Immigrant Entrepreneur Ingenuity
Nightly Business Report
Friday, January 19, 2007
SUSIE GHARIB: Tonight’s commentator says there’s something missing from the debate over immigration. Here’s Myron Kandel, president of the New Hampshire Initiative for Corporate Responsibility and Investor Protection.
MYRON KANDEL, PRESIDENT, NEW HAMPSHIRE INITIATIVE FOR CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY: Immigrant is a fighting word in some quarters these days. To many people, it’s a pejorative, as in those “blankety-blank illegals,” who are threatening the foundation of our country. Sure, our immigration policies need fixing and the subject of illegal aliens is a hot-button issue, but I will leave that to others.
Tonight, I want to discuss one usually overlooked aspect of immigration. It’s the contribution that legal immigrants to the U.S. are making to our country’s leadership in an increasingly competitive world. A new study by researchers at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering and the University of California, Berkeley, has found that immigrant entrepreneurs have become a driving force in the formation of new businesses in the nation.
The figures are startling. Of all the engineering and technology companies started in the U.S. from 1995 to 2005, one quarter had at least one foreign-born founder or co-founder. These companies employed 450,000 workers and had $52 billion in sales in 2005. The study also estimates that, last year, foreign nationals living in the U.S. were the inventors or co-inventors of nearly one quarter of all the U.S.-based patents filed internationally. That figure has more than tripled in eight years. So in the debate over immigration, let’s not forget the contributions legal immigrants continue to make. I'm Myron Kandel.