The question of whether immigrants are more likely than people born
in the United States to start high technology companies has been
receiving a great deal of attention since Senators John Kerry and
Richard Lugar introduced the Start-up
Visa Act bill in Congress.
To justify the need for this program, several authors have argued that immigrants are more likely to become high tech entrepreneurs than people born in the United States. For example, in his BusinessWeek column, Vivek Wadhwa wrote “I published a research report back in 2006 showing that over 50 percent of Silicon Valley engineering and technology startups were founded by immigrants (as were 25 percent of such startups nationwide), I concluded that immigrants were more likely to be entrepreneurs.”
Recently I took a look at what data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) (which collects data on the entire U.S. labor force) show about the odds that immigrants and non-immigrants become the self-employed heads of incorporated businesses. (I focused on incorporated self-employment because it is a better representation of business formation than unincorporated self-employment.)
To read the full, original article click on this link: Are Immigrants Really More Likely to Become High Tech Entrepreneurs? | Small Business Trends
Author: Scott Shane
