The list of American companies founded by immigrants has gotten pretty impressive.
It’s a wiki, so feel free to edit if you can improve it.
In this editorial in the Detroit News, Alex Nowrasteh of OpenMarket.org makes a strong, related point:
Of the eight American citizens who received Nobel Prizes in the science categories, five are immigrants to the United States.
This should be a counterweight to the persistent critics of immigration, but it remained unknown. In the immigration debate, the contribution of highly educated and skilled immigrants to American technology and science is often ignored.
One-quarter of American Nobel Prize winners since 1901 have been immigrants. Today, a third of all the scientists and engineers in Silicon Valley are immigrants or foreign-born. Furthermore, 40 percent of the Ph.D. scientists working in the United States are foreign-born. Unfortunately, our immigration laws ignore these facts.
The whole editorial is worth reading and says it better than I could.
America has always had the most dynamic culture, and the intelligence and customs and drive of immigrants have always powered that dynamism.
In the face of clear and overwhelming data that immigration is good for the country and the economy, the anti-immigration crowd are simply cowards.
Posted on 5 December 2009
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All companies not founded by American Indians were founded by immigrants. There is nothing impressive about it.
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Comparing the ‘conquest’ of America to modern immigration… hmm.
Anyway. I want to raise a point about the illegal immigrants in America – they form the workforce that cleans the toilets and handles the garbage (among other things, of course). Economically it makes sense for companies to employ these kind of people, because they are cheap and disposable.
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The transistor was invented by 1 British bloke, a Chinese national who emigrated to the US and a US citizen from a German family, at bell labs in the US…
I think for all and any achievements of immigrants to the US, this stands alone as a prime example of immigration being important to the US…
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Hi Nat,
Alberto Sangiovanni Vicentelli is not the founder of Synopsys. Aart de Geus is (look him up on Wikipedia). However, you can still put Synopsys in your “founded by immigrants” column; de Geus is Dutch, though he spent most of his youth i(and got his master’s degree) in Switzerland.
Prof. S-V has been going around taking credit for the accomplishments of his students, and his consulting role in the founding of Cadence and Synopsys, to the point where he is regularly (and falsely) credited as a founder. But you don’t found companies by sitting on the sidelines giving advice.
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Joe, thanks for the feedback. The page is a wiki, feel free to edit it!
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Nat,
But aren’t all of them “legal immigrants”?
I don’t think there were any anti-legal-immigrant sentiment in this country. It is rather against “illegal immigrant”.
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The idea behind the startup visa movement is to make it easier to become a legal immigrant. That’s not so easy today.
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The fastest growing group of illegal immigrants in California are Indians, most of whom are highly skilled and overstay their H-1B visas in hopes of attaining a green card.
As this article states:
“‘They come here as professionals, most often in the H-1B program, and given the fluctuations of Silicon Valley, the business climate, these guys lose their jobs. They get laid off or they wager their hands on a start-up coming in,’ Jack said. ‘The problem with the H-1B program is, you can’t have any significant time between jobs” without falling out of legal status.’”
The anti-immigration groups in the US have done a good job at masquerading as anti-illegal immigrants. But FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA are anti-immigration across the board. For instance, Mark Krikorian Executive Director of CIS, wrote a book entitled KEEP THEM OUT: THE CASE AGAINST ILLEGAL AND LEGAL IMMIGRATION.
What’s even odder, and was exposed by Wall Street Journal journalist Jason Riley, was that these anti-immigrant groups have a radical environmentalist anti-human ideology behind them. Their founders advocate for a one-child policy and believe the population of the US should not be greater than 100 million.
The anti-immigration crowd has disguised themselves as “right of center” and anti-illegal immigrant. Both contentions are untrue.
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Actually most people lumped under “those who oppose immigration” oppose only non-white immigration. Thus you (Nat) argue the wrong point. Or even more accurately, they oppose non-white immigrants as well as immigrants of any race who also go on welfare of one form or another — and I include taking university admission slots that for the most part Americans are forced to pay for.
A good book on the immigration issue is Alien Nation by … an immigrant! — from England, one Peter Brimelow. See http://www.vdare.com/alien_nation
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