Arizona may be ground zero for the conflict over U.S. immigration policy, but it takes only a few minutes of watching cable television news and scanning local op-ed pages to see how raw and divisive the matter has become in the nation’s political sphere.
Yet with all the heated rhetoric about illegals, border security, amnesty, racial profiling, and other incendiary topics, one aspect of immigration isn’t emphasized enough: the job-creating potential of immigrant entrepreneurs. They’re the vanguard in America’s global competition for entrepreneurial talent and innovative ideas. The nation needs to encourage more entrepreneurs from other nations to call America home. Their energy is the elixir of future economic growth.
Take a recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute on U.S. multinational corporations. In Growth and competitiveness in the United States: The role of its multinational companies, the consulting firm notes that big business comprises less than 1 percent all U.S. companies, yet the 2,270 multinational corporations in its database accounted for 31 percent of the growth in inflation-adjusted gross domestic product from 1990 to 2007. Even more important, U.S. multinational corporations have contributed 41 percent of gains in labor productivity since 1990 — and 53 percent of the productivity increases during expansions.
The consultants highlight the role immigrants play in bolstering the competitiveness of American multinationals, especially helping the U.S. “lead the world in the number of engineers, scientists, and business professionals who are ready to work in a multinational company.”
High-Tech Startups
Specifically, some of the world’s brightest brains and cutting-edge innovators come to learn and create in the U.S. — and they stay. In 2007, for instance, 62 percent of foreign-born nationals who received a science or engineering doctorate remained in the U.S. for at least five years following graduation. That figure is up from 41 percent in 1992. More than 80…