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Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

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Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#81

Post by _ea1k »

bardworx wrote: post #75
Robelius wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immigrants are a self-selecting group. The barriers you have to cross leave the most motivated individuals/families capable of coming here. The immigrating generation, at least from my experience, come with the intention of setting up their children with better possibilities. Their lives revolve around making their kids hard workers in school, which transfers over into their character. There's a joke in my community…

> Immigrants are a self-selecting group I find this offensive, as an immigrant. Also, my mother (and sister) worked in a sweat shop (they needle thread tags on imported/fake clothes underneath a laundromat) to put food on the table while going to school. My mother didn't "sacrifice" everything for us, she worked hard; became a programmer; and didn't allow my sibling and I to work less then her. > There's a joke in my…

>> Immigrants are a self-selecting group

> I find this offensive, as an immigrant.

I am baffled as to what part of that is offensive. That immigrants choose to immigrate and put in the hard work to make that work out? Or are you objecting to the ideas that there are high barriers to immigration?

Maybe I am just misreading something, but I am confused.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#82

Post by krapp »

nativedude wrote: post #59

We're talking theses United States right?! So unless you're talking 'bout Native Americans then 99%+ of all companies since 1776 have been created by Immigrants. Think about folks!

If you want to be that pedantic, Native Americans are immigrants as well, they just happened to immigrate thousands of years ago.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#83

Post by frandroid »

> These 44 companies, the study says, are collectively valued at $168 billion and create an average of roughly 760 jobs per company in the U.S.

$168B divided by 760 employees: $220M of value created per job.

If there's no error in the numbers, that means that employees at these startups are tremendously underpaid, in spite of probably making above-market salaries.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#84

Post by klipt »

ori_b wrote: post #67
belltaco wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because many of them came to the US to study because of being able to work here through the OPT/H1/GreenCard/citizen route. Same with many top professors, researchers and tech execs like Nadella, Gundotra, Pichai etc.And many people on this list too like the inventor of USB etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_Americans

> Same with many top professors, researchers and tech execs like Nadella, Gundotra, Pichai etc.And many people on this list too like the inventor of USB etc. Some of them might have, but the H1B is an awful avenue for this. You are not allowed any side businesses while you are employed on an H1B visa (and you can't be self employed using it). If you are Indian, you are looking at what is currently an 11 year processi…

> If you want to expand immigration, a simpler, faster path to permanent residency is essential.

Comprehensive immigration reform was supposed to do that, adopting a more streamlined points system like Canada and Australia, but of course the bill ended up covering amnesty for undocumented immigrants too and the whole thing got shot down.

Unfortunately for most people an H1-B is the best path to a green card, and only once you have a green card are you free to be an entrepreneur etc.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#85

Post by hibikir »

falsestprophet wrote: post #24

"These 44 companies, the study says, are collectively valued at $168 billion and create an average of roughly 760 jobs per company." Firstly, that's 33,000 jobs or about 0.0003% of the US workforce, so hardly the backbone of the economy. Secondly, the H1B program, the subject of the article, is not an immigration program but a guest worker program. Generally, H1B workers leave the country and don't go on to start com…

Nope, the H1B visa is THE immigration program. Every university will tell you that.

The route used to go like this: Studying in an American university will get you an F1 visa, which gets you either a first job or an internship. Then, if you are any good, the only sensible way for your employer to retain you is to file for H1B. Back when I did it, it was really easy to get it (as opposed to today's 1/3 lottery). At that point, you can say that you want a green card. Nobody is going to be crazy enough to sponsor someone for a Green Card if they aren't working there already, if just because it's a relatively long process in the best of cases, and many years the worst. So we get H1Bs so that companies will be OK sponsoring us. Once your green card process is pending, the visa stops being limited: You just have to wait as many years as it might take to get to the front of the green card queue. Then you will be approved, and become a permanent resident.

Today, getting the H1B is actually HARDER than getting the green card, but getting one first is pretty much mandatory due to the delays. This is what makes the H1B the main road in. If you look at the employment based green cards handed out every year, a very large percentage comes from H1s, or maybe L1s(which only works in a company that has an international subsidiary)

There are H1Bs that go back home, but they are those that get laid off at the wrong time, so they give up on the green card process.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#86

Post by dang »

roflchoppa wrote: post #42
agmohit01 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright. Let me list down some immigrants who came here on H1B visa. 1. Jyoti Bansal - Founder of AppDynamics The guy in the above mentioned article was on H1B. 2. Kevin Systrom - Cofounder of Instagram was on H1B visa. 3. Jay Scaler - Founder of ZScaler an unicorn, was on H1B visa 4. Vinod Khosla - Founder of Sun Microsystems and well known VC was on H1B visa initially Will list down some more in some time.

fuck Vinod Khosla

Please don't do this here.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#87

Post by dalke »

keerthiko wrote: post #47
tinco wrote: post #13

I'm not a U.S. citizen, and obviously one day I hope to be one of those U.S. Billion-Dollar startup founders and I would appreciate a VISA if it would help me achieve that, but there's something shaky with the premise here. Why does the U.S. need to depend on the ~80.000 odd first order immigrants per year to generate that amount of wealth. Couldn't the U.S. somehow draw those ambitious out of its current population?…

It's not (exclusively) about being poor or about drawing ambition from the current population. It's about having a vastly different perspective and background and understanding of how the world works. It's about being more ambitious than the opportunities presented to them in their home country, and having the tenacity to search for better ones on the other side of the world. This by definition makes them better entr…

"vastly different perspective"

I know it's popular to think that, but just how vastly different is a Canadian immigrant founder from a US one? One of the people highlighted in the report is "Garrett Camp, an immigrant from Canada", who co-founded Uber. What perspective do you think the 8 Canadians on the list of 61 bring to an organization? Might a rural minority US citizen be more likely to contribute more diversity than an urban majority Canadian immigrant?

Certainly Canada is not "on the other side of the world". Most of the Canadian population lives closer to the lower 48 than the Alaskan population, so I don't understand what "by definition makes them better entrepreneurs than nearly any American" as you commented.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#88

Post by davidw »

jonny_eh wrote: post #56
jdminhbg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if people could 'emigrate' from Detroit to California? They can, there's no restriction of movement within the US.

Ya, and it happens a lot, and yet it's not controversial at all. But allowing someone to move from Vancouver to Seattle is for some reason.

> yet it's not controversial at all.

Sadly, it is: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-29/about-100-...

The workers from other states "took errr jaaaawbs"

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#89

Post by klipt »

chris_wot wrote: post #5
mchahn wrote: post #3

So those immigrants are taking all that VC money away from me! (Kidding, kidding, kidding, just a Trump joke).

Damned Australians.

Fun fact: the E-3 visa is basically an H1-B, but with a separate quota, for Australian citizens only. It was created by Bush to thank Australia for helping the US in the Iraq war.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#90

Post by force_reboot »

mchahn wrote: post #3

So those immigrants are taking all that VC money away from me! (Kidding, kidding, kidding, just a Trump joke).

And yet this is what the majority of people in on HN are arguing here. So you have to ask, why is a certain viewpoint laughable when applied to illegal immigrants from South America, but reasonable when applied to H-1B visas?
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