Immigrants Start and Grow Companies.
Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have a combined market valuation of ~ $4 trillion and were all founded by first or second generation immigrants — Apple founder Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian immigrant, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is a second generation Cuban immigrant, Google founder Sergey Brin was born in Russia, and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin is a Brazilian native. Not to mention Elon Musk — founder of Tesla and SpaceX who immigrated from South Africa.
The US has less than 5% of the world's population. Which means if the qualities that make someone a great programmer are evenly distributed, 95% of great programmers are born outside the US.- Paul Graham, Creator of Y Combinator
In the digital economy, you hire where the talent is. When you restrict immigration, the jobs still get created, just somewhere else. And later down the road, when those individuals create the next Google, it won’t be here. - Aaron Levie, Box CEO
Immigration has contributed immensely to America’s economic success, making it a global leader in tech, and also Google the company it is today. Disappointed by today’s proclamation — we’ll continue to stand with immigrants and work to expand opportunity for all.- Sundar Pinchai, Google CEO
A society that curtails the inflow of diverse people, especially highly skilled ones essentially ends up losing productivity and a subset that is really powerful for them to other countries, leading to their prosperity and your decline.- Ziyad Basheer, Immigrant Founders Curator
Immigrants have started more than half (50 of 91, or 55%) of America’s startup companies valued at $1 billion or more and are key members of management or product development teams in more than 80% of these companies. Research shows the increasing importance of immigrants in cutting-edge companies and the U.S. economy at a time when executive branch policies are aimed at restricting immigration into the United States.- National Foundation for American Policy
Immigrants have been awarded 39%, or 33 of 85, of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in Chemistry, Medicine and Physics since 2000.- National Foundation for American Policy
it is likely none of the billion-dollar companies with at least one immigrant founder would have been created or exist in the United States if the foreign-born founder had not been allowed to come to America.- National Foundation for American Policy
A striking proportion of America’s entrepreneurial heroes have been immigrants or the children of immigrants — Alexander Graham Bell and Andrew Carnegie were born in Scotland. Andy Grove and Sergey Brin were born, respectively, in Hungary and the Soviet Union.- Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge