Categories: Government

Are immigrants helping the US economy?

Not sure if it is all a coincidence but I have been dealing with all immigration issues today! I started my day writing to Rajiv [of immigration.com] about his portal. Then I see an email about one of our contributors returning to India. A very well written piece explaining why they are returning to Bangalore. All I can say is “lucky grandparents” for having such a lovely grandchild. This cute girl is sure to be pampered by her grandparents.

These days you get to read about US immigration bill getting into trouble.

One of the main issues of this bill is about legalizing illegal immigrants. Politicians really care about the votes (looks like this is a universal behavior across the world). When I was in the US I did get to hear a lot about how we immigrants were hurting their economy. I never agreed with that as I saw immigrants spending a significant part of their earning [buying cars, home, education etc]. We were indirectly creating more jobs.

Today I read a very well written article about immigrant Entrepreneurs – “Do Highly Educated Immigrant Entrepreneurs Help the U.S. Maintain Its Edge?“. Few highlights from the article,

Immigrants were one of the key founders in more than a quarter of all the engineering and technology companies set up in the U.S. between 1995 and 2005. Further, it counted $52 billion in annual sales by these immigrant-founded companies, which employed 450,000 workers in 2005.
U.S. economy depends upon the high rates of entrepreneurship and education among immigrants to “maintain its global edge.”
96% of the immigrant founders held graduate or postgraduate degrees, with 47% holding master’s degrees and 27% having PhDs. About three-quarters had their highest degrees in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).
Indians are among the best educated of all immigrant groups
Large numbers of skilled Indian immigrants are returning home. This is a double loss for the U.S. One is that we lose good people. The second loss is that they will become our competitors

BG Mahesh

Internet application ideator and implementor. Been there and done that since early 1990s. I like to present data to the common man in the simplest manner on the internet.