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Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

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21–30 of 156 posts

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#21
I think there is some bias due to historical events.

Ww2 caused a lot of jewish immigrants to emmigrate from europe and some emigrated later from russia. They have been very successful in general. I am sure this particular population already skews the statistics already.

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#22
post #15

The publisher of this "Study" is from New American Economy, a think tank "fighting for smart federal, state, and local immigration policies that help grow our economy and create jobs for all Americans." So I don't think it is 100% neutral in terms of its view on immigrants.

But do you suspect the methodology, the results, or the conclusion were "faked" or inaccurate? Or do you consider it an accurate piece but suspect the reasons behind publishing it?

...And suddenly a wave of downvotes in less than 2 minutes. No justified concerns attached to them though.

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#23
post #15

The publisher of this "Study" is from New American Economy, a think tank "fighting for smart federal, state, and local immigration policies that help grow our economy and create jobs for all Americans." So I don't think it is 100% neutral in terms of its view on immigrants.

Do you have any criticism of the actual study or are you immediately dismissing it because you think the publisher is probably biased?

yes, they don't even link to their methodology in their interactive tool that this article is based on. The onus is on them to prove their point.

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#24
I've flagged this post because (IMHO):

  1) Doesn't belong on HN.
  2) Comments so far are unsubstantive -- ranging from "middlebrow dismissal" to flamebait.
  3) Doesn't appear to be conducive to any sort of useful discussion.
Edit: Clearly I've struck a nerve someplace.

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#25
post #15

The publisher of this "Study" is from New American Economy, a think tank "fighting for smart federal, state, and local immigration policies that help grow our economy and create jobs for all Americans." So I don't think it is 100% neutral in terms of its view on immigrants.

Serious question: what does a neutral view on immigrants look like? How does one take a view on immigrants without aligning with one side of the debate?

You bring up a valid point in identifying the authors of this study. I'm just not sure what a truly neutral position in that debate would look like.

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#26
But it isn't a proof that if the immigrants did not found these companies, someone local wouldn't have found them either.

Maybe it had taken some more time but, locals would have ended up setting up these either way.

A big maybe.

China is an example that screams, immigrants do not matter much for economic success.

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#27
post #21

I think there is some bias due to historical events. Ww2 caused a lot of jewish immigrants to emmigrate from europe and some emigrated later from russia. They have been very successful in general. I am sure this particular population already skews the statistics already.

I don't think many of those immigrants would be counted in this study. No founders would be in that group, and very few founders would have parents in that group. Possibly grandparents, but the study is only counting first and second generations.

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#28
post #18

Definitely some selection bias. Many wealthy people in the US are immigrants. Also, many wealthy people probably choose to immigrate to the US to start their business because of lower barriers to entry. EDIT: Also, if this [1] is correct, 13.7% of people in the US are immigrants. So how many people are immigrants OR first-gen? And since ANY of the founders can be immigrants/first-gen, more founders means higher likel…

Not all these people were wealthy before they arrived; Andy Grove of Intel was a Hungarian refugee, for example.

Similarly, not everyone is less than one sigma away from the mean in a normal distribution.

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#29

I've flagged this post because (IMHO): 1) Doesn't belong on HN. 2) Comments so far are unsubstantive -- ranging from "middlebrow dismissal" to flamebait. 3) Doesn't appear to be conducive to any sort of useful discussion. Edit: Clearly I've struck a nerve someplace.

This article seems pretty relevant. 4 of the 5 tech companies I've worked for were founded by immigrants. This website is about entrepreneurship, and talking about the pipeline of entrepreneurs seems no different than talking about the pipeline of say women and POCs in the software engineering pipeline. It might be controversial, but we have to have these discussions.

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#30
post #9

Immigrants is such a broad term its nearly meaningless. From the article: "The share of the most successful and globally-recognized U.S. companies that have immigrant founders is growing, according to NAE's Hanna Siegel and Andrew Lim, while the Trump administration has tried to make it more difficult for immigrants to come to the U.S., often claiming that they take American jobs and lower wages." No mention what typ…

"Since our first New American Fortune 500 report in 2011 [..]" "In this year's brief, we update our analysis, looking at the New American companies that made the 2019 Fortune 500 list."

So the methodology, even a table listing every founder is in the linked 2011 report https://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/0...

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