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

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

#131
Child of an immigrant?

Come on, let's add then grandchildren, friends, lovers, people from the same middle school etc. Most of the time those kids are 100% Americans, who often might not even know the language of their parents.

Source: I'm an immigrant, and the situation: "kids are speaking Russian with me, but between themselves they prefer to speak English, and don't ask me about their writing skills in Russian" is very common among my circle.

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

#132
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine, you're still a valid part of the immigration discussion. For example as an American when I go to Canada I get more hassle than when I'm in Europe. If anything I'd assume it would be easier to go between Canada and the U.S. which are a lot more culturally similar than say Germany and France.

Fascinating. Ill admit I've never traveled to Europe. What part is easier? My wife (an American citizen) has gone to Canada fairly frequently and clearing the custom is a quick formality. My narrow minded self can only imagine that short of not having a customs at all, it can't get a whole lot easier.

In Europe it's one or two questions (e.g. "how long are you staying?" and "why are you coming here?"). In Canada it's dozens of questions for 5-10 minutes. TBH as an American the same thing happened whenever I came back home to the US so who knows maybe I'm on some kind of list. At least in the US it's stopped now that I have Global Entry.

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

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree that those statements are demonstrably false, but you’d be immediately accused of pro-immigration sentiment by elements of the right for taking such a position, which is why even discussing this issue is difficult.

Facts no longer drive these conversations, and it’s pretty unsettling to watch.

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

#134
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have a hypothesis related to this. I believe that surviving being a child refugee in America is something that really brings out the grit in a person. Seeing the things your family goes through to provide a normal life for you in a strange and new place, overcoming ethnic biases, language barriers, and life on government assistance really brings out the attitudes of drive and perseverance toward reaching one's goal…

Or maybe those people feel grateful to escape hell they experienced home and take advantage of all the opportunities America provides for them? That's surely true for part of my family that emigrated to US. You kinda feel you get a new shot at life if you suddenly find yourself in a country so rich, full of opportunities and free as USA, especially if you came from war zone or a communist country.

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

#135

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…

Yup. By this criteria, if I (an adult-aged Canadian) decided to take my startup to Silicon Valley, it would be an 'immigrant' founded startup. My situation would also be completely unlike the scenarios that are dominating the immigration debate in the US at the moment.

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

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People losing their minds over this would sound a lot more sincere and principled if they'd been even half as upset about Obama placing kids in actual cages with a much higher per capita death rate. Now they just sound like ideologues grinding a political axe. But maybe that's just my differing opinion.

The policy before Trump was to hold children who arrive unaccompanied at the border and find their family to reunite them with. The policy under Trump is a zero-tolerance separate all children from their parents policy. Trump HHS currently cannot account for around 6000 children they have separated. This is new. The new rules around immigration seem to be focused around overwhelming the system's capacity for processi…

If you call them concentration camps, if you call them private prisons, if you call them anything besides detention facilities, you likely haven't thought about it much, because only a detention center will allow you to sign up to be let go back at the border. "Hey, I've decided this sucks, I'd like to head back home," is something you only say when being processed at the border in a queue.

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

#137
post #42

I think problem is not in immigration but in type of immigration.So it would be nice not to stop by just say immigrants founded companies.It should be examined how many of that immigrants are highly educated and have parents like that and how many just enter USA in uncotrolled immigration.

I would expect that the type of immigrants who typically enjoy lots of economic success are from middle to upper socioeconomic groups with cultural values that encourage discipline, hard work and getting ahead. In many cases it appears that children that succeed are from success oriented immigrant groups that maintain cultural cohesion in the US. Cultural cohesion is difficult to maintain through the second and third generation amid the corrosive effects of US mass culture. Nobel prize winners show the same pattern.

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

#138
This is only an issue because Donald Trump is misrepresented as being racist and anti-immigration when he has only talked of illegal immigration and the problem of Islamic migrants (ie, the Islamic version of democracy which is not compatible with any Western Liberal democracy).

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

#139
post #58

This "study" is biased and taken out of context. I don't think anyone has issues with immigrants like most liberal medias portrait we do. I am an immigrant and I have no issue with immigrant that come here legally. What I do have a problem is the invasion of illegal immigrations, yes, it is an invasion. The congresses here is stopping the president taking action because he is in a different political party.

Could you explain what you mean by "invasion"?

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

#140

In case it's unclear from the title, the study showed that 45% of Fortune 500 companies had at least 1 founder that was an immigrant or child of an immigrant. For example, Facebook is considered "founded by an immigrant" in this categorization, which sort of surprised me at first.

Agreed. I had to double check to see if Zuckerberg was an immigrant. He's not. But at least one of Facebook's founders is. You're right - it is misleading.
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