Immigrants A Driving Force Behind Innovative Firms, Study Finds

Yes, the study implications are certainly ambiguous

These comments make good points. The study doesn't quite admit this, but its data shows that 97% of the founders are US nationals, and 87% are US-born, which is about the same as the population in general. I give more analysis of the report in my blog: art2science.org

But, partly this study implies that we are admitting a lot of _under_ educated immigrants, along with the well educated ones! If we were cream-skimming properly, we would be getting a substantial boost to startups and job creation in a lot of fields (not just tech fields). The analysis in this paper suggests we are getting a boost, but it's small, and it's proportional to the population as a whole. Quite different from the headlines!

RB of CA @ Jul 22, 2009 14:26:43 PM

Matthew Bandyk spins the data:

The amount of decent data in the report is surprising, and equal to, or less migrant favorable than all of the previous studies that this study quotes -- even with a wider ranging questionnaire i.e. 5 founders (Table 1).

Concerning non-immigrant visas:

"About 77% of the foreign-born high-tech entrepreneurs in our sample are U.S. citizens (Table 17)."

US born founders had a significant contribution to FBF companies:

The matrix in Table 12 shows that of 120 foreign born founded companies with multiple founders, 70% of those also had at least one U.S. born founder.

The following paragraph has Tables inserted within it -- Without the tables breaking up the paragraph, it reads:

6.2 Profile of Immigrant Founders

"We created a second database from our sample in which the unit of analysis is the individual founder, rather than the company. We obtained nativity data on 2,034 founders in total from our set of 1,415 companies. Of these, 261 are foreign-born, or about 12.8% (Table 14). This share is very close to the current share of foreign-born in the U.S. population, which is about 12.6%, but smaller than the share of foreign-born in the science and engineering (S&E) graduate student population and the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce (Table 15)."

next paragraph...

"The foreign-born share of all of these populations has grown rapidly over the past several decades. The 2000 Census found that 11.1% of the U.S. population was foreign born. In 1990, that figure was 7.9%, and it was 6.2% in 1980 (Figure 3). Among S&E graduate students, the foreign-born share was about 25% in 2005, up from 20% in 1985. And in the S&E workforce, the numbers show a rise to 16.7% in 2000, up from 8.2% in 1980 (Table 15)."

The blogger is spinning unremarkable data -- the foreign born share mirrors the population.

weaver of CA @ Jul 20, 2009 12:39:01 PM

Poorly controlled Immigrants are not the main problem

This great country if gets healthy can handle and incorporate 10 times more immigrants then now. The main problem is the destruction of economy and further lack of jobs. The economic structure looks like a pyramid, the more successful small businesses we will have at the bottom, the more stronger and taller will be the pyramid consisting of:

1. Top investors/Clans/Banks

2. Large Corporations (Suppliers of products to small resellers)

3. Medium size corporations (Suppliers of products to small resellers)

4. Small corporations (Suppliers of products to small resellers)

5. Upper class workers

6. Middle class workers.

7. Small family size businesses and freelancesr

8. Govenment workers and Union administration workers

9. People on government assitance (future workforce for small businesses)

10. People living on the street (future workforce for small businesses)

Just think about this pyramid and mason pyramid before you dig for facts.

It ‘s drawn on every dollar. And mason pyramid it the very top part with the eye.

The question is, why the masons became to blind? Why everybody and them allow to destroy themselves

and foundation they based upon too. Let’s build you Builderbergs and other members of the pyramid and not destroy

what we've built already.

AC of NY @ Jul 19, 2009 20:48:54 PM

immigrants

Well of course there are lots of immigrant founders,

10% or better of the tech workfource comes from immigrants

and most start-ups have 2 or more founders, so it would

be surprising if it weren't true that 10-20% of

startups had immigrant founders!

David of CA @ Jul 19, 2009 18:45:12 PM

Steps to solving our economy problems

I recommend the following steps:

1. to control prices on imports and local products at warehouse level by right pricing structures rewarding the best, most talented in sales businesses, & best performing ones. You can only receive lower price, if you can sell more, & there is has to be no wholesale to public stupidity anymore. It has to be illegal.

2. Do not allow illegal advertisings by comparing prices, like Microsoft does to Mac now with Laptop Hunters. We need more creative ads, not just Chinese-style price beating stupidity.

3. To split giant monopolies like Microsoft, Google, Intel, Costco into smaller companies

according to anti-monopoly laws. Turn Costco, Walmart, etc. into wholesale-to-business only chains. Do not allow them to sell wholesale to public anymore.

Otherwise split them into small ones and start regulating their pricing by making them to buy from

Government controlled warehouses.

4. to control minimum wages for visa workers at border level.

AC of NY @ Jul 19, 2009 16:55:02 PM

How Feds want to keep our wages and store prices down secrets

How Feds want to keep our wages and store prices down secrets

The government now thinks on how to keep our wages and store prices down. To temporary prevent inflation. However this is first rule of controlled Socialistic economy. The "tunnel rat" is absolutely right the visa workers help Angle Sam to achieve this goal a lot. When number of visas and visa wages are deregulated. However this is not the main problem. The main problem that due to drastic reduction in number of small businesses on Main Street and within manufacturing sector we do not generate enough available jobs anymore. They all have being opened in China, India, South America, Western Europe, Etc. but not here in USA.

Same as with uncontrolled low priced imports, blood sucking retail giants, no-need-to-win-wars, and other "tools of Globalization". We all know that there is no such thing as Healthy Global Economy, when multiple governments are existed and when they do not coordinate properly their attempts. How can we build Global Economy, if have been destroying our economy for the part 30-40 years. Macro Economy has to have rock solid foundation of Healthy Local Micro Economies in each country. We need to start thinking in terms of small business owners in order to restore our system and economy. The bureaucrats have no idea what small businesses needs are. We need to constantly remind them that they have to represent us and watch after corporate giants. All large corporate giants want is more and more power over small businesses. And instead of being large wholesale supplier to them, they become their killers. Let’s start with the bottom of the economic structure, with helping small businesses to come back & start growing again. Let's vote for strict anti-monopolistic policies, regulation of pricing & distribution of imports, regulation of visa jobs. One may say it's not a capitalistic approach to regulate prices and jobs, however it is, when it's done properly & with right purpose of stimulating local manufacturers, resellers, and retailers. Don't we realize yet that we can't help entire world and save it by setting up Chinese-style economy here and turning China into our outsourcing zone. Everything has to have healthy balance. I'm nto saying we need to completely close borders to imports of merchandise & labor, however we need to learn how control it in a smart & creative capitalistic way. What I suggest is to spend some of the bailout money on economic advisors with retail experience to help them to figure out the right way of restoring the mass of small businesses and manufacturers.

I recommend to following steps:

1. to control prices on imports at warehouse level by right pricing structures rewarding the best, most talented in sales businesses, & best performing ones. You can only receive lower price, if you can sell more, & there is has to be no wholesale to public stupidity anymore. It has to be illegal.

2. control minimum wages for visa workers at border level.

AC of NY @ Jul 19, 2009 14:48:51 PM

detailed critique final portion

29. Service 67.4% native-founded, 72.7% "immigrant"-founded; vs. Manufacturing 32.6% native-founded, 27.3% "immigrant"-founded also shows how the playing field has been tilted to favor abusive body shopping. Company age less than 10 years 30.2% native-founded, 34.3% "immigrant"-founded; vs. company age 30 years and above 11.9% native founded, 10.9% "immigrant"-founded also shows the negative impact of excessive non-immigration and immigration. Figure 1: more illustration of the negative effect excessive immigration and non-immigration have had on the worsening/increase in body shopping. Figure 2 shows that immigrant founding of firms is concentrated in areas with excessive government and taxation, and areas where the economy has been especially damaged over the last 10 years. Table 5 20 is hardly "high employment"; maybe 10K would qualify for high employment. Figure 2 Yep, the foreign-born population has, indeed, increased far too rapidly in the last 50 years (most notably since Teddy's 1965 bill which encouraged chain immigration, which was ramped up by the 1986 bill). Figure 4 shows exactly the attempt by NSF to flood the grad schools with cheap foreign labor and the attempt to drive down compensation to those with PhDs, and the harm caused by all those foreign teaching assistants on the educations of US students. Figure 5 they should have, instead, shown the shift of new immigration and non-immigration, away from Western and Southern Europe to India and Red China, and then correlate that with the growth of espionage.

jgo of FL @ Jul 19, 2009 14:12:29 PM

detailed critique continued

25. The HIC definition is rigged to favor tiny start-ups. How many such firms have seen their revenues and employment halve in the last year, last 4 years... due to displacement by foreign body shops? "Computer and data processing services [body shops] (SIC 737) and engineering and architectural services [body shops] (SIC 871) were the industries containing the largest number of HICs, together accounting [B-school body shops like Anderson/Accenture] for about half the total." It's revealing that software publishers were not included.

26. "a response rate of 53%" So the survey was highly self-selected.

27. "81% of the companies in our sample reported that all of their founders were born in the United States [of America]..." Why wasn't this in the executive summary and at the top of your article!? That's a rhetorical question. The answer is that it does not fit your agenda.

28. 33.7% worked together previously. Yet another reason why the excessive flood of cheap foreign labor is causing the numbers to be rigged against US citizens. The differential relative compensation to US citizens is lower, the graduate school opportunities are lower, the foreign students are more heavily subsidized by US tax-victims, the job opportunities are lower, the career ladders are chopped off to US citizens, so their opportunities to work with people in an environment which encourages the creativity of US citizens is diminished.

...

jgo of FL @ Jul 19, 2009 14:11:46 PM