
A third of venture-backed IPOs between 2006 and 2012 had an immigrant founder - pg
http://www.fastcompany.com/3015616/the-shocking-stats-about-whos-really-starting-companies-in-america
======
jacquesm
That doesn't surprise me in the least. Immigrants have one leg up over the
competition: they have generally very little to lose and everything to gain.
They have also already self-selected for being people that are not risk
adverse (they just left everything behind to start a new life) and they are
executing on their dreams.

I often see people that rant against immigrants in general and I always wonder
how they would react if you explained to them that their old age pension
likely depends on some not yet born immigrant and his or her children.

~~~
netcan
I think there are some close cousins of "nothing to lose" that are at work
too. As an immigrant your out of your own system and its expectations.

Say you come from a background where your reference group mostly follows a
path of: go to high school, go to 3 year Uni, travel for a year, then either
start climbing corporate ladders or more Uni, etc. Obviously, not everyone
follows the exact same path, but there is a lot of similarity. This peers
group might be people your own age that you know. Older siblings, parents or
even mostly theoretical. Most people have something like it and it is how they
create their expectations for themselves.

Taking a year "off" after high school would put you "behind" your peer group.
Figuring out a way of finishing Uni a year early would put you ahead. People
with strong peer groups cluster around the median. This applies to performance
as well as choices. I don't know how well the psychological mechanisms are
understood, but I guess our self expectations are both very important
determinant of performance and choices and very influenced by peer groups.

Derek Sivers wrote a good article called There is no speed limit.^ In a
nutshell, a cool musician called Kimo Williams taught him 2 years with of
Berkley music curriculum in five lessons when he was 17. He set an intense
pace and expected him to keep up. Just because it takes 2 years in a college
context doesn't mean it needs to take 2 years.

Immigrants are islands, relatively. They are on a path with few peers. Taking
a few years to do something won't put you behind because there is nothing to
put you behind of. There are fewer safe choices that an immigrant is hesitant
to deviate from. This is good for making outliers.

^[http://sivers.org/kimo](http://sivers.org/kimo)

~~~
presty
just a note: you mean Berklee, not Berkley (2 different schools)

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jhuckestein
One thing I always find, even when dealing with USCIS, or press, or really
anyone regarding this matter, is that only very few people truly wish to make
it difficult for immigrant founders to stay in the country. In fact, I have
never met anyone that gave me the impression that they didn't want me around.
The problem is that immigration law is slow moving and the adjudicators at the
USCIS need to follow it to the dot, even if it was written before a lot of the
technology we use today was invented and the world was a much less global
place. And now they are rolling the issue of startup founders and high skilled
labor into the massive immigration reform, where it is likely to fall through
the cracks or even be used as a bipartisan bargaining chip/concession.

Personally, I think a great way to level the playing field wrt starting
businesses for immigrant founders would be to allow all holders of employment
visas a grace period during which they can stay in the country after they quit
their job. This grace period could depend on the type of visa, your degree,
your income (read taxes), the time you spent in the US, whatever. Then you can
start a business without first having to secure your own presence, which is
very difficult (because you don't yet have a real company) and expensive to
do. A similar arrangement exists for study visas and is extremely effective in
keeping college and grad school graduates in the country after school.

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od2m
Uh look, this is a false equivalency. Nobody is complaining about the
brilliant immigrants who are founding companies.

People are upset about using immigrant labor as price competition to depress
wages and capture middle class income to be transferred to the wealthy.

We all see this all the time--companies hire legal immigrant labor or import
H1B's to pay 80% of the prevailing wage, meanwhile a massive and unnecessary
management structure compensates itself lavishly.

This is a classic "commons" problem. It's advantageous for any individual
company, but when everyone does it, it leads to the tragedy of the commons. In
this case that tragedy is the collapse of the American consumer. He's being
attack by high health costs, food costs, energy costs, regulatory burden,
grift from financial institutions, education costs and he has no more money to
spend at Waltmart-- the guys who caused the problem in the first place.

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wildgift
That says very little. There are such a wide range of immigrants: young
immigrants, older immigrants, poor immigrants, wealthy immigrants,
undocumented immigrants, documented with a green card. If someone relatively
wealthy immigrates here and uses the "millionaire's visa" and invests in a
business, they get a green card. Well, that counts toward the statistic.

Also, the article has it TOTALLY WRONG about immigration history. Immigration
was relatively loose until the Civil War, and then it was slowly closed until
in the late 1800s, restrictions really increased substantially until the
1940s, particularly for Asians. Then, after WW2 it eased up, and in 1965
racial discrimination in immigration quotas was made illegal by the Civil
Rights Act.

That created a new phase of global immigration, and things stayed the same
until 1986 with the IRCA. That closed off some forms of immigration,
specifically affecting illegal immigration. In the same time frame, it became
easier for wealthy entrepreneurs to immigrate (mainly the ones from Hong
Kong), and then H1B started, and it became easier for technically skilled
workers to get worker visas and later green cards.

So it's not as the article said, that the doors were wide open, and then they
have slowly been closing. That is at best an error, and at worst, a total
deception. After reading that, I stopped, because if the writer can't get that
basic history correct, they don't know squat.

(I should add that I am in favor of increasing immigration, but opposed to the
current trend of expanding guest worker quotas.)

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jvrossb
I wonder how many more are founded by children of immigrant parents. My YC
batch felt 1/3 immigrant founder, 1/3 child of immigrant founder. Quite the
overrepresentation since they each comprise just over 10% of the population:
[http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/foreignborn...](http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/foreignborn_population/cb10-159.html)

~~~
vecter
Not an exact answer to your question, but FTA:

    
    
        "Currently, more than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants"

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ahk
Skilled immigrants don't have much of a voter base, and the current set of US
leaders don't seem to be very far sighted.

It is also pretty hard to even conceive of a good crisis that can force
change.

So, yeah, pretty much a waste of time.

------
torrenegra
It appears that most of these entrepreneurs are documented immigrants, which
may be an argument in favor of keeping the current US immigration system.
However, it's important to keep a few things in mind:

a) Some of these entrepreneurs were able to stay in the US because they got
married to an American citizen (that's my case, BTW).

b) Many would-be-entrepreneurs that tried to migrate to the US end up setting
shops somewhere else because they couldn't stay legally.

c) Most entrepreneurs that are undocumented immigrants in the US (I know many
that own small businesses) have major issues scaling their businesses and
won't ever show up in articles like that one. For example: its extremely
difficult for them to get credit lines. Additionally, they won't ever talk to
the press because they are afraid, and legitimately so, of becoming a
deportation target.

The current immigration system in the US is broken. Ignorance and political-
driven xenophobia are not helping. I really wonder how long it will take for
most Americans to realize that although it used to be a privilege to migrate
to the US, the global dynamics have shifted. It's now a privilege for the US
the welcome many immigrants, specially technology and entrepreneurship-
oriented ones. Many other countries already figured that out and have adapted
their laws.

------
jotm
There's nothing shocking about this - increase the time frame to 20/50/100
years and the numbers will stay more or less the same...

It's just that in the US, you've got favorable laws and culture, existing
infrastructure, lots of investors willing to take a risk and a huge market to
begin with... it's the perfect starting ground for pretty much any business.

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jmtame
As a founder, this is one of the most frustrating things you may deal with:
having another founder who has to worry about visa problems.

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Sven7
As to the innovation centers of the tech industry, I'd like to see some more
decentralization of the hubs. As it evolved, the auto industry benefited
greatly from stuff that came out of Europe and Asia. Same cant be said of
tech.

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fiatmoney
Immigrants aren't homogeneous. What is the distribution of countries-of-origin
for these founders? Why does this imply that we should increase immigration
for groups not disproportionately likely to found successful companies?

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tlogan
What is % of Y combinator companies? From what I see it seems like much
smaller percentage - but could be also about 1/3.

