The contributions of foreign-born business leaders to the American economy are difficult
The contributions of foreign-born business leaders to the American economy are difficult to miss. In a 2006 study, Wadhwa found that roughly one in four U.S. tech companies had either a CEO or chief technology officer who had been born somewhere other than the United States. Foreign-born employees were responsible for a 25 percent of patents secured by U.S. companies. In Silicon Valley, immigrants had launched more than half of the companies started in the previous 10 years. Indian immigrants were responsible for more than quarter of those start-ups—followed by newcomers from Britain, China, Taiwan, and Japan. Of the entrepreneurs in the Inc. 5000, more than one-quarter identified themselves as Asian.
Most of those founders came to the Valley as students, and they stayed because the United States offered the greatest abundance of opportunity. “The great majority of U.S.-educated professionals from places like India and China remained in this country to work at research labs, universities, and private companies,” reads a new report from the entrepreneurship-focused Kauffman Foundation, The Grass Is Indeed Greener in India and China. “Most stayed in the U.S. for the rest of their careers because the economic and professional opportunities here were better than in their home countries.”
While Washington maneuvers, the opportunity to keep Asian entrepreneurs in America has all but slipped away. The Kauffman report found that 72 percent of entrepreneurs who had left the United States to return to India said that the opportunities to start their own business were better back home than in the United States. Among Chinese returnees, the figure was 81 percent. That information has filtered down to students at U.S. colleges. Nealy three quarters of Chinese students and 86 percent of Indian students say that the best days for their home countries’ economies lie ahead. Only 7 percent of Chinese and 25 percent of Indian students feel as hopeful about the U.S. economy.
Thanks to Walter Isaacson’s instant biography, everyone now knows that Steve Jobs lectured Obama on how much easier it was to stat a business in China than in the United States. Presumably, the U.S. will get around to reforming its ridiculous immigration policies sometime after the next election. But it will be too late. The U.S. near-monopoly on entrepreneurship is over. The next entrepreneur to lecture a President may well do it in Mandarin or Hindi.