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

wsj.com

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

#131

Post by winter_blue »

silentElephant wrote: post #116
winter_blue wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These are wealthy upper class people coming to the most logical place They usually need to get an H-1B visa as part of the immigration process. You are insinuating that "wealthy upper class" can immigrate without obeying visa rules. That is ridiculous. > A foreigner that can afford elite credentials Many of their families probably can barely afford to pay for college in the U.S., but they scoop up the money to do s…

He's not referring to H1Bs. http://goldsea.com/Text/index.php?id=6205 Sehat Sutardja. One of many such examples. All you needed to do was fly your pregnant wife over to get American citizenship...but that's changing now.

> All you needed to do was fly your pregnant wife over to get American citizenship...but that's changing now.

This statement is steeped in such ignorance. You get absolutely no immigration benefit whatsoever by having a U.S. citizen child.

If you are talking about a child's citizenship, then FYI, birthright citizenship (part of the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution) has not been repealed.

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

#132

Post by pandaman »

zmitri wrote: post #123
pandaman wrote: post #7

The article is advocating for increasing H1-B caps. I wonder what does H1-B (a non-immigrant visa, which does not allow running your own business) has to do with immigrants founding billion dollar startups other than them using it to acquire cheap labor?

Increasing H1B caps does help immigrant founders who aren't already millionaires. I've been on an H1B visa and I've started my own startup. You can be on an H1B for your own company so long as it's clear there is a board that can fire you. There's two ways to go about making it easier for immigrant founders to work legally in America: create a new startup visa class that is likely ridiculously nebulous, or increase t…

There are more ways. For example, preventing bodyshops like Tata et al from taking all visas every year. While it's profitable to abuse the system the system is going to be abused. It's not like USCIS is oblivious to what's going on, if it were told to enforce the law, I am pretty sure, it would have complied.

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

#133

Post by adventured »

winter_blue wrote: post #127
digikata wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you can basically pay to immigrate via an EB-5 visa which grants a green card for the right amount & kind of capital investment. https://www.uscis.gov/eb-5

Are you kidding me? You need to invest at least $500,000 for the EB-5. Most families don't have $500,000 to just invest in order to get their child a green card. A lot of international students I know worked part-time on-campus (permitted on the F-1 student visa) in order lessen the burden on their parents. Their families struggled to put together the money to pay for college in the U.S. I went to Stony Brook Univers…

You're reacting very strongly in each reply. It's a bit over the top, given you said this:

> You are insinuating that "wealthy upper class" can immigrate without obeying visa rules. That is ridiculous.

The parent you're replying to never said most families could afford that. The parent was indicating that you can buy your way into America, which you in fact can do. The wealthy upper class can buy their way in, and do this all the time (see: wealthy Chinese buying their way into the US).

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

#134

Post by pandaman »

ojbyrne wrote: post #107
pandaman wrote: post #7

The article is advocating for increasing H1-B caps. I wonder what does H1-B (a non-immigrant visa, which does not allow running your own business) has to do with immigrants founding billion dollar startups other than them using it to acquire cheap labor?

H1-B is actually a "dual-intent" visa and is often used for people on non-immigrant visas to move towards getting a green card.

I suggest you read the H1-B entry at wikipedia. "Dual intent" does not make it an immigrant visa, it just allows you to get one without proving the lack of immigration intent.

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

#135

Post by tonyhb »

dalke wrote: post #117

In a slightly older thread concerning this topic, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11306290 I made some objections to this analysis. I think there's a fundamental problem in how to interpret this analysis. It says that a company is founded by an immigrant if there is at least one immigrant founder. This means that if 1 of 10 founders is foreign born, then it classified as immigrant founded. An aggregate calcul…

Conversely, if a two person company were founded by two immigrants it would beat the odds. The chances of two founders meeting, working together, then creating a 1B+ company in the adversary of worse contacts is smaller.

In fact, moving to this country and making a 1B+ country takes more work than being born here. Take a look at statistics at people from well-off backgrounds or with contacts vs people with nothing.

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

#136

Post by winter_blue »

adventured wrote: post #133
winter_blue wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding me? You need to invest at least $500,000 for the EB-5. Most families don't have $500,000 to just invest in order to get their child a green card. A lot of international students I know worked part-time on-campus (permitted on the F-1 student visa) in order lessen the burden on their parents. Their families struggled to put together the money to pay for college in the U.S. I went to Stony Brook Univers…

You're reacting very strongly in each reply. It's a bit over the top, given you said this: > You are insinuating that "wealthy upper class" can immigrate without obeying visa rules. That is ridiculous. The parent you're replying to never said most families could afford that. The parent was indicating that you can buy your way into America, which you in fact can do. The wealthy upper class can buy their way in, and do…

He was responding to the article, but the WSJ article is not about the super-rich moving here. It is about the vast majority of skilled immigrants who have to go through the H-1B visa as a step in their immigration process.

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

#137

Post by girvo »

winter_blue wrote: post #127
digikata wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you can basically pay to immigrate via an EB-5 visa which grants a green card for the right amount & kind of capital investment. https://www.uscis.gov/eb-5

Are you kidding me? You need to invest at least $500,000 for the EB-5. Most families don't have $500,000 to just invest in order to get their child a green card. A lot of international students I know worked part-time on-campus (permitted on the F-1 student visa) in order lessen the burden on their parents. Their families struggled to put together the money to pay for college in the U.S. I went to Stony Brook Univers…

I don't understand this reply at all; you said "that "wealthy upper class" can immigrate without obeying visa rules. That is ridiculous.", and your parent reply pointed out that it's not ridiculous, it's literally true.

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

#138

Post by zamalek »

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?…

H1B is a giant sorting algorithm, at least so far as immigration through a company is concerned. You have these companies footing the bill because they value these people. This means that some of the best hires and potential entrepreneurs are being naturally selected.

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

#140

Post by adventured »

aviwl wrote: post #99
Dr_tldr wrote: post #9

It's no secret that the continuing economic dominance of the US is not due to a post-WW2 windfall or the unique capabilities of Americans, but more to the ability of the US to attract and retain the very best, and then subsequently give them unique opportunities. Few nativists are opposed to the best and the brightest (and the already-wealthy) coming to the US in very, very small numbers, but what they don't realize…

What factors do you think contribute to the ability of the US to attract the best?

- A culture that strongly promotes entrepreneurial activity and doesn't lambast you for failing at starting a business.

- Venture capital on every corner. Most new businesses are started with capital from friends, family, or other local semi-well-off people (think: the doctors etc. that helped fund Warren Buffett's first company with initial investment). It's extremely common in the US, people don't find it strange.

- Large scale venture capital, eg Silicon Valley or NY.

- The best universities, by far. Beyond the concentration of talent that places like Stanford or MIT have, the US produces immense amounts of research and innovation from its top ~100 universities, which then frequently spin-off into new businesses. Bill Gates has estimated that the US produces 1/2 of all the scientific output on earth.

- Very enshrined protections around freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. This has been critical for companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Friendster, LinkedIn, Reddit, Digg, Blogger, Medium, Wordpress, Movable Type, LiveJournal and a thousand others. Relatively strong property rights protections also help.

- An approach to creating new things that mostly says that things are legal until or unless they're named to be illegal. Basically: do it, don't ask permission. It's why PayPal, Uber and Airbnb were able to break the rules and get away with it for so long. Despite the criticism you'll see of this on HN, it's invaluable. Otherwise, you have a system where you must seek permission for every single thing.

- Common language, common currency and a mostly unified large market under one federal system. Free movement between states allowing talent to go where it needs / wants to. Starting in the US enables you to rush to scale much faster than you can in almost any other market, a position of strength from which you can then go after every other market.

- Massive rewards. The US owns around 43% of all global wealth, with among the highest median incomes, and the fifth highest GDP per capita - matched with three hundred million people that have a high rate of consumer activity. That enables very outsized results.

- Extremely high productivity and high technology adoption across most industries. The US economy remains among the top nations in terms of productivity (as witnessed by its very high GDP per capita), despite its size.

- Plentiful and relatively cheap energy / energy costs. The US is the world's second largest manufacturer. If you need to make something physical in the US, you can still do it for the most part.

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