Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 156 posts

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

#31

Post by harryh »

The way they handle companies with > 1 founder is a bit weird. If there is at least one immigrant / 1st gen American it's counted in the "founded by" category. And then the 45% is taken by looking at things just at the company level.

I think it would tell a clearer picture to count the total number of founders and count the percentage of people who were immigrants / 1st gen americans. Then, to give context, you would want to compare this number to the % of people living in the US who are immigrants / 1st gen Americans.

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

#32

Post by tehlike »

onion2k wrote: post #27
tehlike wrote: 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.

Sergey brin emigrated from russia due to rising antisemitism in russia. That was the first example i thought of. I dont know the ratio, it was a hunch.

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

#33

Post by qntty »

onion2k wrote: post #27
tehlike wrote: 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.

No founders of Fortune 500 companies would be in that group? Why do you say that?

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

#36

Post by jdavis703 »

save_ferris wrote: post #25
kediz wrote: 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.

There's a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt out there. Everything from "immigrants commit crimes" to "I work at companies that treat H1Bs terribly" to "no country has ever had open borders." At the end of the day many of these statements are provable or disprovable by facts, which is what a neutral position would look like.

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

#37

Post by onion2k »

qntty wrote: post #33
onion2k wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No founders of Fortune 500 companies would be in that group? Why do you say that?

You're absolutely right. I'm wrong. It's very likely some people would be in that group.

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

#38

Post by 256 »

gingabriska wrote: post #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.

There are a lot of other differences between America and China that make this a terrible comparison.

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

#40

Post by keketi »

Some of the companies are quite old and have a complicated history of mergers and acquisitions. For example both AT&T and Verizon are descendants of Bell Telephone Company, established in 1879.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_AT%26T

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Communications

Post reply on HN