Alexander Hamilton founded one of them.
The circumstances today could be somewhat different. That said, as a non-american looking at starting a company, America still looks like a pretty great place to do it, to the extent that I still sometimes think of moving.
I think there is some bias due to historical events.
Ww2 caused a lot of jewish immigrants to emmigrate from europe and some emigrated later from russia. They have been very successful in general. I am sure this particular population already skews the statistics already.
I don't think many of those immigrants would be counted in this study. No founders would be in that group, and very few founders would have parents in that group. Possibly grandparents, but the study is only counting first and second generations.
Sergey brin emigrated from russia due to rising antisemitism in russia. That was the first example i thought of. I dont know the ratio, it was a hunch.
it seems many have missed the point, or at least that’s not how I read this.
This is not about if immigrants didn’t found company X, an American could do it (well that’s valid about crimes and drugs too! Right?). It’s also not about if they were first generation or second generation.
I believe the study shows immigrants overall had a positive contribution and big impact. Either by themselves or their family.
And this is a good study for people that only see immigrants as a source of crimes and negative impacts.
This is only an issue because Donald Trump is misrepresented as being racist and anti-immigration when he has only talked of illegal immigration and the problem of Islamic migrants (ie, the Islamic version of democracy which is not compatible with any Western Liberal democracy).
I can’t stand bad reasoning even if I sympathize with the objective so to make immigration case to Trump supporters you’re going to have to break out those that came to the U.S. through legal and illegal means. You’re also going to have to show them that a meaningful portion of entrepreneurs came from Latin America because that’s where much of the illegal immigration comes from.
1) Doesn't belong on HN.
2) Comments so far are unsubstantive -- ranging from "middlebrow dismissal" to flamebait.
3) Doesn't appear to be conducive to any sort of useful discussion.
I tend to agree. This study has some pretty serious methodology problems that the article ignores completely. It seems like somebody with an agenda decided to fund some science and skip the rigor.
This article seems pretty relevant. 4 of the 5 tech companies I've worked for were founded by immigrants. This website is about entrepreneurship, and talking about the pipeline of entrepreneurs seems no different than talking about the pipeline of say women and POCs in the software engineering pipeline. It might be controversial, but we have to have these discussions.
Immigrants is such a broad term its nearly meaningless.
From the article:
"The share of the most successful and globally-recognized U.S. companies that have immigrant founders is growing, according to NAE's Hanna Siegel and Andrew Lim, while the Trump administration has tried to make it more difficult for immigrants to come to the U.S., often claiming that they take American jobs and lower wages."
No mention what type of immigrant founded these companies (and by founded, it could mean they were one of a couple cofounders) Most likely they were already highly educated or pursing an advanced degree in the US.
When you go to the source material from New American Economy think tank, they don't have any links to explain how they created this report, nothing about methodology. Its just hey believe us.
"Since our first New American Fortune 500 report in 2011 [..]" "In this year's brief, we update our analysis, looking at the New American companies that made the 2019 Fortune 500 list."
EDIT: Also, if this [1] is correct, 13.7% of people in the US are immigrants. So how many people are immigrants OR first-gen? And since ANY of the founders can be immigrants/first-gen, more founders means higher likelihood that it fits this criteria.
[1]https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested...