According to a new report from the Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), more than half of the most successful start up companies in the entire United States were founded by immigrants. The White House has promised a parole for entrepreneur program but it has still not come to fruition, and there is still a void in the Visa Program in terms of the existence of a “start-up” Visa. Foreigners can apply for Business Visas but the restrictions associated with these types of Visas make them ill-suited for entrepreneurs focusing on start up businesses with very limited capital.
From the new NFAP report, “Immigrants have started more than half (44 of 87) of America’s startup companies valued at $1 billion dollars or more and are key members of management or product development teams in over 70 percent of these companies, according to a new report released by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), an Arlington, VA-based policy research group. The research finds that among the billion dollar startup companies, immigrant founders have created an average of approximately 760 jobs per company in the United States. The collective value of the 44 immigrant-founded companies is $168 billion, which is close to half the value of the stock markets of Russia or Mexico.”
“Immigrants play a key role in creating new, fast-growing companies, as evidenced by the prevalence of foreign-born founders and key personnel in the nation’s leading privately-held companies,” said Stuart Anderson, the author of the study, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, and former head of policy and counselor to the Commissioner of the INS (August 2001 to January 2003). “The findings help illustrate the increasing importance and contributions of immigrants to the U.S. economy.”
