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Is This Really the Time to Make America Less Hospitable to Immigrant Entrepreneurs?
Elon Musk was born in South Africa and now is an American citizen.
Consider the following summary, posted earlier this year at the World Economic Forum blog:
It is no coincidence that 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by first or second generation immigrants; or that more than half of America’s billion-dollar start-ups, known as unicorns, were founded by immigrants like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Alexander Asseily. One quarter of those unicorn-founders initially came to the US as students, typically of science, technology, engineering, medicine (STEM) or business. The impact of international students who stay after graduating is felt far beyond billion-dollar start-ups. A one percentage point increase in immigrant college graduates results in between 9 and 18% more patents per capita, benefiting the whole economy.
It shouldn’t be hard to see the value in making it super-easy for international intellectual and entrepreneurial talent to come to America. It is more difficult to see the wisdom in the Trump administration taking steps “toward scrapping a regulation that would have helped more foreign-born entrepreneurs build startups in the U.S. without a traditional visa.”
As I understand it, the International Entrepreneur Rule is the next-best policy since Congress has been unable to pass the Startup Visa Act. (But I am not arguing that the startup visa is optimal immigration policy either.)
To take advantage of this regulatory workaround, Axios notes, “entrepreneurs must provide evidence that the startup entities: (1) have substantial and demonstrated potential for rapid business growth and job creation, (2) have secured $250,000 in funding, R&D award, or acceptance from a startup incubator, [and] (3) will provide ‘significant benefit’ to the U.S.” Indeed, the economic benefits of such entrepreneurs is so widely accepted that other advanced economies are in hot competition for them.
About the best criticism I could find was that the rule created “uncertainty” because the visa is temporary. From Ars Technica: “It would have allowed foreign entrepreneurs an ‘initial parole stay’ of 30 months in the US, which could have been extended by another 30 months.” Or maybe it was executive overreach from the Obama administration. I also recall that Trump White House adviser has in the past stated there were too many Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley, because it somehow harmed “civic society.”
Oh, about that startup visa idea. Here is something interesting from back in 2010 when the bill was being considered:
Published in Economics, ImmigrationI am an immigrant founder and I have contributed to the creation of over 100 jobs in the US based on my own startups, and startups I have invested in. In the past few years I have invested in two companies that have had immigrant founders — in both cases the founders had PhDs from Stanford and were able to make the case for an EB-1 (Alien of Extra-ordinary Ability) and an EB-2 (National Interest) visa. At the same time, I’ve met numerous would-be startups where the founders don’t have advanced degrees. They are stuck working at companies in the US, biding their time till they can eventually get their greencard and then be able to start their own companies. These are highly qualified people — they would be able to raise money for their companies, but they still cannot venture out on their own because of visa issues. The Startup Visa addresses this.
Yes, now is the time to do that. Only a short time, though, until we get the other immigration problems sorted out and fixed.
And what about the cost of immigration? That never gets figured into the equation. The cost/benefit of immigration is nearly a net wash from what I’ve seen. Ultimately some things are not worth the money.
Musk is a public funded parasite, Theil supported Trump from what I recall, and I don’t know who that other guy is, so swing and a miss here.
No distinction drawn between targeted immigration and immigration as a whole? The costs are vastly different.
That is true. Can one truly have targeted immigration? If it could be limited to entrepreneurs than sure, I’m all for that. But that’s not what happens.
Americans are not hostile to immigrant entrepreneurs, but what they are hostile to is immigrant peonage labor. We saw this with the IT people at Disney who were fired and made to train their immigrant replacements. Conveniently these foreign workers are tied to their employer and not free to seek employment (and higher pay) elsewhere, much less found a tech startup. As it stands our visa system is rigged to provide employers with exploitable, tractable labor to replace Americans and suppress their wages. It is nice that a few aspire to more than bond-servitude, but that’s not enough to overcome the negatives of the system as a whole.
Conservative Inc. don’t care about these people. Also, how many of these foreign entrepreneurs are funded by the government like Elon Musk? Kind of goes against the definition of an entrepreneur.
Actually, it’s time to make America more hospitable to domestic entrepreneurs. Later, once our immigration matters are squared away, we can wonder whether we are hospitable enough to others. But let’s take care of our own first.
Yes. It’s time to correct immigration or it will never ever happen. So there.
When every American with a brain has a job (Democrat voters are on their own), then we can talk about admitting more foreigners.
I slightly hold out hope that this administration could actually do something practical on immigration since they have the “street cred” with their supporters on the issue……nah, never happen. It’s like health care reform, too political to do something easy/smart.
How much of the $100 billion+ amount of Medicaid fraud is facilitated or incubated by the fact that we import 30 medical schools worth of doctors from the third world every year? How much food stamp fraud is facilitated by third world “entrepreneur” families running convenience stores? Mr. Pethokoukis has a sunny view of immigration, which I share with reservations, but just as Joe McCarthy ruined anti-communism in polite society Trump has caused eye-rolling dismissal of any of those reservations.
I lived in SW Florida during the Sami al-Arian case and watched how mainstream opinion makers contorted themselves into useful idiots in defense of these poor widdie immigrants, and I saw how those who want to do us harm have learned to use these arguments to play us like violins.
Leave it to Pethokoukis to fall for a con artist like Elon Musk. Why don’t you just advocate for immigration for all those Nigerian businessmen to come into the country so they can help you launder some money.
Yes.
On the article a couple of points. 1: Alexander Asseily is British Lebanese, Peter Thiel is from Germany. I’ll go out on a limb here and bet that not too many of those startups are founded by people from Psycotastan or Somalia. 2: there is a very good article titled Hall of Injustice by Steve Sailer detailing the exploitation of Mexican Truck Drivers at the Port of Los Angelas. Apparently things in California haven’t changed all that much since Upton St. Claire wrote the Jungle. Of course California is not the Chicago Meat Packing Industry but the same kinds of contracts were used to exploit the ignorant Poles in Mr. St. Claire’s book.
I regret that I haven’t figured out how to copy links yet. but the Sailer article is at http://www.takimag.com