A column in Forbes reports on a study of 91 of the nation’s start-up companies valued at over $1 billion as of October 2018 (think Uber, Avant, SpaceX, etc.) which found that 50 of them (55%) of them have at least one immigrant founder.
Twenty-two percent of these companies were founded by individuals who came to the U.S. as international students, with six of them founded by former refugees. The immigrant-founded businesses have a collective value of $248 billion, and have created an average of 1200 jobs per company.
The column goes on to highlight troubling policy directions from the current administration that raise barriers to or discourage international graduate students and high tech professionals from coming to and staying in the U.S. In addition, drastic cuts to refugee admissions, and a proposed rule that, if enacted, would slash immediate family immigration, would deprive the nation of the new energy that immigrants of all types bring to the U.S.
We should think long and hard about whether the administration’s moves to restrict immigration of all kinds, from foreign professionals, to refugees, immediate family immigrants, and asylum seekers at the southern border, represent our nation’s values, or even, our economic interests.