The Power of Immigrants

Entrepreneurship has long been a hallmark of the American identity, one that is eagerly embraced by recent immigrants. Studies show they are, for example, more likely to launch new businesses than native-born citizens.

New research by Shulamit Kahn and Megan MacGarvie, both associate professors of markets, public policy & law, adds nuance to this picture. With Giulia La Mattina, an assistant professor of economics at the University of South Florida, they found that college-educated immigrants have a significant edge in a particular subset of entrepreneurial endeavor: “Immigrants are more likely to create scientific start-ups than native-born citizens with similar kinds of education,” says Kahn.

When it came to scientific fields—think high-tech R&D businesses in fields such as biomedicine—immigrants were twice as likely as non-immigrants to be entrepreneurs (4.14 percent compared to 2.08 percent). The researchers also found that high-performing immigrants—those whose wages were in the top 30 percent in their field—were among the most likely to launch scientific start-ups. Kahn says the results may help add context to today’s contentious immigration debates. Immigrants, she says, play a critical role in advancing science and the economy. “We don’t want to keep scientists and scientific entrepreneurs out of our country. Instead, we want to find more ways to attract these scientific minds.”