[ssz]

This isn't surprising to me since most of us upend our lives just to be in US, so we have more of an incentive to try harder to make it.

[jerlam]

And people know that the US is friendlier to startups/business than other countries, so founders will come to the US. They didn't just happen to be here.

[9rx]

Does the "I can always go back whence I came" also lower the perceived risk? If a domestically-born founder fails they aren't apt to have anywhere else they can go, thus having to stick around to deal with the fallout.

[netsharc]

I can imagine the opposite "This place is so nice and I don't want to go back to what I perceive as a hellhole", and so they work harder to succeed.

[linotype]

Ah yeah, if lazy Americans would just try harder, they’d be richer.

[s1artibartfast]

tons of studies show children of bottom income quintile immigrants have far more economic mobility than non-immigrants children in the bottom quintile, so there is something to it, even if it is not as simple as laziness.