That doesn't surprise me in the least. Immigrants have one leg up over the competition: they have generally very little to lose and everything to gain. They have also already self-selected for being people that are not risk adverse (they just left everything behind to start a new life) and they are executing on their dreams.
I often see people that rant against immigrants in general and I always wonder how they would react if you explained to them that their old age pension likely depends on some not yet born immigrant and his or her children.
I think there are some close cousins of "nothing to lose" that are at work too. As an immigrant your out of your own system and its expectations.
Say you come from a background where your reference group mostly follows a path of: go to high school, go to 3 year Uni, travel for a year, then either start climbing corporate ladders or more Uni, etc. Obviously, not everyone follows the exact same path, but there is a lot of similarity. This peers group might be people your own age that you know. Older siblings, parents or even mostly theoretical. Most people have something like it and it is how they create their expectations for themselves.
Taking a year "off" after high school would put you "behind" your peer group. Figuring out a way of finishing Uni a year early would put you ahead. People with strong peer groups cluster around the median. This applies to performance as well as choices. I don't know how well the psychological mechanisms are understood, but I guess our self expectations are both very important determinant of performance and choices and very influenced by peer groups.
Derek Sivers wrote a good article called There is no speed limit.^ In a nutshell, a cool musician called Kimo Williams taught him 2 years with of Berkley music curriculum in five lessons when he was 17. He set an intense pace and expected him to keep up. Just because it takes 2 years in a college context doesn't mean it needs to take 2 years.
Immigrants are islands, relatively. They are on a path with few peers. Taking a few years to do something won't put you behind because there is nothing to put you behind of. There are fewer safe choices that an immigrant is hesitant to deviate from. This is good for making outliers.
Would be interesting to see the income distribution of the families of these VC backed founders. Most if not all of these founders will be exceptionally well-to-do. The cost of going to an elite university program outside of their home country is staggering without financial aid. In any event, not (by any means) a sample from which to extrapolate from.
That being said, more power to them for overcoming the still very large risks and challenges it takes to make it even that far. I know from personal experience how hard it is for many of these people to contribute to US society/economy after they finish their programs. The red tape is obnoxious (without institutional support or sponsorship).
These entrepreneurs all appear to be legal immigrants. Most of the "ranting" in the U.S. is towards the law-breaking immigrants who now want amnesty. There is a consensus in America in favor of legal immigration, the political fight is over the inability of America to secure its borders and how to assimilate the millions of people who entered the country illegally.
Immigrants have plenty to lose. Take my own example. Living in America for a few years (first as a graduate student and then as a software developer), I have made strong connections and a social life here. I lose everything if I don't make it.
There are two big problems for immigrants:
The Green Card process takes ~10 years. Imagine staying put in one company for 10 years. The legal immigration system is so haplessly broken that if I lose my job (say, late in the GC process), I get kicked out. My wife can't work. I cannot have kids without them confusing nationalities. I cannot buy a house. Immigrants are living on a thin strand, sacrificing a lot.
Motivated immigrants, who wish to start a company, cannot do so either because there are no visas to do so easily. Until we get a Green Card, we cannot quit our jobs and go on a road trip of the US, like my colleagues do. Realize that there is an opportunity cost, a small window, in which we all are highly motivated to start something. We immigrants typically waste that window in simply waiting for the Green Card to arrive (all-the-while, hoping we don't get laid-off).
The loss of this opportunity is one of the biggest reasons why many choose to head back to their own countries to start companies.
In summary, Immigrants have A LOT to lose. Grass is not green on this side either.
Source: Me. An Immigrant working in SV who's not allowed to start a company because of the ridiculous immigration system.
This seems a bit of a generalization, or dare I say, a romanticization. It's supposing you know the motivations driving a group of people whose only shared characteristic is that they weren't born in the United States. In many ways, it's as much a generalization as the "people that rant against immigrants in general".
Why is this not news to me? Every immigrant I know is harder working than every us born person I know. America - wealth has made us lazy/complacent and loss of morals has made us unfocused, entitlement minded busybodies.
One thing I always find, even when dealing with USCIS, or press, or really anyone regarding this matter, is that only very few people truly wish to make it difficult for immigrant founders to stay in the country. In fact, I have never met anyone that gave me the impression that they didn't want me around. The problem is that immigration law is slow moving and the adjudicators at the USCIS need to follow it to the dot, even if it was written before a lot of the technology we use today was invented and the world was a much less global place. And now they are rolling the issue of startup founders and high skilled labor into the massive immigration reform, where it is likely to fall through the cracks or even be used as a bipartisan bargaining chip/concession.
Personally, I think a great way to level the playing field wrt starting businesses for immigrant founders would be to allow all holders of employment visas a grace period during which they can stay in the country after they quit their job. This grace period could depend on the type of visa, your degree, your income (read taxes), the time you spent in the US, whatever. Then you can start a business without first having to secure your own presence, which is very difficult (because you don't yet have a real company) and expensive to do. A similar arrangement exists for study visas and is extremely effective in keeping college and grad school graduates in the country after school.
Uh look, this is a false equivalency. Nobody is complaining about the brilliant immigrants who are founding companies.
People are upset about using immigrant labor as price competition to depress wages and capture middle class income to be transferred to the wealthy.
We all see this all the time--companies hire legal immigrant labor or import H1B's to pay 80% of the prevailing wage, meanwhile a massive and unnecessary management structure compensates itself lavishly.
This is a classic "commons" problem. It's advantageous for any individual company, but when everyone does it, it leads to the tragedy of the commons. In this case that tragedy is the collapse of the American consumer. He's being attack by high health costs, food costs, energy costs, regulatory burden, grift from financial institutions, education costs and he has no more money to spend at Waltmart-- the guys who caused the problem in the first place.
That says very little. There are such a wide range of immigrants: young immigrants, older immigrants, poor immigrants, wealthy immigrants, undocumented immigrants, documented with a green card. If someone relatively wealthy immigrates here and uses the "millionaire's visa" and invests in a business, they get a green card. Well, that counts toward the statistic.
Also, the article has it TOTALLY WRONG about immigration history. Immigration was relatively loose until the Civil War, and then it was slowly closed until in the late 1800s, restrictions really increased substantially until the 1940s, particularly for Asians. Then, after WW2 it eased up, and in 1965 racial discrimination in immigration quotas was made illegal by the Civil Rights Act.
That created a new phase of global immigration, and things stayed the same until 1986 with the IRCA. That closed off some forms of immigration, specifically affecting illegal immigration. In the same time frame, it became easier for wealthy entrepreneurs to immigrate (mainly the ones from Hong Kong), and then H1B started, and it became easier for technically skilled workers to get worker visas and later green cards.
So it's not as the article said, that the doors were wide open, and then they have slowly been closing. That is at best an error, and at worst, a total deception. After reading that, I stopped, because if the writer can't get that basic history correct, they don't know squat.
(I should add that I am in favor of increasing immigration, but opposed to the current trend of expanding guest worker quotas.)
I wonder how many more are founded by children of immigrant parents. My YC batch felt 1/3 immigrant founder, 1/3 child of immigrant founder. Quite the overrepresentation since they each comprise just over 10% of the population: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/foreignborn...
It appears that most of these entrepreneurs are documented immigrants, which may be an argument in favor of keeping the current US immigration system. However, it's important to keep a few things in mind:
a) Some of these entrepreneurs were able to stay in the US because they got married to an American citizen (that's my case, BTW).
b) Many would-be-entrepreneurs that tried to migrate to the US end up setting shops somewhere else because they couldn't stay legally.
c) Most entrepreneurs that are undocumented immigrants in the US (I know many that own small businesses) have major issues scaling their businesses and won't ever show up in articles like that one. For example: its extremely difficult for them to get credit lines. Additionally, they won't ever talk to the press because they are afraid, and legitimately so, of becoming a deportation target.
The current immigration system in the US is broken. Ignorance and political-driven xenophobia are not helping. I really wonder how long it will take for most Americans to realize that although it used to be a privilege to migrate to the US, the global dynamics have shifted. It's now a privilege for the US the welcome many immigrants, specially technology and entrepreneurship-oriented ones. Many other countries already figured that out and have adapted their laws.
There's nothing shocking about this - increase the time frame to 20/50/100 years and the numbers will stay more or less the same...
It's just that in the US, you've got favorable laws and culture, existing infrastructure, lots of investors willing to take a risk and a huge market to begin with... it's the perfect starting ground for pretty much any business.
As to the innovation centers of the tech industry, I'd like to see some more decentralization of the hubs. As it evolved, the auto industry benefited greatly from stuff that came out of Europe and Asia. Same cant be said of tech.
Immigrants aren't homogeneous. What is the distribution of countries-of-origin for these founders? Why does this imply that we should increase immigration for groups not disproportionately likely to found successful companies?
[+] [-] jacquesm|12 years ago|reply
I often see people that rant against immigrants in general and I always wonder how they would react if you explained to them that their old age pension likely depends on some not yet born immigrant and his or her children.
[+] [-] netcan|12 years ago|reply
Say you come from a background where your reference group mostly follows a path of: go to high school, go to 3 year Uni, travel for a year, then either start climbing corporate ladders or more Uni, etc. Obviously, not everyone follows the exact same path, but there is a lot of similarity. This peers group might be people your own age that you know. Older siblings, parents or even mostly theoretical. Most people have something like it and it is how they create their expectations for themselves.
Taking a year "off" after high school would put you "behind" your peer group. Figuring out a way of finishing Uni a year early would put you ahead. People with strong peer groups cluster around the median. This applies to performance as well as choices. I don't know how well the psychological mechanisms are understood, but I guess our self expectations are both very important determinant of performance and choices and very influenced by peer groups.
Derek Sivers wrote a good article called There is no speed limit.^ In a nutshell, a cool musician called Kimo Williams taught him 2 years with of Berkley music curriculum in five lessons when he was 17. He set an intense pace and expected him to keep up. Just because it takes 2 years in a college context doesn't mean it needs to take 2 years.
Immigrants are islands, relatively. They are on a path with few peers. Taking a few years to do something won't put you behind because there is nothing to put you behind of. There are fewer safe choices that an immigrant is hesitant to deviate from. This is good for making outliers.
^http://sivers.org/kimo
[+] [-] 001sky|12 years ago|reply
That being said, more power to them for overcoming the still very large risks and challenges it takes to make it even that far. I know from personal experience how hard it is for many of these people to contribute to US society/economy after they finish their programs. The red tape is obnoxious (without institutional support or sponsorship).
[+] [-] newbie12|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NTDF|12 years ago|reply
Immigrants have plenty to lose. Take my own example. Living in America for a few years (first as a graduate student and then as a software developer), I have made strong connections and a social life here. I lose everything if I don't make it.
There are two big problems for immigrants:
The Green Card process takes ~10 years. Imagine staying put in one company for 10 years. The legal immigration system is so haplessly broken that if I lose my job (say, late in the GC process), I get kicked out. My wife can't work. I cannot have kids without them confusing nationalities. I cannot buy a house. Immigrants are living on a thin strand, sacrificing a lot.
Motivated immigrants, who wish to start a company, cannot do so either because there are no visas to do so easily. Until we get a Green Card, we cannot quit our jobs and go on a road trip of the US, like my colleagues do. Realize that there is an opportunity cost, a small window, in which we all are highly motivated to start something. We immigrants typically waste that window in simply waiting for the Green Card to arrive (all-the-while, hoping we don't get laid-off).
The loss of this opportunity is one of the biggest reasons why many choose to head back to their own countries to start companies.
In summary, Immigrants have A LOT to lose. Grass is not green on this side either.
Source: Me. An Immigrant working in SV who's not allowed to start a company because of the ridiculous immigration system.
[+] [-] bdcravens|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goggles99|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhuckestein|12 years ago|reply
Personally, I think a great way to level the playing field wrt starting businesses for immigrant founders would be to allow all holders of employment visas a grace period during which they can stay in the country after they quit their job. This grace period could depend on the type of visa, your degree, your income (read taxes), the time you spent in the US, whatever. Then you can start a business without first having to secure your own presence, which is very difficult (because you don't yet have a real company) and expensive to do. A similar arrangement exists for study visas and is extremely effective in keeping college and grad school graduates in the country after school.
[+] [-] od2m|12 years ago|reply
People are upset about using immigrant labor as price competition to depress wages and capture middle class income to be transferred to the wealthy.
We all see this all the time--companies hire legal immigrant labor or import H1B's to pay 80% of the prevailing wage, meanwhile a massive and unnecessary management structure compensates itself lavishly.
This is a classic "commons" problem. It's advantageous for any individual company, but when everyone does it, it leads to the tragedy of the commons. In this case that tragedy is the collapse of the American consumer. He's being attack by high health costs, food costs, energy costs, regulatory burden, grift from financial institutions, education costs and he has no more money to spend at Waltmart-- the guys who caused the problem in the first place.
[+] [-] wildgift|12 years ago|reply
Also, the article has it TOTALLY WRONG about immigration history. Immigration was relatively loose until the Civil War, and then it was slowly closed until in the late 1800s, restrictions really increased substantially until the 1940s, particularly for Asians. Then, after WW2 it eased up, and in 1965 racial discrimination in immigration quotas was made illegal by the Civil Rights Act.
That created a new phase of global immigration, and things stayed the same until 1986 with the IRCA. That closed off some forms of immigration, specifically affecting illegal immigration. In the same time frame, it became easier for wealthy entrepreneurs to immigrate (mainly the ones from Hong Kong), and then H1B started, and it became easier for technically skilled workers to get worker visas and later green cards.
So it's not as the article said, that the doors were wide open, and then they have slowly been closing. That is at best an error, and at worst, a total deception. After reading that, I stopped, because if the writer can't get that basic history correct, they don't know squat.
(I should add that I am in favor of increasing immigration, but opposed to the current trend of expanding guest worker quotas.)
[+] [-] jvrossb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vecter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahk|12 years ago|reply
It is also pretty hard to even conceive of a good crisis that can force change.
So, yeah, pretty much a waste of time.
[+] [-] torrenegra|12 years ago|reply
a) Some of these entrepreneurs were able to stay in the US because they got married to an American citizen (that's my case, BTW).
b) Many would-be-entrepreneurs that tried to migrate to the US end up setting shops somewhere else because they couldn't stay legally.
c) Most entrepreneurs that are undocumented immigrants in the US (I know many that own small businesses) have major issues scaling their businesses and won't ever show up in articles like that one. For example: its extremely difficult for them to get credit lines. Additionally, they won't ever talk to the press because they are afraid, and legitimately so, of becoming a deportation target.
The current immigration system in the US is broken. Ignorance and political-driven xenophobia are not helping. I really wonder how long it will take for most Americans to realize that although it used to be a privilege to migrate to the US, the global dynamics have shifted. It's now a privilege for the US the welcome many immigrants, specially technology and entrepreneurship-oriented ones. Many other countries already figured that out and have adapted their laws.
[+] [-] jotm|12 years ago|reply
It's just that in the US, you've got favorable laws and culture, existing infrastructure, lots of investors willing to take a risk and a huge market to begin with... it's the perfect starting ground for pretty much any business.
[+] [-] jmtame|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sven7|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fiatmoney|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlogan|12 years ago|reply