Brookings Paper: Immigration and High-Impact, High-Tech Entrepreneurship

 
The Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings today released a new paper “Immigration and High-Impact, High-Tech Entrepreneurship” that offers illuminating data about foreign-born entrepreneurs and their impact on the U.S. economy, particularly the tech sector.  Researched by George Mason University’s David Hart and Zoltan Acs, this paper shows that the founding teams of about 16 percent of a nationally representative sample of high-impact, high-tech companies – the kind of company that is most critical for long-term economic growth – include at least one immigrant. These immigrant entrepreneurs are deeply-rooted in the U.S.; about 77 percent, for instance, are U.S. citizens. Most are well-educated and have substantial professional experience.

Hart and Acs outline three policy options that might expand the pool of potential high-impact, high-tech immigrant entrepreneurs over the long-term:

(1) clearing the green card backlog;

(2) easing the pathway from student visa to work visa to green card; and

(3) creating a “point system” for a limited number of unsponsored green card applicants.

KJ