"Skilled immigrants provide one of America’s
greatest advantages. They contribute to the
economy, create jobs, and lead innovation.
In January 2007, we published a report titled
“Americas New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,”1 which
showed that immigrants are fuelling the creation
of hi-tech business across the nation and creating
a wealth of intellectual property.
Our research
produced some startling statistics: in 25.3 percent
of technology and engineering companies started
in the United States from 1995 to 2005, at least
one key founder was foreign-born; in California,
this percentage was 38.8; in North Carolina, the
percentage was only 13.9.
Our analysis of Silicon
Valley and Research Triangle Park (RTP) showed
greater concentrations of immigrant founders. In
Silicon Valley, 52.4 percent of companies had an
immigrant as a key founder, as did 18.7 percent
of RTP. Nationwide, these immigrant-founded
companies produced $52 billion in sales and
employed 450,000 workers in 2005......"
snip
<
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~anno/Papers/Americas_new_immigrant_entrepreneurs_II.pdf>"Silicon Valley's workforce is among the world's most ethnically diverse. Not only do Asian and
Hispanic workers dominate the low-paying, blue-collar workforce, but foreign-born scientists and
engineers are increasingly visible as entrepreneurs and senior management.
More than a quarter of Silicon Valley's highly skilled workers are immigrants, including tens of thousands from lands as diverse as China, Taiwan, India, the United Kingdom, Iran, Vietnam, the Philippines, Canada, and Israel.
Understandably, the rapid growth of the foreign-born workforce has evoked intense debates over
U.S. immigration policy, both here and in the developing world. In the United States, discussions
of the immigration of scientists and engineers have focused primarily on the extent to which
foreign-born professionals displace native workers.
The view from sending countries, by contrast,
has been that the emigration of highly skilled personnel to the United States represents a big
economic loss, a "brain drain."
Neither view is adequate in today's global economy. Far from simply replacing native workers,
foreign-born engineers are starting new businesses and generating jobs and wealth at least as
fast as their U.S. counterparts....."
snip
<
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~anno/Papers/brain-circulation-brookings-review-2002.pdf>