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.
I won't believe it until we start seeing the schools of the children of the successful put arbitrary and even petulant roadblocks in the way of the students, and deliberately teaching to far below the level the students can handle.
Anecdotally speaking, as an American immigrant to Sweden, I do not think the adversity I faced has made me as successful as I would have been had I stayed the US.
Certainly some succeed despite adversity, and even draw strength from it, but to highlight those few is to make faceless the many who did not.
In any case, the report argues that diversity leads to robustness which leads to success. This is a very different view, designed more, I think, to appeal to the current pro-diversity trend rather than a group which might prefer the meaning behind "spare the rod, spoil the child."