Writing in Forbes, Stuart Anderson reports a new statistic about immigrants’ contribution to the U.S. He is the author of the research he reports.
New research concludes that immigrants have founded or cofounded most of America’s privately held startup companies valued at $1 billion or more. The role of immigrant entrepreneurs receives little attention in daily press coverage. There is no startup visa in U.S. law—Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) blocked its inclusion in the Chips and Science Act in 2022. Immigrant entrepreneurs come to America as refugees or are sponsored by an employer or family member. The significant impact of immigrant entrepreneurs on the U.S. economy and on the creation of cutting-edge companies has become too big to ignore.
“Immigrants have founded or cofounded 59% (455 of 775) of America’s privately held startup companies valued at $1 billion or more,” according to a new National Foundation for American Policy analysis. (I authored the study.) “Moreover, approximately two-thirds (66%) of U.S. billion-dollar companies (unicorns) were founded or cofounded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Nearly 80% of America’s unicorn companies (privately held, billion-dollar companies) have an immigrant founder or an immigrant in a key leadership role, such as CEO or vice president of engineering.”
The research involved interviews and gathering information on over 700 U.S. startup companies valued at over $1 billion (as of April 2026). These are companies yet to be traded on the U.S. stock market, are tracked by CB Insights and have received venture capital financing.
These start-ups employ an average of 833 people.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
But Trump would say “Those are the good immigrants, the ones I want to allow in.” As if he knew who they were ahead of time, only using skin color or religion to categorize them.
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Elon Musk was born in Pretoria. Given his track record as an immigrant, and given the right wing tendencies regarding the fallacy of generalization, we need further restrictions on immigration.
Ok, so that was snark and humor. This is hard sociological observation:
It has long been an accepted that those who move are generally more adventurous and willing to take the risk of moving, of starting businesses, of loosing the ties that bind them to traditional values where they were born. We have reaped the benefits of this fact for generations.
The only reason people are openly questioning this is that they are trying to create conflict within the American electorate for the purpose of increasing their own wealth and power. Us and them works for MAGA, just as it worked for other snake oil peddlers of reganomics since the 1980 election. All these years of demonizing groups in order to dupe voters has now arrived at our present state.
Someone will arise and call this by its true name: tyranny.
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