Amicus Curiae Brief — Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, et al., Petitioners v. Hawaii, et al.

Supreme Court briefMar 30, 2018

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NO. 17-965

IN THE

Supreme Court of the United States

DONALD J. TRUMP,

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL.,

Petitioners,

STATE OF HAWAII, ET AL.,

Respondents.

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR NINTH CIRCUIT

BRIEF OF MASSACHUSETTS TECHNOLOGY

LEADERSHIP COUNCIL, INC., AS AMICUS

CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS IN

AFFIRMANCE OF THE DECISIONS BELOW

Christopher Escobedo Hart

Counsel of Record

Michael B. Keating

Kristyn M. DeFilipp

Daniel L. McFadden

FOLEY HOAG LLP

155 Seaport Boulevard

Boston, MA 02210

(617) 832-1232

chart@foleyhoag.com

Dated: March 30, 2018

BATEMAN & SLADE, INC.

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ..................................... iv

INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE ............................1

CORPORATE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT ............2

INTRODUCTION .......................................................2

ARGUMENT ...............................................................4

II.

THE THIRD TRAVEL BAN IS

MERELY A CONTINUATION

OF THE PRESIDENT’S

UNCONSTITUTIONAL ANTIMUSLIM POLICIES. ............................4

The President Banned

Muslims. ......................................4

The Federal Courts

Ordered The President To

Cease Implementing The

Ban. .............................................5

The Third Travel Ban Is A

Continuation Of Its

Predecessors And Is

Equally Flawed. ..........................6

THE THIRD TRAVEL BAN IS

NOT ONLY ILLEGAL, BUT IT

WILL OPERATE AGAINST THE

PUBLIC INTEREST,

INCLUDING AGAINST THE

INTERESTS OF THE

TECHNOLOGY SECTOR. ....................9

The Domestic Technology

Industry Benefits From

Immigration. ...............................9

Immigration

Supports The

Innovation

Economy............................9

Immigrants Are

Inventors.........................11

Immigrants Are

Technology Leaders. .......12

Immigrants Are

Business Leaders. ..........13

Immigrants

Contribute To The

Field Of Medicine. ..........15

Unless It Is Enjoined, The

Third Travel Ban Will

Harm The Technology

Industry. ....................................16

Unless It Is Enjoined, the

Third Travel Ban Will

Undermine the

Competitive Strength of

the Domestic Technology

Industry and Will Chill the

Culture of Innovation. ..............18

CONCLUSION ..........................................................20

APPENDIX

Mass Technology Leadership Council, The

Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.,

June 2017

iii

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Cases

Page(s)

Aziz v. Trump,

234 F. Supp. 3d 724

(E. D. Va. 2017) ...................................... passim

Epperson v. Arkansas,

393 U.S. 97 (1968) ..........................................19

Int’l Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump,

857 F.3d 554 (4th Cir. 2017) .........................6, 8

Hawaii v. Trump,

241 F. Supp. 3d 1119 (D. Haw. 2017) .........3, 8

Hawaii v. Trump,

878 F.3d 662 (9th Cir. 1982) ............................8

Peacock v. Duval,

694 F.2d 664 (9th Cir. 2017) ............................8

Washington v. Trump,

No. 17-141, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16012

(W.D. Wash. Feb. 3, 2017)...................... passim

Washington v. Trump,

847 F.3d 1151 (9th Cir. 2017) ................ passim

United States v. Ballard,

332 U.S. 78 (1944) ..........................................20

Statutory Authorities

8 U.S.C. §§ 1101 et seq................................................8

Regulations

82 Fed. Reg. 8,977 (Jan. 27, 2017)......................2, 4, 5

82 Fed. Reg. 13,209 (Mar. 6, 2017) .............................2

82 Fed. Reg. 45,161 (Sep. 24, 2017) ............................2

Other Authorities

Adam Vaccaro, Boston Business

Leaders Oppose Trump Immigration

Order, The Boston Globe (Jan. 29,

2017), available at

https://www.bostonglobe.com/busine

ss/2017/01/29/chief-says-companywill-stand-with-employees-frombanned-countries/5v00oFyvZZpG

Pd5CxPDjfN/story.html...................................... 17

January 27, 2016 Letter of Edward J.

Ramotowski, Deputy Ass’t of State,

Bureau of Consular Affairs,

Department of State ..............................................5

September 15, 2017 Tweet from Donald

J. Trump, available at

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrum

p/status/90864516146265090 ................................6

Trump Advisor Says New Travel Ban

Will Have ‘Same Basic Policy

Outcome,’ FoxNews.com, Feb. 21,

2017, available at

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201

7/02/21/trump-adviser-says-newtravel-ban-will-have-same-basicpolicy-outcome.html ...........................................3, 7

Zeninjor Enwemeka, Local Tech

Companies Say Trump’s

Immigration Order Is Bad For

Business, WBUR (Feb. 7, 2017),

available at http://www.wbur.org/

bostonomix/2017/02/07/bostonbusiness-travel-ban .............................................17

INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE 1

Amicus Curiae is the Massachusetts

Technology Leadership Council, Inc. (“MassTLC”), a

not-for-profit association of companies that

collectively employ more than 170,000 people in the

Massachusetts technology industry.

MassTLC

represents a vibrant and growing community of

innovators in fields including software, computers,

robotics, and security products. MassTLC therefore

closely follows issues—including immigration

policy—that may affect the ability of its members to

build value, attract talent, and compete in the

diverse global marketplace.

No party’s counsel authored this brief in

whole or in part. No party or party’s counsel

contributed money intended to fund preparing or

submitting this brief.

No person other than

MassTLC, its members or its counsel contributed

money intended to fund preparing or submitting this

brief.

Petitioner’s Letter of Consent to the filing of all

amicus briefs in this matter was lodged with the Clerk of Court

pursuant to Rule 37.3(a) on January 25, 2018. Counsel for

Respondents provided written consent to the filing of this brief

pursuant to Rule 37.3(a) on February 20, 2018.

CORPORATE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

Massachusetts

Technology

Leadership

Council, Inc., is a not-for-profit organization based in

Burlington, Massachusetts. It has no parent

company, and no publicly traded organization owns

10% or more of its stock.

INTRODUCTION

MassTLC writes in support of the

Respondents in opposing the Administration’s effort

to overturn nationwide injunctions restraining the

execution of President Donald Trump’s Executive

Order dated September 24, 2017, entitled

“Enhancing Vetting Capabilities and Processes for

Detecting Attempted Entry Into the United States

by Terrorists or Other Public-Safety Threats” (the

“Third Travel Ban”). 2 As the Court is aware, the

Third Travel Ban was issued to supplant a similarlytitled Executive Order entitled “Protecting the

Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United

States” (the “Second Travel Ban”), 3 which itself was

issued to voluntarily narrow an identically titled

Executive Order issued January 27, 2017 (the

“Original Travel Ban”). 4

The Third Travel Ban, like the ones before it,

is arbitrary, illegal, and does not serve the public

interest.

This is fundamentally the same

discriminatory “Muslim Ban” that has been

2 82 Fed. Reg. 45,161 (Sep. 24, 2017).

3 82 Fed. Reg. 13,209 (Mar. 6, 2017).

4 82 Fed. Reg. 8,977 (Jan. 27, 2017).

repeatedly enjoined over the last fourteen months. 5

Cosmetic changes—such as the post hoc addition of

purported security justifications, or the addition of

certain non-Muslim countries—do not alter the fact

that this policy still proceeds from the same

irrational and unconstitutional religious animus.

When the Original Travel Ban was revised, the

President’s own Senior Policy Advisor admitted that

the revision was intended to achieve the “same basic

policy outcome” as its patently illegal predecessor. 6

The public interest demands an immigration

system that does not discriminate against any

religion, and that is fair, orderly, and predictable. In

particular, technology companies in Massachusetts

require such a system to recruit innovators from

around the world to build businesses here at home,

and to sell their products back out into the global

marketplace. President Trump’s attempt to ban the

entry of entire nationalities—even when the person

seeking entry clearly poses no risk—is antithetical to

the public interest and undermines America’s

innovation economy and its fundamental values.

5 See, e.g., Washington v. Trump, 847 F.3d 1151, 11561158 (9th Cir. 2017); Aziz v. Trump, 234 F. Supp. 3d 724, 729731 (E.D. Va. 2017); Hawai’i v. Trump, 241 F. Supp. 3d 1119,

1135-1140 (D. Haw. Mar. 15, 2017).

See Trump Advisor Says New Travel Ban Will Have

‘Same Basic Policy Outcome,’ FoxNews.com, Feb. 21, 2017,

available at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/21/trump6

adviser-says-new-travel-ban-will-have-same-basic-policyoutcome.html.

ARGUMENT

THE THIRD TRAVEL BAN IS MERELY A

CONTINUATION OF THE PRESIDENT’S

UNCONSTITUTIONAL

ANTI-MUSLIM

POLICIES.

The President Banned Muslims.

During his recent election campaign,

President Trump repeatedly promised to ban

Muslims from entering the United States. 7 As one

court has explained, “[t]he ‘Muslim ban’ was a

centerpiece of the president’s campaign for months,

and the press release calling for it was still available

on his website as of [Feb. 13, 2017].” 8

Within days of taking office, President Trump

issued the Original Travel Ban. Section 3(c) of that

order immediately prohibited all people from seven

predominantly Muslim countries from entering the

United States, even including returning permanent

residents and visa-holders residing in the United

States. 9 The President ordered that this exclusion

continue for 90 days, during which time federal

agencies

would

purportedly

review

their

immigration security procedures.

To implement

this order, the Department of State “provisionally

revoke[d] all valid nonimmigrant and immigrant

See Aziz, 234 F. Supp. 3d at 729-731.

See id.

See Washington, 847 F.3d at 1156-1158. Notably, the

order included a safety valve to permit “religious minorities”.

10 82 Fed. Reg. 8,977, 8,977-78.

visas of nationals” of those seven countries without

any due process or advance notice. 11

Notably, the Original Travel Ban contained

provisions to add additional countries to the

“banned” list, and also to extend the ban indefinitely

beyond the initial 90-day period. 12 Thus, with the

stroke a pen, President Trump suddenly excluded a

vast number of Muslims from the United States,

stripped legal status from many already residing

here, and created well-founded fear that more

nationalities would find themselves banned without

warning.

The Federal Courts Ordered The

President To Cease Implementing The

Ban.

The Original Travel Ban was rapidly enjoined

by numerous federal courts. Most broadly, Judge

James Robart of the U.S. District Court for the

Western District of Washington issued an order that

the federal government was “ENJOINED and

RESTRAINED from . . . [e]nforcing Section 3(c)” of

the Original Travel Ban on a nationwide basis. 13

The federal government appealed this order, but

ultimately dismissed the appeal after the 9th Circuit

See January 27, 2016 Letter of Edward J.

Ramotowski, Deputy Ass’t of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs,

Department of State. This letter made a small number of

exceptions for military and diplomatic visas, or case-by-case

determinations “in the national interest.”

12 82 Fed. Reg. 8,977, 8,978.

Washington, No. 17-141, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS

16012, at *7-8 (W.D. Wash. Feb. 3, 2017).

construed the order as a preliminary injunction and

refused to stay its operation. 14

Notably, at least one court enjoined the

Original Travel Ban based on the strong likelihood

that it would prove to be an exercise in religious

discrimination. Judge Brinkema of the U.S. District

Court for the Eastern District of Virginia concluded,

based in large part on the President’s own

statements, that the Commonwealth of Virginia had

established such a strong likelihood of success on its

Establishment Clause claim that the Original Travel

Ban should be enjoined on that basis alone. 15

Similarly, after President Trump signed the Second

Travel Ban, that too was enjoined. 16 Even while

litigation concerning the Second Travel Ban was

pending, just days before the Third Travel Ban was

issued, the President tweeted that the “travel ban

into the United States” should be “far larger” and

“tougher.” 17

The

Third

Travel

Ban

Continuation Of Its Predecessors And

Is Equally Flawed.

On September 24, 2017, President Trump

signed the Third Travel Ban, which supplants the

14 See Washington, 847 F.3d

at 1169 (stay of

preliminary injunction denied); Order, Washington, No. 1735105 (9th Cir. Mar. 8, 2017) (granting federal government’s

motion to voluntarily dismiss appeal of preliminary injunction,

including payment of State of Washington’s costs).

Aziz, 234 F. Supp. 3d at 737 n.11.

Int’l Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump, 857 F.3d

554 (4th Cir. 2017).

September 15, 2017 Tweet from Donald J. Trump,

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/

90864516146265090.

available

original two orders. Unchanged, however, is the

ban’s basic function: to prohibit people from

predominantly Muslim countries from entering the

United States based solely on their national origin. 18

While the Third Travel Ban is somewhat

narrower than the Original Travel Ban, and includes

two non-Muslim majority countries (unlike the

previous orders), it nevertheless still achieves (in the

words of President Trump’s own senior advisor

concerning the Second Travel Ban) the “same basic

policy outcome.” 19

For example, although

permanent residents and aliens already issued visas

are exempted from the revised order, the residents of

six Muslim-majority countries still cannot obtain

new visas. Inevitably, travel from those countries

will be incrementally extinguished as existing visas

expire.

Further, although the Third Travel Ban now

contains purported security justifications for

restricting travel from the identified Muslimmajority countries (Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria,

Yemen, and Chad), and extends to certain

individuals from Venezuela and a tiny group of

North Korean travelers (estimated at fewer than 100

annually), it is telling that these justifications were

not proffered until after the Original Travel Ban had

been enjoined (and new non-Muslim countries added

18 This is prohibited discrimination even if the ban does

not restrict travel from every predominantly Muslim country.

See Aziz at 736-737 (“The major premise of that argument—

that one can only demonstrate animus toward a group of people

by targeting all of them at once—is flawed.”).

See Trump Advisor Says New Travel Ban Will Have

‘Same Basic Policy Outcome,’ n.6, supra.

after the Second one, too, had been enjoined). 20

Asserted now—in the teeth of numerous adverse

rulings—these post hoc rationalizations are entitled

to little weight. 21 The Ninth Circuit agreed, finding

in the Order subject to this appeal that the President

failed to make an adequate finding of detriment

pursuant to Section 1182(f) of the Immigration and

Nationality Act. 22 Similarly, in a separate case, the

Fourth Circuit found that the Third Travel Ban

likely violated the Establishment Clause and could

not be supported by a purported multi-agency

security review that the government refuses to

disclose. 23

The Third Travel Ban has the purpose and

effect of banning Muslims from the United States, as

is evident from the overwhelming record of the

President’s statements targeting Muslims.

The

Third Travel Ban also violates the Immigration and

Nationality Act. 24 For all of these reasons, as well as

for those set forth in Respondents’ Brief, the Third

Travel Ban is illegal.

Washington, 847 F.3d, at 1168 & n.8.

Aziz, 234 F. Supp. 3d at 736 n.10 (citing Peacock v.

Duval, 694 F.2d 644, 646 (9th Cir. 1982)); Hawai’i, 241 F. Supp.

3d at 1137-1138, n. 15 (citing Aziz).

Hawai’i v. Trump, 878 F.3d 662, 694 (9th Cir. 2017).

23 See Int’l Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump, No.

17-2231, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 3513, at *58-61 (4th Cir. Feb.

15, 2018).

24 8 U.S.C. §§ 1101

et seq.

II.

THE THIRD TRAVEL BAN IS NOT ONLY

ILLEGAL, BUT IT WILL OPERATE

AGAINST

THE

PUBLIC

INTEREST,

INCLUDING AGAINST THE INTERESTS

OF THE TECHNOLOGY SECTOR.

Although the Third Travel Ban is contrary to

the public interest in many ways, MassTLC writes to

explain one particular facet of that harm: the ban’s

profoundly disruptive effect on the technology sector,

including in Massachusetts.

The Domestic Technology

Benefits From Immigration.

Industry

Immigration

Supports

Innovation Economy.

The

The technology industry is a critical driver of

the Massachusetts economy. Nearly 400,000 people

in Massachusetts work in jobs that are either in the

technology sector, or are in technology-related

occupations in other sectors—roughly 13% of the

state’s total workforce. 25 This industry is a global

enterprise, fueled in large part by immigration and

international travel. According to one recent study,

as of January 1, 2016, “[i]mmigrants have started

more than half (44 of 87) of America’s startup

companies valued at $1 billion dollars or more and

are key members of management or product

development teams in over 70 percent (62 of 87) of

25 Appendix, The Economic Impact of Immigration on

the U.S., June 2017 (“App.”), 15-16. This Appendix is a version

of a publicly-available report published by MassTLC and

available on its website, http://www.masstlc.org/immigration/.

The report cites original sources for the data relied on in this

brief. MassTLC provides a version of the full report here as an

Appendix for the Court’s convenience.

these companies.” 26

More than half of Silicon

Valley’s corporate founders are immigrants. 27

The integral role that immigrants play in the

technology industry does not arise because

“immigrants steal jobs” (as many nativist

demagogues have claimed), but rather because the

technology industry is growing too rapidly to be

staffed through domestic labor alone. By 2020, for

example, projections indicate that 1.4 million

computer specialist positions will be open in the

United States, but domestic universities will only

produce enough graduates to fill 29% of those jobs. 28

In Massachusetts today, there are seventeen

technology jobs for every person who graduates with

a degree in computer science or information

Immigrants are responsible for

technology. 29

substantial economic growth. This is true as a

general matter of the country as a whole: in 2015,

immigrants contributed $2 trillion to the U.S. GDP,

which represents 11% of the country’s total GDP.30

Zooming in to the Massachusetts technology sector,

one study projects that, if half of Massachusetts’

3,608 advanced level graduates in science,

technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)

related fields, studying on temporary visas,

remained in Massachusetts upon graduation, then

4,726 new jobs would be created for U.S.-born

workers by 2021. 31

26 App. at 30.

27 App. at 61.

28 App. at 13.

29 App. at 16.

30 App. at 52.

31 App. at 17.

As it stands, immigrant students are

disproportionately more likely to get their degrees in

a STEM field, and international students make up

over 30% of the post-baccalaureate degrees in STEM

fields. 32 Individuals from the six banned countries,

moreover, are more likely to have a bachelor’s

degree, approximately twice as likely to have a

graduate degree, and four times as likely to have a

doctoral degree relative to the native-born

population. 33 Quite apart from this population being

a disproportionately educated and skilled one, they

are also part of a population making immediate

impacts on the U.S economy: During the 2015-16

academic year, international students contributed

$32.8 billion to the U.S. economy and supported

more than 400,000 jobs. 34

Immigrants Are Inventors.

So too do immigrants drive the development of

inventions and other useful arts. For example, in

2011, 76% of patents awarded to the Top 10 patentproducing U.S. universities had an inventor that was

foreign-born. 35 In recent years, foreign nationals

contributed to more than three quarters of patents in

the fields of information technology, molecular and

microbiology, and pharmaceuticals. 36

The amount of invention originating from

immigrants can have dramatic effects on innovation,

with discernable spillover effects. One academic

32 App. at 159-60.

33 App. at 150

34 App. at 163-64

35 App. at 37.

36 App. at 39.

study noted that a 1.3 percentage point increase in

the share of the overall U.S. population composed of

immigrant college graduates, and a 0.7 percentage

point increase in that same share composed of postgraduate immigrants, led to an increase in patenting

by approximately 12 to 21%. 37 Similarly, as little as

a 0.45 percentage point increase in immigrant

scientists and engineers in the overall U.S.

population increases patenting per capita by

approximately 13 to 32%. 38

High-skilled

immigration has an important and discernable

impact on the innovation economy. Limiting such

immigration clearly threatens future innovation.

Immigrants

Leaders.

Are

Technology

The highly-educated foreign-born scientists,

mathematicians, and engineers also represent some

of the best in the field. 41% of the Nobel Prizes won

by Americans in Chemistry, Medicine, and Physics

since 2000 were awarded to immigrants. 39 In 2016,

all six American winners of the Nobel Prize in

economics and scientific fields were foreign born. 40

From 2010-2015, four out of eight U.S. Turing

Award (for computing) recipients were first or second

generation immigrants. 41 Since 1936, 63% of Fields

Medal (for mathematics) recipients affiliated with a

U.S. research institution have been foreign born

(and all such recipients have been foreign-born since

37 App. at 41.

Id.

39 App. at 166.

Id.

41 App. at 178.

2002). 42 40% of National Medal of Science recipients

in math or computer science are foreign-born. 43 In

Massachusetts, 37% of Nobel Prize winners

associated with MIT are foreign-born; 44 32% of Nobel

prize winners who are current faculty or alumni of

Harvard University are foreign-born; 45 and 75% of

Nobel Prize winners who have been affiliated with

Boston University are foreign born. 46 There is little

question as to the importance of the contributions

that immigrants make to STEM fields, in both the

U.S. and Massachusetts.

Immigrants

Leaders.

Are

Business

American companies that are household

names—Microsoft, McDonald’s, U.S. Steel—are led

by foreign-born CEOs. 47 As of 2016, over 10% of

Fortune 500 CEOs were born outside of the U.S.; the

same was true for 14% of Fortune 100 CEOs. 48 In

2016, over 40% of Fortune 500 firms were founded

either by an immigrant or the child of immigrants. 49

The same holds true in Massachusetts. More

than half of the Massachusetts-based Fortune 500

companies were founded by immigrants, or by

42 App. at 176.

43 App. at 180.

44 App. at 168.

45 App. at 169.

Id.

47 App. at 29.

Id.

49 App at 32

children of immigrants. 50 Their impact on the

Massachusetts economy has been significant,

generating over $130 billion in annual revenue, and

employing nearly half a million people around the

world. 51 At the beginning of this decade, over 17

percent of all business owners in Massachusetts

were foreign born. 52 In 2013, the same was true of

nearly 19 percent of business owners in the greater

Boston area. 53 From 2006 to 2010, Massachusetts

businesses owned by new immigrants had a total net

business income of $2.8 billion. 54

Prominent American innovators, past and

present, hail from countries directly targeted by the

Third Travel Ban, including Steve Jobs (the cofounder of Apple whose father is from Syria), 55 Ali

Hajimiri (an academic and entrepreneur who holds

over 85 U.S. and European patents, who is from

Iran), 56 and Joe Kiani (founder, chairman, and CEO

of Masimo, and also from Iran). 57 Iranian-Americans

either founded or lead mainstays of the technology

sector like Twitter, Dropbox, Oracle, and eBay. 58

Similarly, several of the top venture capitalists who

50 App. at 26.

Id.

52 App. at 27.

Id.

55 App. at 32-34.

Id.

58 App. at 14.

fund new technology companies were born in

Tehran. 59

Immigrants Contribute To The

Field Of Medicine.

Medicine, in particular, has benefitted greatly

from immigrants.

More than 25 percent of

physicians practicing in the United States are

foreign born. 60 Importantly, foreign-born physicians

are disproportionately represented in rural clinics

and public safety-net hospitals treating isolated and

vulnerable populations. 61 The simple reason for this

is that the United States does not produce enough

physicians to keep up with demand. According to a

report published by the Association of American

Medical Colleges (AAMC) in 2016, a current deficit

of 11,000 physicians is expected to grow as the

population grows and ages. 62 The AAMC estimates

that the U.S. will face a shortage of up to 94,700

doctors by 2025. 63 Almost a third of the shortage

will be primary care physicians. 64 More than 8,400

doctors working in the U.S. are from two countries

listed in the Third Travel Ban: Iran and Syria. 65

Specifically in Massachusetts, in 2016 almost 1 in 4

physicians graduated from a medical school outside

of the United States (suggesting non-U.S. origin). 66

59 App. at 17-18

60 App. at 17.

61 App. at 17-18.

Id.

63 App at 18

Id.

65 App. at 19.

66 App. at 21.

Unless It Is Enjoined, The Third Travel

Ban Will Harm The Technology

Industry.

Implementation

irrational

and

discriminatory immigration policies, including the

Third Travel Ban, would severely harm the

technology industry in the U.S. generally, and

Massachusetts specifically. Indeed, Massachusetts

has one of the highest numbers of applications for

temporary non-agricultural work permits in the

United States. 67

The impact is expected to

destabilize the workforce and reduce the

competitiveness of U.S. technology firms. For

example, Microsoft’s public securities filings explain

that “[c]hanges to U.S. immigration policies that

restrain the flow of technical and professional talent

may inhibit our ability to adequately staff our

research and development efforts.” 68 In addition to

stifling recruiting from the “banned” countries, the

Third Travel Ban could accelerate the rise of

technology hubs abroad, making such locales as

Vancouver, London, and Singapore more “attractive

alternatives to existing hubs” of technology in the

United States, 69 and force companies based abroad

to put off opening offices in the United States. 70 It

will also likely result in the relocation of foreign born

employees from the United States to other counties

where they can reside without fear of a sudden

revocation of their rights to access their families and

homes.

67 App. at 128.

68 App. at 21.

69 App at 22.

Id.

The Massachusetts technology sector expects

to feel this impact acutely.

As reported in the press, numerous Bostonbased businesses have expressed grave concern

regarding the Administration’s travel ban and its

potential expansion. As Jeff Bussgang, a general

partner at the venture capital firm Flybridge and

professor at Harvard Business School stated, the

travel ban is “the innovation economy’s worst

nightmare.” 71 Paul English, founder of the travel

booking site Kayak and startup Lola, expressed

concern about a Mexican national hired to develop

an app who was worried about traveling out of the

country to visit his family. 72 Leaders of

Massachusetts-headquartered

technology

companies, from large to small— including GE,

TripAdvisor, Carbonite, Brightcove, and Fuze—have

expressed concern over the direct impact that

implementation of the travel ban had on their

businesses. 73 This anecdotal evidence is strongly

supported by the empirical data noted above: a high

percentage of founders, managers, and employees of

Massachusetts

technology

companies

are

immigrants and potentially impacted by the Third

Travel Ban, either directly or indirectly.

Adam Vaccaro, Boston Business Leaders Oppose

Trump Immigration Order, The Boston Globe (Jan. 29, 2017),

available at https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/01/29/

chief-says-company-will-stand-with-employees-from-bannedcountries/5v00oFyvZZpGPd5CxPDjfN/story.html.

Id.

Zeninjor Enwemeka, Local Tech Companies Say

Trump’s Immigration Order Is Bad For Business, WBUR (Feb.

7, 2017), available at http://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2017/02/

07/boston-business-travel-ban.

It is thus clearly in the public interest—

including in the interests of the Massachusetts

technology industry—for the Court to restrain the

operation of the Third Travel Ban. The United

States deserves fair, rational, and predictable rules

to govern immigration and international travel.

Such a system permits individuals and companies to

reliably arrange employment and commercial

relationships, without fear that those relationships

will be abruptly disrupted by irrational or

discriminatory policies.

Unless It Is Enjoined, the Third Travel

Ban Will Undermine the Competitive

Strength of the Domestic Technology

Industry and Will Chill the Culture of

Innovation.

The Third Travel Ban is also contrary to the

public interest because it substantially undermines

the ability of the Massachusetts technology industry

to compete in the international marketplace. It

discourages travel to the U.S. by potential customers

and investors, either because they are directly

impacted by the ban, or because they are worried

that the ban would be unexpectedly expanded to

exclude additional nationalities. Indeed, this is not a

theoretical concern. Flight bookings to the United

States from January 28, 2017 to February 4, 2017

dropped by 6.5% overall in comparison to the

previous year. 74 Bookings to the United States from

the six targeted countries in the Second Travel Ban

have dropped by 80%. 75

74 App. at 271.

Id.

It may also force companies to move jobs

outside of the U.S., locating businesses where

employees live rather than enticing them to come to

the U.S.

Similarly, the Third Travel Ban

discourages talented foreign students from attending

local educational institutions, from which the

technology industry hires many engineers and

scientists to drive innovation in the United States.

Foreign-born students already in the U.S. will be

less likely to remain, as they may be unable to

receive or renew a visa, or may be fearful of that

possibility. The Third Travel Ban will inevitably

reduce the relative strength of domestic industry in

global markets, which does nothing to make the

United States more safe, prosperous, or secure.

The technology industry, in Massachusetts as

elsewhere, thrives on a culture of diversity,

inclusivity, and equal opportunity. The Third Travel

Ban is antithetical to these values. It is a patently

illegal and discriminatory attempt to inflict harm

upon a religious minority. 76 This animus was both

proven and magnified by the manner of the Original

Travel Ban’s implementation, which—without any

notice—barred the re-entry of Muslims who have

made their home in our country, separating them

from their homes, families, and careers.

government that acts to hurt people based on their

religion (or non-religion) undermines not only the

inclusive principles of the modern technology

industry, but also legal principles “rooted in the

foundation soil of our Nation” and “fundamental to

freedom.” 77 “Freedom of thought, which includes

Aziz, 234 F. Supp. 3d at 729-31, 737.

Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 103-09 (1968).

freedom of religious belief, is basic in a society of free

men [and women].” 78

CONCLUSION

For all the foregoing reasons, MassTLC

respectfully requests that this Court affirm the

decision below.

Respectfully submitted,

/s/

Christopher Escobedo Hart

Counsel of Record

Michael B. Keating

Kristyn M. DeFilipp

Daniel L. McFadden

FOLEY HOAG LLP

155 Seaport Boulevard

Boston, MA 02210

(617) 832-1232

chart@foleyhoag.com

Attorneys for Amicus Curiae

MASSACHUSETTS TECHNOLOGY

LEADERSHIP COUNCIL, INC.

Dated: March 30, 2018

United States v. Ballard, 322 U.S. 78, 86 (1944).

APPENDIX

THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF

IMMIGRATION ON THE U.S.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to the following organizations for

their support: Carbonite, CHEN PR, Foley Hoag,

Goodsill Anderson Quinn & Stifel, TripAdvisor, and

WireStone.

And, thank you to the many individuals who

contributed time and energy to our research and

advocacy on this important issue: Catherine Alford,

Mohamad Ali, Amitay Alter, Almudena Arcelus,

Grace Brittan, Kip Brown, Marric Buessing, Kristyn

Bunce DeFilipp, Sean Burpoe, Lenore Byers, Chris

Carleton, Sonia Cheung, Pierre-Yves Cremieux, Nick

Dadson, Tracy Danner, Matt Driver, Akanksha Dua,

Sorcha Evenhouse, Adam Feifel, Catherine Fernan,

Desiree Fish, Aaron Fix, Max Flignor, Sara Fraim,

Emily Gao, Sam Green, Norman Guadagno, Carro

Halpin, Christopher Hart, Owen Hearey, Alex

Henslovitz, Ryan Hiatt, Alison Hill, Hunter Hillman,

Victoria Hopcroft, Tom Hopcroft, Grace Howland,

Samantha Jandl, Patrick Johnson, Seth Kalvert,

Steve Kaufer, Michael Keating, Sarah King, Olga

Korolev, Nguyen Le, Jee-Yeon Lehmann,

Christopher Llop, Dana Louie, Tarek Makawi,

Federico Mantovanelli, Rosamond Mate, Sean

McCoy, Dan McFadden, Kate McLeod, Liz Milsark,

Pedro Mora, Ruth Morris, Liz Neyens, Amanda

Nguyen, Caitlin O’Malley, Alec Paulson, Shaked

Peleg, Clemens Pilgram, Greg Rafert, Nina Roesner,

Peter Rosenblum, Aidan Saavedra Buckley, Kate

Schoenbach, Shannon Seitz, Riddhima Sharma,

Jesse Shea, Danielle Sheer, Yanying Sheng, Eric

Smiley, Mike Spinney, Ian Staeheli, Patricio Suarez

Urtaza, Matt Summers, Neal Tan, Evelyn TaylorMcGregor, Brett Tobin, David Toniatti, Kate Uthe,

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Jahnvi Vaidya, Katie Williams, Frances Yen, Brad

Young, Tom Yu, Haimin Zhang, and Luise Zhong.

INTRODUCTION

The Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council

(MassTLC), the region’s largest non-profit

technology organization, joined the national

conversation on the role that immigrants play in our

economy with its submission of amicus briefs in the

District Court of Hawaii and the U.S. Court of

Appeals for the 4th and 9th Circuits. These briefs

support the plaintiffs in those cases, who have

sought to enjoin the President’s Executive Orders

restricting travel to the U.S. from certain countries.

While it is well understood within the technology

community that diversity and the global mobility of

talent and ideas into our country are critical

drivers of U.S. innovation, economic growth, and

global competitiveness, we felt that the submission

of amicus briefs requires better documentation and

sourcing of these commonly held truths. This report

reflects our work to document the impact that

immigrants have on our economy.

We entered this dialogue on behalf of the tech

community in Massachusetts because, as a leading

technology state, we feel the acute impact that

immigrants have in our economy. As Governor

Charlie Baker noted, “Massachusetts is a global

community, and we all benefit from the shared

experiences of our partners from around the world to

support our economy and educational institutions

[and] make our state the best place to live, work, and

raise a family.”

This report illustrates a rich tapestry of unique

impacts across the country. We hope this

iii

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The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

compilation of research contributes to a productive

dialogue about the important role immigrants play

as critical drivers of our national leadership in

innovation, economic growth, and global

competitiveness.

We encourage readers of this report to lend their

voices to the conversation and use this research to

complement personal insights and experiences about

the role of immigrants. We welcome broad sharing of

this report and have made it freely available for

download at the following URL:

www.MassTLC.org/Immigration.

Thank you,

/s/ Thomas Hopcroft

Thomas Hopcroft

President & CEO

Mass Technology

Leadership Council, Inc.

/s/ Mohamad Ali

Mohamad Ali

President & CEO

Carbonite, Inc.

Trustee, MassTLC

/s/ Steve Kaufer

Steve Kaufer

President & CEO

TripAdvisor, Inc.

Member, MassTLC

June 2017

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .............................. 1

II.

THE IMPACT OF IMMIGRATION ON

THE TECH INDUSTRY .................................1

THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE TRAVEL

BAN ON INNOVATION AND THE

ECONOMY ..................................................5

COST TO BUSINESSES IMPOSED BY

THE EXECUTIVE ORDER ............................ 8

DEMAND FOR H-1B WORKERS .................10

THE ROLE OF IMMIGRANTS IN THE

TECH INDUSTRY.......................................12

Massachusetts-Specific

Facts ..........................................15

THE ROLE OF IMMIGRANTS IN

MEDICINE ................................................17

Massachusetts-Specific

Facts ..........................................12

Massachusetts-Specific

Facts ..........................................20

IMPACT OF VISA RESTRICTIONS ON

AMERICAN EMPLOYERS ...........................21

Potential Impact of the

Proposed Order on Risk

and Instability of

American Workforces ................21

ii.

Potential Impact of the

Proposed Order on the

Competitiveness of U.S.

Firms .........................................22

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III.

IV.

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

iii.

Outsourcing ...............................23

iv.

Impact on Massachusetts .........24

IMPACT OF IMMIGRANTS ON

INNOVATION AND PRODUCTIVITY ........ 28

IMMIGRANTS IN LEADERSHIP

POSITIONS ...............................................29

INNOVATORS FROM TARGETED

COUNTRIES ..............................................32

IMPACT OF IMMIGRANTS ON PATENT

ACTIVITY .................................................34

COMMERCIAL VALUE OF IMMIGRANT

PATENTS ..................................................37

IMMIGRANTS PATENTING BY FIELD ..........38

SPILLOVER EFFECTS ON

INNOVATION BY IMMIGRANTS ..................40

IMPACT OF VISA RESTRICTIONS ON

INNOVATION AND PATENTING ..................45

IMPACT OF IMMIGRANT STUDENTS

ON INNOVATION AND PATENTING .............46

IMPACT OF IMMIGRANTS ON FIRMS ..........49

IMPACT OF IMMIGRANTS ON

PRODUCTIVITY .........................................52

IMPACT OF IMMIGRANTS ON

ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITY ............... 57

THE IMPACT OF IMMIGRANTS ON

NEW BUSINESS STARTS BY SECTOR .........58

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THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND

IMMIGRATION STATUS,

PARTICULARLY IN HIGH-TECH

SECTORS ..................................................58

Literature Review .....................58

a. Share of Business

Founders .............................59

b. Business Formation

Rate .....................................62

ii.

Descriptive Tables from

Fortune 500 Companies ............73

iii.

Descriptive Tables from

Survey of Business

Owners, 2007 and 2012 ............77

IMPACT OF NEW BUSINESSES

STARTED BY IMMIGRANTS ........................86

Estimates of Sales,

Employment, and Payroll

Generated by ImmigrantOwned Firms in 2012................86

ii.

Regional Differences .................89

REGIONAL IMPACT AND

ECONOMIC GROWTH ................................ 90

STATE-BY-STATE FACTS FROM THE

AMERICAN IMMIGRATION COUNCIL .........92

STEM POST-BACCALAUREATE

DEGREES BY STATE AND STUDENT

U.S. RESIDENCY STATUS .......................100

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The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

H-1B VISA AND GREEN CARD

APPLICATIONS BY STATE........................102

NUMBERS AND FRACTION OF

IMMIGRANT POPULATIONS BY U.S.

STATE, 2010-2015 .................................107

PERCENTAGE CHANGES OF

IMMIGRANT POPULATIONS BY

STATE, 2005-2015 .................................116

LEVELS AND PERCENTAGE CHANGES

OF PETITIONS FOR SKILLED

WORKERS, 2010-2016 ...........................128

FISCAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGRANT

GENERATION, 2011-2013 ......................140

VI.

HIGH-SKILLED IMMIGRANTS ............... 149

CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGHSKILLED IMMIGRANTS ...........................150

Education Levels .....................150

ii.

Medical Professionals .............152

IMMIGRANTS IN THE U.S. MILITARY ......155

IMMIGRANTS ENROLLED IN U.S.

HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS .......159

Degrees Conferred in the

U.S. ..........................................159

ii.

Impact of Degrees

Conferred in

Massachusetts .........................161

iii.

Economic Benefits of

International Students ...........162

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The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

AWARDS .................................................... 164

THE NOBEL PRIZE .................................166

Nobel Laureates Affiliated

with Universities in

Massachusetts .........................168

MACARTHUR FELLOWSHIP ....................169

RECOGNITIONS IN MEDICINE .................172

Wolf Prize in Medicine ............172

ii.

Top Cancer Researchers .........174

iii.

Howard Hughes

Investigators ...........................175

OTHER PRIZES IN STEM .......................176

Fields Medal ............................176

ii.

Turing Award ..........................178

iii.

National Medal of Science ......180

iv.

Intel Science Talent

Search ......................................182

Breakthrough Prize ................185

vi.

Simons Investigators ..............188

vii.

Blavatnik Awards ...................188

MEMBERSHIP IN THE NATIONAL

ACADEMY OF SCIENCES .........................189

MEDAL OF FREEDOM .............................189

THE CARNEGIE CORPORATION

PRIDE OF AMERICA HONOREES ..............192

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VIII. IMMIGRATION, CRIME, AND

TERRORISM .............................................. 193

PUBLIC OPINION ....................................195

IMMIGRATION AND CRIME ......................198

IX.

Existing Research Finds

No Impact of Immigration

on Increasing Crime................198

ii.

Immigrants Are No More

Likely to Be Criminals

than Native-Born

Individuals ..............................204

IMMIGRATION AND TERRORISM ..............210

The Link between

Immigration and

Terrorism is Unclear...............210

ii.

Immigrants Are No More

Likely to Be Radicalized

than Native-Born

Individuals ..............................211

IMMIGRANTS ARE MORE LIKELY TO

BE THE VICTIMS OF HATE CRIME ..........214

RHETORIC AND HATE INCIDENTS

AGAINST IMMIGRANTS .......................... 217

HATE CRIMES AND BIAS INCIDENTS ......218

ORGANIZED HATE GROUPS ....................221

ANXIETY IN K-12 EDUCATION ................223

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S TWITTER

RHETORIC ..............................................225

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PROFILE OF IMMIGRANTS FROM

THE SIX COUNTRIES AND OTHER

SELECTED COUNTRIES.......................... 228

OVERVIEW OF IMMIGRANTS FROM

THE SIX COUNTRIES...............................229

Department of Homeland

Security Data – Summary

Tables ......................................232

a. Countries Covered

Under Current Travel

Ban ....................................232

b. Mexico, Guatemala,

and El Salvador ................235

WHERE IMMIGRANTS MOVE ...................238

Summary .................................238

ii.

Literature Review ...................238

iii.

Descriptive Tables from

the American Community

Survey......................................240

iv.

Public Opinion on

Immigration ............................252

HOW IMMIGRANTS SPEND THEIR

TIME ......................................................253

Summary .................................253

ii.

Descriptive Statistics from

the 2003-2015 Current

Population Survey and

American Time Use

Survey......................................254

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APPENDIX: STATISTICS PERTAINING

TO IRAQ .................................................259

XI.

THE IMPACT OF THE TRAVEL BAN

ON THE U.S. TRAVEL INDUSTRY .......... 261

CHANGES IN TRAVEL DEMAND

BEFORE/AFTER TRAVEL BAN .................262

Flight Search Data..................262

ii.

Flight Booking Data ...............269

iii.

Additional Sources ..................273

STATISTICS REGARDING TRAVEL

AND TOURISM BY IMMIGRANTS ..............276

Air Travel ................................276

ii.

Tourism Revenue ....................277

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I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A. The Impact of Immigration on the Tech

Industry

The technology industry is a critical driver of the

U.S. economy. In Massachusetts alone, nearly

400,000 people work in jobs that are either in the

technology sector, or are in technology-related

occupations in other sectors, together comprising

about 13 percent of the state’s total workforce. The

tech industry is a global enterprise, fueled in large

part by immigration and international travel. As of

January 1, 2016, "[i]mmigrants have started more

than half (44 of 87) of America’s startup companies

valued at $1 billion dollars or more and are key

members of management or product development

teams in over 70 percent (62 of 87) of these

companies." More than half of Silicon Valley’s

corporate founders are immigrants.

The integral role that immigrants play in the

technology industry is one of job creation,

innovation, and leadership. Far from taking jobs,

immigrants are creating jobs for the native-born

population and helping meet the needs of an

industry constrained by a lack of skilled workers. By

2020, for example, projections indicate that 1.4

million computer specialist positions will be open in

the United States, but domestic universities will

only produce enough graduates to fill 29 percent of

those jobs. In Massachusetts today, there are

seventeen technology jobs for every person who

graduates with a college degree in computer science

or information technology.

Immigrants are responsible for substantial economic

growth. This is true of the U.S. economy where, in

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The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

2015, immigrants contributed $2 trillion to the U.S.

GDP, representing 11 percent of the country’s total

GDP. It is also true of the Massachusetts economy,

where one study found that if half of Massachusetts’

3,608 advanced level graduates in science,

technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)

related fields, studying on temporary visas,

remained in Massachusetts upon graduation, then

4,726 new jobs would be created for U.S.-born

workers by 2021.

Research indicates that immigrant students are

disproportionately more likely to get their degrees in

a STEM field – an area of critical domestic talent

shortages – and that international students make up

over 30 percent of the post-baccalaureate degrees in

STEM fields. Furthermore, individuals from Iran,

Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen – the six

countries subject to the President’s revised

Executive Order – are more likely to have a

bachelor’s degree, approximately twice as likely to

have a graduate degree, and four times as likely to

have a doctoral degree relative to the native-born

population. In addition to this population being

disproportionately educated and skilled, they are

also part of a population making immediate impacts

on the U.S economy. During the 2015-16 academic

year alone, international students contributed $32.8

billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than

400,000 jobs.

Immigrants also drive the development of inventions

and other useful arts. For example, in 2011, 76

percent of patents awarded to the Top 10 patentproducing U.S. universities had an inventor that was

foreign-born. In recent years, foreign nationals

contributed to more than three quarters of patents in

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The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

the fields of information technology, molecular and

microbiology, and pharmaceuticals. The amount of

invention originating from immigrants can have

dramatic effects on innovation, with discernable

spillover effects. One academic study noted that a

1.3 percentage point increase in the share of the

overall U.S. population composed of immigrant

college graduates, and a 0.7 percentage point

increase in that same share composed of postgraduate immigrants, led to an increase in patenting

by approximately 12 percent to 21 percent.

Similarly, as little as a 0.45 percentage point

increase in immigrant scientists and engineers in

the overall U.S. population increases patenting per

capita by approximately 13 to 32 percent. Highskilled immigration has an important and

discernable impact on patenting, a key indicator of

innovation in the economy.

The highly-educated foreign-born scientists,

mathematicians, and engineers also represent some

of the best in the field. Forty percent of the Nobel

Prizes won by Americans in Chemistry, Medicine,

and Physics since 2000 were awarded to immigrants.

In 2016, all six American winners of the Nobel Prize

in economics and scientific fields were foreign-born.

From 2010-2015, four out of eight American

recipients of the Turing Award (for computing) were

first or second generation immigrants. Since 1936,

63 percent of Fields Medal (for mathematics)

recipients affiliated with a U.S. research institution

have been foreign-born (and all such recipients have

been foreign-born since 2002). Forty percent of

National Medal of Science recipients in math or

computer science are foreign-born. In

Massachusetts, 37 percent of Nobel Prize winners

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The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

associated with MIT are foreign-born; 33 percent of

Nobel Prize winners who are current faculty or

alumni at Harvard University are foreign-born; and

75 percent of Nobel Prize winners who have been

affiliated with Boston University are foreign-born.

American companies that are household names—

Microsoft, McDonald’s, U.S. Steel—are led by

foreign-born CEOs. As of 2016, over 10 percent of

Fortune 500 CEOs were born outside of the U.S.; the

same was true for 14 percent of Fortune 100 CEOs.

In 2016, over 40 percent of Fortune 500 firms were

founded either by an immigrant or a child of

immigrants. The same holds true in Massachusetts.

More than half of the Massachusetts-based Fortune

500 companies were founded by immigrants, or by

children of immigrants. Their impact on the

Massachusetts economy has been significant,

generating over $130 billion in annual revenue, and

employing nearly half a million people around the

world. At the beginning of this decade, over 17

percent of all business owners in Massachusetts

were foreign-born. In 2013, the same was true of

nearly 19 percent of business owners in the greater

Boston area.

From 2006 to 2010, Massachusetts businesses owned

by new immigrants had a total net business income

of $2.8 billion. Prominent American innovators, past

and present, hail from countries directly targeted by

the Revised Travel Ban, including Steve Jobs; the cofounder of Apple whose father is from Syria; Ali

Hajimiri, an academic and entrepreneur who holds

over 85 U.S. and European patents and is from Iran;

and Joe Kiani, founder, chairman, and CEO of

Masimo who is also from Iran. Iranian-Americans

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The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

either founded or lead mainstays of the technology

sector like Twitter, Dropbox, Oracle, and eBay.

Similarly, several of the top venture capitalists who

fund new technology companies were born in

Tehran.

The field of medicine has also benefitted greatly from

immigrants. More than 25 percent of physicians

practicing in the United States are foreign-born.

Importantly, foreign-born physicians are

disproportionately represented in rural clinics and

public safety-net hospitals treating isolated and

vulnerable populations. The simple reason for this is

that the United States does not produce enough

physicians to keep up with demand. A current deficit

of 11,000 physicians is expected to grow as the

population grows and ages. It is estimated that U.S.

will face a shortage of up to 94,700 doctors by 2025.

Almost a third of the shortage will be primary care

physicians. More than 8,400 doctors working in the

U.S. are from Iran and Syria, two of countries listed

in the Revised Travel Ban. In Massachusetts, almost

1 in 4 physicians graduated from a medical school

outside of the United States, suggesting non-U.S.

origin.

B. The Implications of the Travel Ban on

Innovation and the Economy

Creating unnecessary barriers for foreign innovators

and job creators is likely to have an adverse impact

on the technology industry and threaten the

innovation capacity and economic prosperity of the

United States in general, and Massachusetts

specifically. Indeed, Massachusetts has one of the

highest numbers of applications for temporary nonagricultural work permits in the United States. A

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The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

potential impact of the executive order will be the

destabilization of the workforce and the reduction of

U.S. competitiveness. Microsoft’s public securities

filings explain that “[c]hanges to U.S. immigration

policies that restrain the flow of technical and

professional talent may inhibit our ability to

adequately staff our research and development

efforts.”

In addition to stifling recruiting from certain

countries, the Revised Travel Ban could accelerate

the rise of technology hubs abroad, making such

locales as Vancouver, London, and Singapore more

“attractive alternatives to existing hubs” of

technology than the United States, and force

companies based abroad to put off opening offices in

the United States. It will also likely result in the

relocation of foreign-born employees from the United

States to other counties where they can reside

without fear of a sudden revocation of their rights to

access their families and homes.

The Massachusetts technology sector expects to feel

this impact acutely. As reported in the press,

numerous Boston-based businesses have expressed

grave concerns regarding the Administration’s travel

ban and its potential expansion. As Jeff Bussgang, a

general partner at the venture capital firm Flybridge

and professor at Harvard Business School stated, the

travel ban is “the innovation economy’s worst

nightmare.” Paul English, founder of the travel

booking site Kayak and startup Lola, expressed

concern about a Mexican national hired to develop

an app who was worried about traveling out of the

country to visit his family. Leaders of

Massachusetts-headquartered technology companies

from large to small—including GE, TripAdvisor,

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The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Carbonite, Brightcove, and Fuze—have expressed

concern over the direct impact that implementation

of the original Travel Ban had on their businesses.

This anecdotal evidence is strongly supported by the

empirical data contained in this report: a high

percentage of founders, managers, and employees of

Massachusetts technology companies are

immigrants and potentially impacted by the Revised

Travel Ban, either directly or indirectly.

The impact of the Revised Travel Ban also inhibits

the ability of the Massachusetts technology industry

to compete in the international marketplace. It

discourages travel to the U.S. by potential customers

and investors, either because they are directly

impacted by the ban, or out of concern that the ban

could be unexpectedly expanded. Indeed, this is not a

theoretical concern. Flight bookings to the United

States from January 28, 2017 to February 4, 2017

dropped by 6.5 percent overall in comparison to the

previous year. Bookings to the United States from

the six countries targeted by the Revised Travel Ban

have dropped by 80 percent. Companies are already

considering moving jobs outside of the U.S., locating

businesses where employees live rather than

enticing them to come to the U.S. Moving these jobs

out of the country reduces employment in domestic

support jobs that will be hired in proximity to these

workers.

Similarly, the Revised Travel Ban discourages

talented foreign students from attending local

educational institutions, from which the technology

industry hires many engineers and scientists to

drive innovation in the United States. Foreign-born

students already in the U.S. will be less likely to

remain, as they may be unable to receive or renew a

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The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

visa, or may be fearful of that possibility. The

Revised Travel Ban will inevitably reduce the

relative strength of the domestic industry in global

markets.

The technology industry, in Massachusetts as

elsewhere, thrives on a culture of diversity,

inclusivity, and equal opportunity. We hope that by

compiling this research and highlighting the impact

of immigration on the U.S. and Massachusetts

economies, we can productively contribute to the

national conversation and are able to illustrate the

significant impact immigrants have on the growth

and prosperity of our nation.

II. COST TO BUSINESSES IMPOSED BY THE

EXECUTIVE ORDER

One of the primary contributions of immigrants 1 to

the United States is as members of the workforce.

From 1996 to 2010, immigrants accounted for

roughly half of the U.S. labor force growth. 2

Strikingly, immigrants have also been leaders in

innovation and entrepreneurship, comprising over

Unless otherwise noted, immigrants refer to foreign-born

individuals who are residents of the United States.

Orrenius, Pia M. and Madeline Zavodny, “Immigrants in

the U.S. Labor Market,” Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas,

Working Paper 1306, September 2013, available at

https://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/research/paper

s/2013/wp1306.pdf, accessed March 25, 2017, p. 8

(“Although they make up only 16 percent of U.S. workforce,

these immigrants account for a much larger share of its

growth. Just over half of the increase in the U.S. labor force

between 1996 and 2010 was the result of immigration—

legal and illegal”).

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The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

half of Silicon Valley founders. 3 The executive order

limiting work visas and immigration from select

countries, however, creates significant levels of

uncertainty for immigrant workers and their

employers and has the potential to impose

substantial costs on firms. The proposed order also

increases incentives for firms to outsource their

operations, reducing employment prospects in the

United States generally.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

•

By 2020, it is estimated that 1.4 million

computer specialist positions will be open.

However U.S. universities will only produce

enough graduates to fill 29 percent of these

jobs. There are more than 500,000 open

computing jobs, but less than 50,000

Americans graduate from college with

computer-science degrees every year.

•

The tech sector accounts for 20 percent of jobs

in Massachusetts. At the same time, there is

a shortage of graduates in tech-related fields;

there is one graduate with degrees in

computer science or information technology

(IT) for every 17 technology jobs in

Massachusetts.

Kerr, William, “Why These Business School Professors

Oppose Trump's Executive Order on Immigration,”

Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, January 31,

2017, available at http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-thesebusiness-school-professors-oppose-trump-s-executive-orderon-immigration, accessed March 25, 2017.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

•

In 2014, immigrants comprised 15.6 percent of

the population in Massachusetts and 26.6

percent of science, technology, engineering,

and mathematics (“STEM”) jobs.

•

Almost 1 in 4 physicians in Massachusetts

were graduates from a foreign medical school

in 2016.

•

Almost 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies

based in Massachusetts were founded by

immigrants or their children 4 and almost 20

percent of business owners in the Boston

metropolitan area were foreign-born.

C. Demand for H-1B Workers

•

The private sector accounts for the intensity of

demand for H1-B workers:

o Top H1-B demands are from firms such

as Wal-Mart, Merrill Lynch, Credit

Suisse, JPMorgan Chase & Co. 5

“The Contributions of New Americans in Massachusetts,”

New American Economy, August 2016, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/02/nae-ma-report.pdf, accessed March

25, 2017, p. 3.

“The H-1B Visa Program: A Primer on the Program and Its

Impact on Jobs, Wages, and the Economy,” American

Immigration Council, April 1, 2016, available at

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/h1bvisa-program-fact-sheet, accessed March 25, 2017.

June 2017

•

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

o Nearly two thirds of requests for H1-B

visas are in STEM occupations with

lower percentages of workers contributing to

the healthcare, business, finance, and

life sciences industries. 6

H1-B petitions approved in 2012, by detailed

industry 7 (number of petitions; percent of

approved H1-B Petitions):

o Computer Systems Design & Related

Services (110,414; 42 percent)

o Colleges, Universities, and Professional

Schools (16,167; 6.2 percent)

o Software Publishers (5,367; 2.0 percent)

o Management, Scientific, & Technical

Consulting Services (4,915; 1.9 percent)

o General Medical and Surgical Hospitals

(4,533; 1.7 percent)

Two thirds of foreign students pursue

bachelor or higher level degrees in STEM,

business, management, and marketing fields

“The H-1B Visa Program: A Primer on the Program and Its

Impact on Jobs, Wages, and the Economy,” American

Immigration Council, April 1, 2016, available at

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/h1bvisa-program-fact-sheet, accessed March 25, 2017.

“Characteristics of H1B Specialty Occupation Workers:

Fiscal Year 2012 Annual Report to Congress,” U.S.

Citizenship and Immigration Services, June 26, 2013,

available at

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/R

eports%20and%20Studies/H-1B/h1b-fy-12characteristics.pdf, accessed March 25, 2017, p. 20 and

Table 13A. Percent calculated as number of petitions in

industry divided by total number of petitions.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

in the United States as compared to 48

percent of American-born students. 8

Massachusetts-Specific Facts

o Boston is the city with the 6th highest

number of H-1B visa sponsored MBAs. 9

D. The Role of Immigrants in the Tech Industry

• The U.S. relies heavily on a steady stream of

skilled engineers from other countries to help

create its products, as indicated by the

number of H1-B petitions approved in related

sectors. 10

Ruiz, Neil G. “The Geography of Foreign Students in U.S.

Higher Education: Origins and Destinations,” Global Cities

Initiative: A Joint Project of Brookings and JPMorgan

Chase, August 2014, available at

https://www.brookings.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2014/08/Foreign_Students_Final.pdf,

accessed March 25, 2017, p. 1.

Allen, Nathan, “Where MBAs Are Most Likely to Get an

H1B Visa,” Poets & Quants, March 1, 2017, available at

http://poetsandquants.com/2017/03/01/mbas-likely-get-h1bvisa/, accessed March 10, 2017. This statistic is calculated

using data from the 13,000 users of the website

https://www.transparentcareer.com/. According to Sheryle

Dirks, Associate Dean of Career Management at the Fuqua

School of Business at Duke University, “Transparent’s data

looks entirely consistent with what we have seen and

known to be true, specifically at Duke Fuqua over the past

few years anecdotally, as well as talking with our other

business school counterparts.”

Wingfield, Nick and Mike Isaac, “Tech Industry Frets over

Possible Immigration Changes,” The New York Times,

January 27, 2017, available at

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/business/technologyh-1b-visa-immigration.html, accessed March 25, 2017.

June 2017

•

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

The U.S. does not produce enough

professionals to fill all open high-tech jobs:

o There are almost five open positions for

every software developer looking for

work 11

By 2020, it is estimated that 1.4 million

computer specialist positions will be open,

however U.S. universities will only produce

enough graduates to fill 29 percent of these

jobs. 12 There are more than 500,000 open

computing jobs, but less than 50,000

Americans graduate from college with

computer-science degrees every year. 13

Koetsier, John, “Hiring and Hirable in 2013: Agile

Developers,” VentureBeat, December 31, 2012, available at

https://venturebeat.com/2012/12/31/hiring-and-hirable-in2013-agile-developers/, accessed March 27, 2017 (“…4.59

job postings for each and every job-seeking agile

developer.”). The statistic is calculated by talent discovery

company Yoh and jobs site CareerBuilder.

Nager, Adams and Robert D. Atkinson, “The Case for

Improving U.S. Computer Science Education,” May 2016,

available at http://www2.itif.org/2016-computer-scienceeducation.pdf, accessed March 11, 2017, p. 3 (“In 2011,

Code.org projected that the economy would add 1.4 million

computing jobs by 2020, but educate just 400,000 computer

science students by then”). The statistics were calculated by

the authors using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,

Code.org, Change the Equation, and the Information

Technology and Innovation Foundation.

“Summary of Source Data for Code.org Infographics and

Stats,” Code.org, 2015, available at

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gySkItxiJn_vwb8HIIK

NXqen184mRtzDX12cux0ZgZk/pub, accessed March 27,

2017 (“…there were 580,940 bachelor’s degrees earned in

STEM in 2015, and only 49,291 of those—8.48%—were in

Computer Science…There are more than 500,000 open

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

•

“Iranian-Americans founded or hold

leadership positions at Twitter, Dropbox,

Oracle, Expedia, eBay, and Tinder. Top

venture capitalists like Shervin Pishevar,

Pejman Nozad, and brothers Ali and Hadi

Partovi, all of whom invest millions of dollars

in technology startups, were born in

Tehran.” 14

•

“Immigrant founded engineering and

technology firms employed approximately

560,000 workers and generated $63 billion in

sales in 2012. Immigrant founders from top

venture-backed firms have created an average

of approximately 150 jobs per company in the

United States.” 15

computing jobs in the United States.”). The number of

current open computing jobs comes from the sum of the perstate jobs data from The Conference Board’s Help Wanted

OnLine service. The number of STEM and Computer

Science graduates comes from the National Center for

Education Statistics (NCES) IPEDS Completions Survey,

obtained using the National Science Foundation (NSF)

WebCASPAR tool.

Waddell, Kaveh, “How Trump’s Immigration Rules Will

Hurt the U.S. Tech Sector,” The Atlantic, February 1, 2017,

available at

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/ho

w-trumps-immigration-rules-will-hurt-the-us-techsector/515202/, accessed March 11, 2017.

Stangler, Dane and Jason Wiens, “The Economic Case for

Welcoming Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” Kauffman

Foundation, September 8, 2015, available at

http://www.kauffman.org/what-wedo/resources/entrepreneurship-policy-digest/the-economic-

June 2017

•

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

“In the United States as a whole, there are

almost as many immigrants in white-collar

jobs (46 percent) as in all other occupations

combined.”

o “In some states, more than half [of

immigrants] are in white-collar jobs…

the perception that nearly all

immigrants work in low-wage jobs is

clearly inaccurate.” 16

Massachusetts-Specific Facts

o The tech sector is critical to the state’s

economy. More than 294,000 people

work directly for the technology sectors

in Massachusetts, which combined with

over 96,000 tech occupations in other

sectors and over 733,000 indirect jobs

supported by the tech sector, comprise

approximately 35 percent of the

workforce in Massachusetts. 17

case-for-welcoming-immigrant-entrepreneurs, accessed

March 25, 2017.

Costa, Daniel, David Cooper, and Heidi Shierholz, “Facts

About Immigration and the U.S. Economy,” Economic

Policy Institute, August 12, 2014, available at

http://www.epi.org/publication/immigration-facts/, accessed

March 25, 2017.

MassTLC, “The Connected Commonwealth: How the

Massachusetts Tech Ecosystem is Creating New Growth

Opportunities,” 2016, available at

http://www.masstlc.org/2016-state-of-technology-report/,

accessed April 25, 2017, p. 14.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Together, tech is responsible for 31% of

Massachusetts Gross State Product. 18

o Put together, their output was worth

$160 billion in 2013, the most recent

year for which statistics were

available.” 19

o “In the red-hot Massachusetts

technology field, meanwhile, there are

17 jobs for every one graduate with a

degree in computer science or IT.” 20

o In 2014, immigrants comprised 15.6

percent of the population in

MassTLC, “The Connected Commonwealth: How the

Massachusetts Tech Ecosystem is Creating New Growth

Opportunities,” 2016, available at

http://www.masstlc.org/2016-state-of-technology-report/,

accessed April 25, 2017, p. 15.

Adams, Dan, “Mass. Tech Sector Flourishing with

Challenges Ahead,” Boston Globe, March 13, 2015,

available at

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/03/12/reportmass-tech-sector-flourishing-but-challengesahead/BMzslVy0k1zB4cZVSH6DrK/story.html, accessed

March 10, 2017.

“The Degree Gap: Honing in on College Access,

Affordability and Completion in Massachusetts,” The

Vision Project, June 2016, available at

http://www.mass.edu/visionproject/_documents/2016%20Th

e%20Degree%20Gap%20%20Vision%20Project%20Annual%20Report.pdf, accessed

March 25, 2017, p. 14.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Massachusetts and 26.6 percent of

STEM jobs. 21

o “If half of Massachusetts’ 3,608

advanced level STEM grads on

temporary visas stayed in the state

after graduation…4,726 jobs for U.S.born workers would be created by

2021.” 22

E. The Role of Immigrants in Medicine

•

More than 25 percent of physicians practicing

in the United States are foreign-born. 23

Foreign-born physicians are disproportionally

represented in rural clinics and public safety-

“The Contributions of New Americans in Massachusetts,”

New American Economy, August 2016, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/02/nae-ma-report.pdf, accessed March

25, 2017, p. 13.

“The Contributions of New Americans in Massachusetts,”

New American Economy, August 2016, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/02/nae-ma-report.pdf, accessed March

11, 2017, p. 14.

McCabe, Kristen, “Foreign-Born Health Care Workers

in the United States,” Migration Policy Institute, June 27,

2012, available at

http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/foreign-born-healthcare-workers-united-states#4, accessed March 10, 2017 (“Of

the roughly 853,000 health care professionals employed as

physicians and surgeons in 2010, more than one-quarter

(27 percent) were foreign born.”).

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

net hospitals treating isolated and vulnerable

populations. 24

•

The reason such doctors are in the U.S. in the

first place is that America does not produce

enough physicians to keep up with demand.

According to a report published by the

Association of American Medical Colleges

(AAMC) in 2016, a current deficit of 8,200

primary care doctors and 2,800 psychiatrists

is expected to grow as the population grows

and ages. 25 The AAMC estimates that the

U.S. will face a shortage of up to 94,700

doctors by 2025. Almost a third of the

shortage will be primary care physicians. 26

Ross, Casey, and Max Blau, “US health care relies heavily

on foreign workers. Trump's immigration ban is raising

alarms,” STAT, January 30, 2017, available at

https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/30/trump-immigrationban-health-workers/, accessed March 10, 2017.

Dall, Tim, Terry West, Ritashree Chakrabarti, and Will

Iacobucci, “The Complexities of Physician Supply and

Demand: Projections from 2014 to 2025,” IHS Inc. and the

Association of American Medical Colleges, April 5, 2016,

available at

https://www.aamc.org/download/458082/data/2016_complex

ities_of_supply_and_demand_projections.pdf, accessed

March 11, 2017, p. 36.

Dall, Tim, Terry West, Ritashree Chakrabarti, and Will

Iacobucci, “The Complexities of Physician Supply and

Demand: Projections from 2014 to 2025,” IHS Inc. and the

Association of American Medical Colleges, April 5, 2016,

available at

https://www.aamc.org/download/458082/data/2016_complex

ities_of_supply_and_demand_projections.pdf, accessed

March 11, 2017, p. 37, Exhibit 22.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

More than 8,400 doctors working in the U.S.

are from the two countries listed in the

executive order – Syria and Iran. 27

o The share of health care workers that

are foreign-born was 5 percent in the

1960s and was as high as 30 percent by

the 1990s. 28

o Healthcare has the largest percentage

of foreign-born and foreign-trained

workers of any industry in the

country. 29

Yasmin, Seema, “Trump Immigration Ban Can Worsen

U.S. Doctor Shortage, Hurt Hospitals,” Scientific American,

February 1, 2017, available at

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trumpimmigration-ban-can-worsen-u-s-doctor-shortage-hurthospitals/, accessed March 10, 2017 (“More than 8,400

doctors working in the U.S. are from two countries listed in

the executive order—Syria and Iran—according to data

from the American Medical Association.”).

Carnevale, Anthony P., Nicole Smith, Artem Gulish, and

Bennett H. Beach, “Healthcare Executive Summary,”

Georgetown Public Policy Institute Center on Education

and the Workforce, June 2012, available at

https://cew.georgetown.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2014/11/Healthcare.ExecutiveSummary.09

0712.pdf, accessed March 25, 2017, p. 12.

Carnevale, Anthony P., Nicole Smith, Artem Gulish, and

Bennett H. Beach, “Healthcare Executive Summary,”

Georgetown Public Policy Institute Center on Education

and the Workforce, June 2012, available at

https://cew.georgetown.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2014/11/Healthcare.ExecutiveSummary.09

0712.pdf, accessed March 25, 2017, p. 12 (“Healthcare has

largest proportion of foreign-born and foreign-trained

June 2017

•

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Data on older Medicare patients admitted to

hospital in the U.S. showed that patients

treated by graduates of foreign medical

programs had lower mortality than patients

cared for by U.S. graduates. 30

Massachusetts-Specific Facts

o “This year’s Boston Business Journal

list of the 50 largest employers in

Massachusetts, which excludes

government jobs, totals more than

410,000 Bay State employees. Led by

No. 1-ranked Partners Health Care

System’s 67,600 Massachusetts

employees, the 13 health care

companies on the list alone comprise

more than 172,366 (in some cases this

includes per diem and temp workers) of

those employees.” 31

workers in the country. Foreign-born workers make up

nearly a quarter (22 percent) of the healthcare workforce,

nearly twice the national average.”).

Tsugawa, Yusuke, Anupam B. Jena, E. John Orav, and

Ashish K. Jha, “Quality of Care Delivered by General

Internists in US Hospitals Who Graduated from Foreign

versus US Medical Schools: Observational Study,” BMJ

356:j273, February 3, 2017, available at

http://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.j273, accessed March

25, 2017.

“The List: Health Care, Higher Ed Dominate Bay State’s

Largest Employers,” Boston Business Journal, July 8, 2016,

available at

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2016/07/08/thelist-health-care-higher-ed-dominate-bay-state.html,

accessed March 25, 2017.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

o “In 2016 almost 1 in 4 physicians in

Massachusetts graduated from a

foreign medical school, a likely sign

they were born elsewhere.” 32

F. Impact of Visa Restrictions on American

Employers

Potential Impact of the Proposed Order

on Risk and Instability of American

Workforces

•

According to Microsoft, “[c]hanges to U.S.

immigration policies that restrain the flow of

technical and professional talent may inhibit

our ability to adequately staff our research

and development efforts.” 33

•

The Computing Research Association, a nonprofit organization representing computing

professionals in academia, government

laboratories, and other areas, noted that the

proposed order “creates uncertainty and

potential hardship among current students

and researchers already here making

“The Contributions of New Americans in Massachusetts,”

New American Economy, August 2016, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/02/nae-ma-report.pdf, accessed March

25, 2017, p. 15.

Microsoft Corporation, Form 10-Q for the Quarter Ending

December 31, 2016, available at

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312

516441821/d15167d10q.htm, accessed April 14, 2017, p. 58.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

important contributions and endangers our

leadership role in a key field.” 34

ii.

Potential Impact of the Proposed Order

on the Competitiveness of U.S. Firms

•

The proposed executive order could accelerate

the rise of technology hubs abroad. Vancouver,

London, and Singapore are “attractive

alternatives to existing hubs in the West

Coast of the United States.” 35

•

Companies that are based abroad may put off

opening offices in the United States:

o “Already, the number of billion-dollar

technology start-ups, commonly called

‘unicorns,’ that are located outside the

United States has been increasing

significantly. Fifteen years ago, almost

all were in the United States, while

today 86 of the 191 unicorns are in

countries such as China and India. We

can expect this trend to accelerate

because the Trump administration has

Wingfield, Nick and Mike Isaac, “Tech Industry Frets Over

Possible Immigration Changes,” The New York Times,

January 27, 2017, available at

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/business/technologyh-1b-visa-immigration.html, accessed March 25, 2017.

Waddell, Kaveh, “How Trump’s Immigration Rules Will

Hurt the U.S. Tech Sector,” The Atlantic, February 1, 2017,

available at

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/ho

w-trumps-immigration-rules-will-hurt-the-us-techsector/515202/, accessed March 11, 2017.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

just added fuel to the fire of innovation

abroad and handicapped our own

technology industry.” 36

•

“In fiscal year 2012, fewer than 5% of those

who obtained U.S. permanent resident status

were professionals with advanced degrees,

compared to over 9% of those granted

permanent resident status in Canada…Only

14% of U.S. green cards authorizing

permanent residence – and a path to

citizenship – were granted for employment

purposes in 2012, compared to the 62% of

Canadian immigrants who were admitted for

economic reasons….Immigrants want to come

to the United States because they see

opportunity in gaps in our economy that they

have the skills to fill. Instead, many are

choosing Canada.” 37

iii.

•

Outsourcing

Research points to an inverse relationship

between temporary immigration and product

Wadhwa, Vivek, “Why Trump’s Travel Ban Is So Harmful

to the Tech Economy,” The Washington Post, January 30,

2017, available at

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/201

7/01/30/why-trumps-travel-ban-is-so-harmful-to-the-techeconomy/?utm_term=.54c1ef2a182a, accessed March 27,

2017.

Furchtgott-Roth, Diana, “U.S. Loses to Canada When It

Comes to Immigration,” MarketWatch, October 18, 2013,

available at http://www.marketwatch.com/story/inimmigration-us-loses-out-to-canada-2013-10-18, accessed

March 25, 2017.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

outsourcing. When the number of H-1B visas

issued by the U.S. government decreases,

product outsourcing increases. 38

•

Economic research on the effects of

outsourcing on blue-collar and white-collar

wages finds that outsourcing can decrease the

wage of native-born white-collar workers

when outsourcing industries are blue-collar

worker intensive compared with nonoutsourcing industries. 39 Using U.S. product

manufacturing data, outsourcing has been

found to decrease the relative wage of whitecollar workers in the 1970s. 40

iv.

•

Impact on Massachusetts

According to Jerry Rubin, president of the

Jewish Vocational Service, many key

Das, Simontini, Ajitava Raychaudhuri, and Saikat Sinha

Roy, “Immigration versus Outsourcing: A Developing

Country’s View,” Journal of Economic Development, 37:2,

June 2012, available at http://www.jed.or.kr/full-text/372/5.pdf, accessed April 14, 2017, pp. 129-131.

Hsu, Kuang-Chung, “Does Outsourcing Always Benefit

Skilled Labor?” Review of International Economics, 19:3,

August 2011, available at

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.14679396.2011.00964.x/epdf, accessed April 14, 2017, p. 539554.

Hsu, Kuang-Chung, and Hui-Chu Chiang, “The Impact of

International Outsourcing on U.S. Workers’ Wages:

Rethinking the Role of Innovation,” International Journal

of Economics and Finance, 6:5, April 25, 2014, available at

http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijef/article/view/33719/2

0417, accessed April 14, 2017, p. 1.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

industries in Boston, such as health care and

food services, have labor shortages. “[With]

the native-born population remaining

relatively flat, the demand for bilingual

workers soaring, and a large number of

workers reaching retirement age, immigrants

are essential to keep the economy from

‘grinding to a screeching halt.’” 41

•

Immigration is a key source of growth for

Boston’s labor supply. Between 1980 and

2010, the number of foreign-born workers in

Boston has tripled, while the number of

native-born workers grew by 4 percent. 42 In

2015, 32 percent of working age people moving

into the Boston area were immigrants who

moved directly from abroad. 43

Johnston, Katie. “MIT Study: Immigrants Vital to Boston’s

Economy,” Boston Globe, May 17, 2017, available at

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/05/17/mitstudy-immigrants-vital-bostoneconomy/l9PszENhVRsffVWvQVa1yO/story.html, accessed

May 17, 2017.

Johnston, Katie. “MIT Study: Immigrants Vital to Boston’s

Economy,” Boston Globe, May 17, 2017, available at

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/05/17/mitstudy-immigrants-vital-bostoneconomy/l9PszENhVRsffVWvQVa1yO/story.html, accessed

May 17, 2017. This statistic was provided by Marilynn

Johnson, author of “The New Bostonians: How Immigrants

Have Transformed the Metro Area since the 1960s.”

Osterman, Paul, William Kimball, and Christine Riordan,

“Boston’s Immigrants: An Essential Component of a Strong

Economy,” Jewish Vocational Service, May 10, 2017,

available at https://jvsboston.org/images/pdf/Osterman%20Report%20-

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

•

“3,806 H-1B denials for tech workers in the

metro area cost computer workers [in Boston

in 2007 and 2008 cost] 3,176 potential new

jobs and $72.9M in aggregate wage growth in

the two years that followed. 964 H-1B denials

for tech workers in the metro area cost

computer workers [in Worcester in 2007 and

2008 cost] 761 potential new jobs and $14.7M

in aggregate wage growth in the two years

that followed.” 44

•

“58% of Fortune 500 companies based in

Massachusetts were founded by immigrants

or their children. Those firms generate

$136.8B in annual revenue, and employ

466,892 people globally.” 45

%20Final.pdf, accessed May 22, 2017, p. 7 and Table 5.

This statistic was calculated using American Community

Survey data.

“The Contributions of New Americans in Massachusetts,”

New American Economy, August 2016, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/02/nae-ma-report.pdf, accessed March

25, 2017, p. 21.

“The Contributions of New Americans in Massachusetts,”

New American Economy, August 2016, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/02/nae-ma-report.pdf, accessed March

10, 2017, p. 3 (“58% of Fortune 500 companies based in

Massachusetts were founded by immigrants or their

children. Those firms generate $136.8B in annual revenue,

and employ 466,892 people globally”).

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

•

In 2010, 17.9% of all business owners in

Massachusetts were foreign-born. 46

•

In 2013, 18.8% of business owners in the

Boston metropolitan area were foreign-born. 47

•

From 2006 to 2010, new immigrant business

owners in Massachusetts had total net

business income of $2.8 billion, which makes

up 14% of all net business income in the

state. 48

Kallick, David Dyssegaard, “Immigrant Small Business

Owners: A Significant and Growing Part of the Economy,”

Fiscal Policy Institute, June 2012, available at

http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/immigrant-small-businessowners-FPI-20120614.pdf, accessed March 10, 2017, p. 24

and Figure 24.

“Interactive: the Impact of Immigrants on Main Street

Business and Population in U.S. Metro Areas,” Fiscal

Policy Institute and Americas Society/Council of the

Americas, January 14, 2015, available at http://www.ascoa.org/articles/interactive-impact-immigrants-main-streetbusiness-and-population-us-metro-areas, accessed March

10, 2017. The “Foreign Born Share of Business Owners”

from the American Community Survey 2013 5-Year Data is

18.8% for the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH

Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Fairlie, Robert W., “Open for Business: How Immigrants

are Driving Small Business Creation in the United States,”

Partnership for a New American Economy, August 2012,

available at

http://www.renewoureconomy.org/sites/all/themes/pnae/ope

nforbusiness.pdf, accessed March 10, 2017, p. 33. This

statistic was calculated using data from the American

Community Survey, 2006-2010.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

III.IMPACT OF IMMIGRANTS ON INNOVATION

AND PRODUCTIVITY

Academic and industry research have shown that

immigration has a positive impact on innovation,

productivity, and leadership.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

•

Many iconic American brands are led by

foreign-born CEOs. As of March 1, 2016, 10.8

percent of Fortune 500 CEOs were born

outside of the U.S, and 14 percent of Fortune

100 CEOs were born outside of the U.S.

•

More than half of America’s startup

companies valued at $1 billion dollars have

immigrant founders, and many key members

of management or product development teams

in these startups are immigrants.

•

Many prominent American innovators, past

and present, hail from countries directly

targeted by the Executive Order. These

individuals include Steve Jobs, Ali Hajimiri,

and Joe Kiani.

•

Academic research shows that there is a

positive spillover effect of immigrant inventors

and college graduates on native-born

inventors, indicating that immigrants boost

the rate at which native-born inventors file

patents.

•

Innovation from the native-born population

increases with expansions of the H-1B

program and the associated inflow of new

workers.

June 2017

•

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO)

estimated in 2013 that immigration reform

that allows for an increase in the number of

noncitizens who could lawfully enter the

United States permanently or temporarily

would boost real GDP by 5.4 percent by 2033,

and add 9 million workers to the labor force.

A. Immigrants in Leadership Positions

•

“Some of the most iconic American brands –

such as Microsoft, McDonald’s and U.S. Steel

– are led by foreign-born CEOs.” 49

o As of March 1, 2016, “10.8% of Fortune

500 CEOs were born outside of the

U.S.” 50

o As of March 1, 2016, “14.0% of Fortune

100 CEOs were born outside of the

U.S.” 51

“Immigrant CEOs of the Fortune 500,” Boardroom Insiders,

2016, available at http://info.boardroominsiders.com/getour-fortune-500-immigrant-ceo-list-for-free, accessed

February 22, 2017.

“Immigrant CEOs of the Fortune 500,” Boardroom Insiders,

2016, available at http://info.boardroominsiders.com/getour-fortune-500-immigrant-ceo-list-for-free, accessed

February 22, 2017.

“Immigrant CEOs of the Fortune 500,” Boardroom Insiders,

2016, available at http://info.boardroominsiders.com/getour-fortune-500-immigrant-ceo-list-for-free, accessed

February 22, 2017.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

•

“Immigrants have started more than half (44

of 87) of America’s startup companies valued

at $1 billion dollars or more and are key

members of management or product

development teams in over 70 percent (62 of

87) of these companies.” 52

•

Immigrants are entrepreneurial and are job

creators.

o Immigrants were nearly twice as likely

to start new businesses as the nativeborn population as of 2015. 53

Anderson, Stuart, “Immigrants and Billion Dollar

Startups,” National Foundation for American Policy, March

2016, available at http://nfap.com/wpcontent/uploads/2016/03/Immigrants-and-Billion-DollarStartups.NFAP-Policy-Brief.March-2016.pdf, accessed

March 10, 2017, p. 1 and Appendix 5. The article examines

a list of billion dollar startups tracked by The Wall Street

Journal available at http://graphics.wsj.com/billion-dollarclub/. The article also uses a mixture of company-provided

information, company websites, CrunchBase, LinkedIn,

and The Wall Street Journal to calculate the percent of

immigrants who are key members of management or

product development teams. For more information, see

Appendix 5 of the cited article.

“Reason for Reform: Entrepreneurship,” New American

Economy, October 2016, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/12/Entrepreneur.pdf, accessed March

10, 2017, p. 1. This study was conducted using the 2013

American Community Survey 5-year data. See Kallick,

David, “Bringing Vitality to Main Street: How Immigrant

Small Businesses Help Local Economies Grow,” Fiscal

Policy Institute and Americas Society/Council of the

Americas, 2015, available at http://www.as-

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.



In 2014, 20.6% of entrepreneurs

in the U.S. were immigrants,

while making up only 13.2% of

the U.S. population. 54



Immigrants accounted for about

a quarter of founders of new

high-tech companies with at least

one million dollars in sales in

2006. 55



In Massachusetts, 29% of new

high-tech companies with at least

one million dollars in sales in

2006 had at least one key

founder who was foreign-born. 56

coa.org/sites/default/files/ImmigrantBusinessReport.pdf,

accessed March 21, 2017.

“Reason for Reform: Entrepreneurship,” New American

Economy, October 2016, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/12/Entrepreneur.pdf, accessed March

10, 2017, p. 2.

Wadhwa, Vivek, et al., “America’s New Immigrant

Entrepreneurs: Part I,” Technical Report 23, Duke Science,

Technology Innovation Papers, January 2007, available at

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=99015

2, accessed March 10, 2017, p.4. The authors used

information provided by Dun & Bradstreet’s Million Dollar

Database, which contains information on U.S. companies

with more than $1 million in sales, and 20 or more

employees, and company branches with 50 or more

employees.

Wadhwa, Vivek, et al., “America’s New Immigrant

Entrepreneurs: Part I,” Technical Report 23, Duke Science,

Technology Innovation Papers, January 2007, available at

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

o In 2016, 40.2% of Fortune 500 firms

were founded by either an immigrant or

the child of immigrants. 57

o Businesses owned by immigrants

employed over 5.9 million workers in

2007. 58

B. Innovators from Targeted Countries

•

Many prominent American innovators hail

from countries directly targeted by the

Executive Order. For example,

o Steve Jobs (Syria), whose father, Abdul

Fattah Jandali, was born in Homs,

Syria, and immigrated to the United

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=99015

2, accessed March 10, 2017, p.4. The authors used

information provided by Dun & Bradstreet’s Million Dollar

Database, which contains information on U.S. companies

with more than $1 million in sales, and 20 or more

employees, and company branches with 50 or more

employees.

“Reason for Reform: Entrepreneurship,” New American

Economy, October 2016, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/12/Entrepreneur.pdf, accessed March

10, 2017, p. 2.

“Reason for Reform: Entrepreneurship,” New American

Economy, October 2016, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/12/Entrepreneur.pdf, accessed March

10, 2017, p. 2.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

States to study in the 1950s. 59 Jobs is a

co-founder of Apple.

o Ali Hajimiri (Iran), an academic,

entrepreneur, and Fellow at the

National Academy of Inventors, holds

over 85 U.S. and European patents.

Hajimiri is known for his research in

“electronics and photonics integrated

circuits, and their applications in

various disciplines, including highfrequency and high-speed

communications, sensing, imaging, and

bio-sensing.” In 2002, Hajimiri cofounded Axiom Microdevices. 60

o Joe Kiani (Iran), who is the founder,

chairman, and CEO of Masimo

Corporation has more than 575 issued

and pending patents worldwide. Kiani

is prominent in the healthcare

technology industry, especially

technology relating to sensors, signal

processing, and patient monitoring

devices. Kiani’s company Masimo

Corporation pioneered products such as

Baig, Edward C, “Steve Jobs' biological father was Syrian

migrant, some note,” USA Today, November 16, 2015,

available at

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2015/11

/16/steve-jobs-biological-father-syrian-migrant-somenote/75899450/, accessed March 19, 2017.

“Ali Hajimiri,” Caltech High-Speed Integrated Circuits,

available at http://chic.caltech.edu/hajimiri/, accessed

March 19, 2017.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

“Masimo Patient SafetyNetTM – the first

remote monitoring and wireless

clinician notification system designed to

help hospitals improve patient safety

and clinical outcomes by dramatically

decreasing rescue events and costly

ICU transfers.” 61

C. Impact of Immigrants on Patent Activity

•

Immigrants have a higher patenting rate than

native-born individuals. 62

o “Massachusetts’ immigrants also

contribute to the state’s economic

growth and competitiveness by earning

patents on cutting-edge research and

products. In 2011, Massachusetts

Institute of Technology (MIT) earned

[i.e., granted] almost 168 patents,

placing it among the top 10 most

productive [universities] in the country.

More than 72 percent of those patents

“Company Overview of Masimo Corporation,” Bloomberg,

available at

http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.a

sp?personId=541010&privcapId=31167, accessed March 19,

2017.

Hunt, Jennifer, and Marjolaine Gauthier-Loiselle, “How

Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation?,” American

Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2, no. 2, 2010, pp.

31–56, available at www.jstor.org/stable/25760296,

accessed March 5, 2017, p. 37. This is based on data from

the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

had at least one foreign-born

inventor.” 63

o At MIT, “the rate of patenting is higher

for foreign-born students (34 percent)

than for U.S.-born students (30

percent).” 64

o “…immigrants comprise a large and

vital component of U.S. innovation with

35.5 percent of U.S. innovators born

outside the United States.” 65 “Another

“The Contribution of New Americans in Massachusetts,”

New American Economy, August 2016, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/02/nae-ma-report.pdf, accessed March

22, 2017, p. 14. The article uses data from a publication

from the same organization. See Patent Pending: How

Immigrants are Reinventing the American Economy,”

Partnership for a New American Economy, June 2012,

available at

http://www.renewoureconomy.org/sites/all/themes/pnae/pat

ent-pending.pdf.

Granados, Samuel, “How Today’s Visa Restrictions Might

Impact Tomorrow’s America,” The Washington Post,

February 21, 2017, available at

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/visasimpact/, accessed March 10, 2017, p.11.

In their study, ITIF “surveyed more than 900 people who

have made meaningful, marketable contributions to

technology-intensive industries as award-winning

innovators and international patent applicants.” Nager,

Adams et al., “The Demographics of Innovation in the

United States,” Information Technology & Innovation

Foundation, February 2016, available at

http://www2.itif.org/2016-demographics-ofinnovation.pdf?_ga=1.211995860.1949709181.1488476922,

accessed March 10, 2017, p. 5.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

10 percent of innovators have at least

one parent born abroad.” 66

o “Over 17 percent of innovators are not

even U.S. citizens, yet are nonetheless

making invaluable contributions to U.S.

innovation. Immigrants born in Europe

or Asia are over five times more likely

to have created an innovation in

America than the average native-born

U.S. citizen.” 67

o “At the University of Illinois, for

instance, nine out of 10 of the patents

had at least one foreign national listed

as an inventor, and almost 64% of

patents had a foreign inventor who was

Nager, Adams et al., “The Demographics of Innovation in

the United States,” Information Technology & Innovation

Foundation, February 2016, available at

http://www2.itif.org/2016-demographics-ofinnovation.pdf?_ga=1.211995860.1949709181.1488476922,

accessed March 10, 2017, pp. 1, 5. In their study, ITIF

“surveyed more than 900 people who have made

meaningful, marketable contributions to technologyintensive industries as award-winning innovators and

international patent applicants.”

Nager, Adams et al., “The Demographics of Innovation in

the United States,” Information Technology & Innovation

Foundation, February 2016, available at

http://www2.itif.org/2016-demographics-ofinnovation.pdf?_ga=1.211995860.1949709181.1488476922,

accessed March 10, 2017, p. 5. In their study, ITIF

“surveyed more than 900 people who have made

meaningful, marketable contributions to technologyintensive industries as award-winning innovators and

international patent applicants.”

June 2017

•

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

not yet in a professorial role. This was

despite the fact that in the fall of 2011,

fewer than 47% of the graduate

students studying STEM on Illinois’s

two patent-producing campuses were in

the U.S. on temporary visas.” 68

In 2011, 76% of patents awarded to the Top 10

patent-producing U.S. universities had an

inventor that was foreign-born. 69

D. Commercial Value of Immigrant Patents

•

Immigrants’ contributions to innovation as

measured by patent activity have also had a

“Patent Pending: How Immigrants are Reinventing the

American Economy,” Partnership for a New American

Economy, June 2012, available at

http://www.renewoureconomy.org/sites/all/themes/pnae/pat

ent-pending.pdf, accessed March 10, 2017, p. 7. The study

pulled data on graduate students enrolled in each major to

conduct calculations. The data were obtained from

University of Illinois at Chicago, Office of Institutional

Research.

“Patent Pending: How Immigrants are Reinventing the

American Economy,” Partnership for a New American

Economy, June 2012, available at

http://www.renewoureconomy.org/sites/all/themes/pnae/pat

ent-pending.pdf, accessed March 10, 2017, p. 1. The study

relies on data on patent assignees available from Patent

Full-Text and Image Database maintained by the U.S.

Patent and Trademark Office, available at

http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/. In most cases, when

applying for a patent, inventors submit an oath or power of

attorney form on which they indicate their citizenship. The

study accessed these forms through the publicly-available

Patent Application Information Retrieval, available at

http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

direct positive impact on university revenue,

as demonstrated by how the top 10 U.S.

patent-producing universities earned nearly

$450 million in patent licensure revenue in FY

2010. 70

•

Patents filed by immigrants are more likely to

be licensed or commercialized as compared to

patents filed by native-born inventors, and

patents that are licensed or commercialized

are more likely to be beneficial to society. 71

E. Immigrants Patenting by Field

•

“Foreign nationals were listed as inventors on

more than five out of six (84%) informationtechnology patents.” 72

“Patent Pending: How Immigrants are Reinventing the

American Economy,” Partnership for a New American

Economy, June 2012, available at

http://www.renewoureconomy.org/sites/all/themes/pnae/pat

ent-pending.pdf, accessed March 10, 2017, p. 12. These

figures were calculated using the results of the annual

licensing survey from the Association of University

Technology Managers.

Hunt, Jennifer, and Marjolaine Gauthier-Loiselle, “How

Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation?,” American

Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2, no. 2, 2010, pp.

31–56, available at www.jstor.org/stable/25760296,

accessed March 5, 2017, p. 37. This is based on data from

the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates.

“Patent Pending: How Immigrants are Reinventing the

American Economy,” Partnership for a New American

Economy, June 2012, available at

http://www.renewoureconomy.org/sites/all/themes/pnae/pat

ent-pending.pdf, accessed March 10, 2017, p. 11. This

statistic is based on data from the Patent Full-Text and

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

•

“Almost eight out of ten (79%) patents for

pharmaceutical drugs or drug compounds

were invented or co-invented by a scientist

born abroad.” 73

•

“Immigrants contributed to 75% of patents in

the molecular biology and microbiology

fields.” 74

•

Immigrants make significant contributions to

the Science, Technology, Engineering, and

Mathematics (“STEM”) fields.

Image Database maintained by the US Patent and

Trademark Office, available at

http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.htm.

“Patent Pending: How Immigrants are Reinventing the

American Economy,” Partnership for a New American

Economy, June 2012, available at

http://www.renewoureconomy.org/sites/all/themes/pnae/pat

ent-pending.pdf, accessed March 10, 2017, p. 11. This

statistic is based on data from the Patent Full-Text and

Image Database and the publically available Patent

Application Information Retrieval (“PAIR”) website, both of

which are maintained by the US Patent and Trademark

Office, available at

http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.htm, and

http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair.

“Patent Pending: How Immigrants are Reinventing the

American Economy,” Partnership for a New American

Economy, June 2012, available at

http://www.renewoureconomy.org/sites/all/themes/pnae/pat

ent-pending.pdf, accessed March 10, 2017, p. 11. This

statistic is based on data from the Patent Full-Text and

Image Database maintained by the US Patent and

Trademark Office, available at

http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.htm.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

o 99% of the patents from the top 10

patent-generating universities by

foreign-born inventors were in STEM

fields, an area that will have a shortfall

of 230,000 qualified advanced-degree

workers by the year 2018. 75

o As an added benefit, “[e]very graduate

with an advanced degree working in a

STEM-related field in the United States

has been shown to create on average

2.62 additional jobs for native-born

workers. Sending those people away

doesn’t protect American jobs, it

jeopardizes them.” 76

F. Spillover Effects on Innovation by Immigrants

•

Academic research shows that there is a

positive spillover effect of immigrant inventors

“Press Release: New Study Reveals Immigrants Are Behind

More Than Three-Quarters of Patents From Top Ten

Patent-Producing American Universities,” New American

Economy, June 26, 2012, available at

http://www.renewoureconomy.org/news/press-release-newstudy-reveals-immigrants-behind-three-quarters-patentstop-ten-patent-producing-american-universities/, accessed

March 10, 2017.

“Press Release: New Study Reveals Immigrants Are Behind

More Than Three-Quarters of Patents From Top Ten

Patent-Producing American Universities,” New American

Economy, June 26, 2012, available at

http://www.renewoureconomy.org/news/press-release-newstudy-reveals-immigrants-behind-three-quarters-patentstop-ten-patent-producing-american-universities/, accessed

March 10, 2017.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

on native-born inventors, indicating that

immigrants boost the rate at which nativeborn inventors file patents. 77

o “The 1.3 percentage point increase in

the share of the population composed of

immigrant college graduates, and the

0.7 percentage point increase in the

share of post-college immigrants,” each

increased patenting per capita in the

U.S. by 12 to 21 percent. 78

o A 0.45 percentage point increase in

immigrant scientists and engineers in

the U.S. increased patenting per capita

in the U.S. by 13 to 32 percent. 79

Hunt, Jennifer, and Marjolaine Gauthier-Loiselle. “How

Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation?” American

Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2, no. 2, 2010, pp.

31–56, available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25760296,

accessed March 5, 2017, p. 51. This is based on data from

the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates.

Specifically, “The 1.3 percentage point increase in the share

of the population composed of immigrant college graduates,

and the 0.7 percentage point increase in the share of postcollege immigrants, each increased patenting per capita by

about 12 percent based on least squares and 21 percent

based on instrumental variables.” Hunt, Jennifer, and

Marjolaine Gauthier-Loiselle. “How Much Does

Immigration Boost Innovation?” American Economic

Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2, no. 2, 2010, pp. 31–56,

available at www.jstor.org/stable/25760296, accessed

March 5, 2017, p. 51. This is based on data from the 2003

National Survey of College Graduates.

Specifically, “The 0.45 percentage point increase in

immigrant scientists and engineers increased patenting per

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

o “Immigration could boost innovation

indirectly through positive spillovers on

fellow researchers, the achievement of

critical mass in specialized research

areas, and the provision of

complementary skills such as

management and entrepreneurship.” 80

o The same positive spillover effect on

patenting created through immigration

may not be replicable by incentivizing

the native-born population alone. 81

capita by about 13 percent based on least squares and 32

percent based on instrumental variables.” Hunt, Jennifer,

and Marjolaine Gauthier-Loiselle. “How Much Does

Immigration Boost Innovation?” American Economic

Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2, no. 2, 2010, pp. 31–56,

available at www.jstor.org/stable/25760296, accessed

March 5, 2017, p. 51. This is based on data from the 2003

National Survey of College Graduates.

Hunt, Jennifer, and Marjolaine Gauthier-Loiselle. “How

Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation?” American

Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2, no. 2, 2010, pp.

31–56, available at www.jstor.org/stable/25760296,

accessed March 5, 2017, p. 31.

Specifically, “One should be cautious in drawing the

conclusion that innovation could be sustained by

simultaneously subsidizing natives to study science and

engineering and cutting immigration of scientists and

engineers. The additional natives drawn into science and

engineering might have lower inventive ability than the

excluded immigrants, and such natives might have

contributed more to the US economy outside science and

engineering.” Hunt, Jennifer, and Marjolaine GauthierLoiselle. “How Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation?”

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2, no. 2,

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

o There is also support for small

crowding-in effects on native-born

patenting from immigration due to H1B expansions. 82

•

Additionally, there is evidence that nativeborn inventors’ patents were not displaced by

immigrants that were admitted as a result of

expansions in the H-1B visa program. 83

•

Moser et al conclude that German Jewish

emigres who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s

2010, pp. 31–56, available at

www.jstor.org/stable/25760296, accessed March 5, 2017, p.

52.

“Overall, a 10% growth in the H-1B population

corresponded with a 0.3%–0.7% increase in total invention

for each standard deviation growth in city dependency

[upon the H-1B program].” Kerr, William R., and William

F. Lincoln. “The Supply Side of Innovation: H‐1B Visa

Reforms and U.S. Ethnic Invention.” Journal of Labor

Economics, vol. 28, no. 3, 2010, pp. 473–508, available at

www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/651934, accessed March 5,

2017, p. 475. This analysis was based on data from the

Current Population Survey, in addition to patent records

from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Kerr, William R., and William F. Lincoln. “The Supply Side

of Innovation: H‐1B Visa Reforms and U.S. Ethnic

Invention.” Journal of Labor Economics, vol. 28, no. 3, 2010,

pp. 473–508, available at

www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/651934, accessed March 10,

2017, p. 475. This analysis was based on data from the

Current Population Survey, in addition to patent records

from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

and 1940s increased patenting in the United

States by 31 percent. 84

o Inventor-level data suggest that this

increase in patenting can be attributed

to emigrants attracting U.S. inventors

to their fields. 85

o Data also indicate that the number of

patents filed by native-born inventors

who collaborated with immigrant

professors increased substantially in

the 1940s and 1950s, suggesting that

“emigre professors helped to increase

U.S. invention in the long run, by

training a new group of younger US

invention in the long run, who then

continued to train other scientists.” 86

Moser, Petra, et al. “German Jewish Émigrés and U.S.

Invention.” The American Economic Review, vol. 104, no.

10, 2014, pp. 3222–3255, available at

www.jstor.org/stable/43495318, accessed March 5, 2017, p.

3222. This conclusion is drawn from an analysis of patent

records available through Google Patents, available at

https://patents.google.com, in addition to faculty directories

at German and Austrian universities, among other sources.

Moser, Petra, et al. “German Jewish Émigrés and U.S.

Invention.” The American Economic Review, vol. 104, no.

10, 2014, pp. 3222–3255, available at

www.jstor.org/stable/43495318, accessed March 5, 2017, p.

3222. This conclusion is drawn from an analysis of patent

records available through Google Patents, available at

https://patents.google.com, in addition to faculty directories

at German and Austrian universities, among other sources.

Moser, Petra, et al. “German Jewish Émigrés and U.S.

Invention.” The American Economic Review, vol. 104, no.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

G. Impact of Visa Restrictions on Innovation and

Patenting

•

Increases in high-skilled immigration due to

expansions of the H-1B visa program are

associated with higher levels of patent

contributions from immigrants.

o “Total [science and engineering]

employment and [the number of]

invention [in the U.S.] increases with

higher [H-1B] admissions”. 87

o Innovation from the native-born

population also increases with

expansions of the H-1B program and

the associated inflow of new workers. 88

10, 2014, pp. 3222–3255, available at

www.jstor.org/stable/43495318, accessed March 5, 2017, p.

3253. This conclusion is drawn from an analysis of patent

records available through Google Patents, available at

https://patents.google.com, in addition to faculty directories

at German and Austrian universities, among other sources.

Kerr, William R., and William F. Lincoln. “The Supply Side

of Innovation: H‐1B Visa Reforms and U.S. Ethnic

Invention.” Journal of Labor Economics, vol. 28, no. 3, 2010,

pp. 473–508, available at

www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/651934, accessed March 5,

2017, p. 473.

“Overall, a 10% growth in the H-1B population

corresponded with a 0.3%–0.7% increase in total invention

for each standard deviation growth in city dependency

[upon the H-1B program].” Kerr, William R., and William

F. Lincoln. “The Supply Side of Innovation: H‐1B Visa

Reforms and U.S. Ethnic Invention.” Journal of Labor

Economics, vol. 28, no. 3, 2010, pp. 473–508, available at

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

o Firms that employ H-1B workers show

higher rates of innovation when the

national H-1B admission levels

increase. 89

o In Massachusetts, if all Labor

Condition Applications (LCAs) for H-1B

visas filed by employers in 2014 had

turned into visas, H-1B workers could

have created an estimated 61,256 jobs

for US-born workers by the year 2020. 90

H. Impact of Immigrant Students on Innovation

and Patenting

•

Increase in the share of foreign graduate

students and skilled immigrants have a

www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/651934, accessed March 5,

2017, p. 475.

Kerr, William R., and William F. Lincoln. “The Supply Side

of Innovation: H‐1B Visa Reforms and U.S. Ethnic

Invention.” Journal of Labor Economics, vol. 28, no. 3, 2010,

pp. 473–508, available at

www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/651934, accessed March 5,

2017, p. 503.

“The Contributions of New Americans in Massachusetts,”

New American Economy, August 2016, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/02/nae-ma-report.pdf, accessed March

24, 2017, pp. 20-21. The data on visa demand are drawn

primarily from the 2014 Annual Report produced by the

Office of Foreign Labor Certification within the U.S.

Department of Labor. The multipliers use to produce these

estimates originate in a 2011 report released by

Partnership for a New American Economy and the

American Enterprise Institute.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

positive and strong impact on the generation

of new ideas in the United States.

o Patent quantity: increase in the

presence of foreign graduate students

provides a positive and significant

impact on patenting activity at both

universities and private firms, thereby

contributing to American innovation. 91

o Patent quality: increase in the share of

skilled immigrants associated with a

rise in number of granted patents at

universities. 92

Chellaraj, Gnanaraj and Maskus, Keith E. and Mattoo,

Aaditya, “The Contribution of Skilled Immigration and

International Graduate Students to U.S. Innovation,”

World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 3588, May

2005, available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=744625,

accessed March 5, 2017, p. 3. This study used data from the

U.S. Department of Education Education Statistics

Quarterly, the Institute for International Education Open

Doors, the National Science Foundation Science and

Engineering Statistics, the U.S. Patent and Trademark

Office, the U.S. Census Bureau Statistical Abstract of the

United States, and the Economic Report of the President.

Chellaraj, Gnanaraj and Maskus, Keith E. and Mattoo,

Aaditya, “The Contribution of Skilled Immigration and

International Graduate Students to U.S. Innovation,”

World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 3588, May

2005, available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=744625,

accessed March 5, 2017, p. 3. This study used data from the

U.S. Department of Education Education Statistics

Quarterly, the Institute for International Education Open

Doors, the National Science Foundation Science and

Engineering Statistics, the U.S. Patent and Trademark

June 2017

•

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Academic research found that there are

significant and positive spillovers on overall

patenting activity associated with an increase

in the proportion of immigrant college

graduates. 93

o A “1 percentage point increase in

immigrant college graduates’

population share increases patent per

capita by 9-18 percent.” 94

Office, the U.S. Census Bureau Statistical Abstract of the

United States, and the Economic Report of the President.

“For immigrant college graduates … a 1 percentage point

increase in share increases patenting per capita by 8–10

percent in least squares and 12–18 percent in instrumental

variables, more than the 6 percent based on the individuallevel data (statistically significantly so in the case of the

highest coefficient), and therefore implying positive

spillovers.” Hunt, Jennifer, and Marjolaine GauthierLoiselle. “How Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation?”

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2, no. 2,

2010, pp. 31–56, available at

www.jstor.org/stable/25760296, accessed March 5, 2017, p.

48. This study used data from the National Science

Foundation National Survey of College Graduates, the U.S.

Patent and Trademark Office, and the Harvard Business

School Patent Data File.

Hunt, Jennifer, and Marjolaine Gauthier-Loiselle. “How

Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation?” American

Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2, no. 2, 2010, pp.

31–56, available at www.jstor.org/stable/25760296,

accessed March 5, 2017, p. 31. This study used data from

the National Science Foundation National Survey of

College Graduates, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office,

and the Harvard Business School Patent Data File.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

I. Impact of Immigrants on Firms

•

Allowing for more H-1B visa holders benefits

firms:

o Research suggests that when the H-1B

visa cap is increased, firms that

perform large amounts of research and

development experience increased

productivity and profits. 95



•

For example, an increase in the

cap on H-1B visas of 110,000

visas from 85,000 to 195,000 may

lead to a 16% increase in firm

profits. 96

An increase in the supply of foreign-born

workers can improve firm outcomes.

o There is evidence that an increase in

the supply of foreign-born workers in an

Ghosh, Anirban, Anna Maria Mayda, and Francese Ortega,

“The Impact of Skilled Foreign Workers on Firms: an

Investigation of Publicy Traded U.S. Firms,” IZA

Discussion Paper No. 8684, November 2014, pp.1-47,

available at http://ftp.iza.org/dp8684.pdf, accessed March 5,

2017, p.1. This study uses data from the Foreign Labor

Certification Data Labor Condition Applications (LCAs)

Records, and Compustat.

Ghosh, Anirban, Anna Maria Mayda, and Francese Ortega,

“The Impact of Skilled Foreign Workers on Firms: an

Investigation of Publicy Traded U.S. Firms,” IZA

Discussion Paper No. 8684, November 2014, pp.1-47,

available at http://ftp.iza.org/dp8684.pdf, accessed March 5,

2017, p.24. This study uses data from the Foreign Labor

Certification Data Labor Condition Applications (LCAs)

Records, and Compustat.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

area leads to increased productivity,

faster growth of capital, and better

export performance for firms in that

area. 97



These positive effects are

especially potent for firms with

fewer foreign-born employees

prior to the increase. 98

Mitaritonna, Cristina, Gianluca Orefice, Giovanni Peri,

“Immigrants and Firms’ Productivity: Evidence from

France,” IZA Discussion Paper No. 8063, March 2014, pp.138, available at http://anon-ftp.iza.org/dp8063.pdf, accessed

March 5, 2017, p.1. The study uses data from the

Declaration Annuelle des Donnetes Sociales (DADS)

databases, the O*NET Standard Occupational

Classification (SOC) system, and the Annual Business

survey (EAE). See also, Perri, Giovanni, “The Effect of

Immigration on Productivity: Evidence from U.S. States,”

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 94, No. 1,

February 2012, available at

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/REST_a_0

0137#.WPBnuvnyuUk, accessed March 5, 2017, pp. 348358.

Mitaritonna, Cristina, Gianluca Orefice, Giovanni Peri,

“Immigrants and Firms’ Productivity: Evidence from

France,” IZA Discussion Paper No. 8063, March 2014, pp.138, available at http://anon-ftp.iza.org/dp8063.pdf, accessed

March 5, 2017, p.1. The study uses data from the

Declaration Annuelle des Donnetes Sociales (DADS)

databases, the O*NET Standard Occupational

Classification (SOC) system, and the Annual Business

survey (EAE). See also, Perri, Giovanni, “The Effect of

Immigration on Productivity: Evidence from U.S. States,”

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 94, No. 1,

February 2012, available at

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/REST_a_0

June 2017

•

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Immigrants promote more efficient allocation

of tasks within firms.

o Academic literature suggests that

immigrant workers lead to tasks being

assigned more efficiently to both

immigrant and native-born workers,

increasing overall productivity. 99

•

“[C]ities whose employers faced large numbers

of denials in the H-1B visa lotteries

experienced considerably less job creation and

wage growth for American-born computer

workers in the two years that followed.” 100

0137#.WPBnuvnyuUk, accessed March 5, 2017, pp. 348358.

Peri, Giovanni, “The Effect of Immigration on Productivity:

Evidence From U.S. States,” The Review of Economics and

Statistics, 94, No. 1, February 2012, pp. 348-358, available

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/REST_a_0

0137#.WPBnuvnyuUk, accessed March 5, 2017, p. 357. This

study uses data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata

Samples (IPUMS), the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis,

and the National Economic Accounts. The author

conjectures that “at least part of the positive productivity

effects are due to an efficient specialization of immigrants

and natives in manual-intensive and communicationintensive tasks, respectively (in which each group has a

comparative advantage), resulting in a gain in overall

efficiency” (see p. 357).

100

Peri Giovanni, Shish Kevin, Chad Sparber, and Angie

Marek Zeitlin, “Closing Economic Windows: How H-1B Visa

Denials Cost U.S.-Born Tech Workers Jobs and Wages

During the Great Recession,” The Partnership for a New

American Economy, June 2014, pp. 1-36, available at

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

J. Impact of Immigrants on Productivity

•

Considering earnings, patenting,

commercializing and licensing patents,

publishing books or papers and presenting at

major conferences, immigrants on H-1B and J1 visas outperformed native-born

individuals. 101

•

In 2015, immigrants contributed $2 trillion to

the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), which

represents 11 percent of its total GDP. 102

http://www.renewoureconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/06/pnae_h1b.pdf, accessed March 5,

2017, p.4. The study uses data from the U.S Citizenship

and Immigration Services, the U.S. Department of Labor,

and the American Community Survey.

101

102

Murray, Sara, “H-1B, J-1 Immigrants More Productive

Than Americans, Study Says,” Wall Street Journal, April

27, 2009, available at

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/04/27/h-1b-j-1immigrants-more-productive-than-americans-study-says/,

accessed March 5, 2017.

“People on the Move: Global Migration’s Impact and

Opportunity,” McKinsey Global Institute, December 2016,

available at

http://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Global%20Th

emes/Employment%20and%20Growth/

Global%20migrations%20impact%20and%20opportunity/M

GI-People-on-the-Move-Executive-summary-December2016.ashx, accessed March 5, 2017, p. 56. This study used

data from McKinsey Global Institute, the OECD database,

the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United Nations

Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), the

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

(UNHCR), the World Bank, and others.

June 2017

•

103

104

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO)

estimated in 2013 that a reform that seeks to

“revise laws governing immigration and the

enforcement of those laws, allowing for a

significant increase in the number of

noncitizens who could lawfully enter the

United States permanently or temporarily” 103

would boost real GDP by 5.4 percent by 2033,

and add 9 million workers to the labor

force. 104

o The CBO also finds that U.S.

productivity would be about 0.7 percent

higher in 2023 and about 1.0 percent

“The Economic Impact of S. 744, the Border Security,

Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization

Act,” Congressional Budget Office, June 2013, available at

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/113th-congress-20132014/reports/44346-Immigration.pdf, accessed March 5,

2017, p. 1. All data are from the Congressional Budget

Office.

The CBO calculated these numbers by comparing their

economic projections under immigration reform to their

baseline economic projections for FY 2013 to 2023. See “The

Economic Impact of S. 744, the Border Security, Economic

Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act,”

Congressional Budget Office, June 2013, available at

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/113th-congress-20132014/reports/44346-Immigration.pdf, accessed March 5,

2017, p. 3; “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal

Years 2013 to 2023,” Congressional Budget Office,

February 2013, available at

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/113th-congress-20132014/reports/43907-BudgetOutlook.pdf, accessed March 5,

2017. Data are from the Congressional Budget Office.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

higher in 2033 under a reform scenario

described above. 105

105

106

107

•

“The influx of immigrant college graduates in

the 1990s increased U.S. GDP per capita by

1.4-2.4 percent.” 106

•

The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) estimates

that immigration reform that would seek to

increase the growth of overall population and

the workforce would increase GDP by 4.8

percent over 20 years. 107

“The Economic Impact of S. 744, the Border Security,

Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization

Act,” Congressional Budget Office, June 2013, available at

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/113th-congress-20132014/reports/44346-Immigration.pdf, accessed March 5,

2017, p. 1. All data are from the Congressional Budget

Office.

Hunt, Jennifer, and Marjolaine Gauthier-Loiselle. “How

Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation?” American

Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2, no. 2, 2010, pp.

31–56, available at www.jstor.org/stable/25760296,

accessed March 5, 2017, p. 52. This study used data from

the National Science Foundation National Survey of

College Graduates, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office,

and the Harvard Business School Patent Data File.

The BPC study uses the CBO’s analysis on the economic

impact of immigration reform bill S. 744 as a reference case

in which they construct their model on. The BPC has

enlisted the help of Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC, in order

to assess the economic and budgetary impact of the

reference case immigration reform. A description of their

methodology and assumptions can be found in Appendix A

of the article. See “Immigration Reform: Implications for

Growth, Budgets, and Housing,” Immigration Task Force,

Bipartisan Policy Center, October 2013, available at

June 2017

•

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Skilled immigration leads to macroeconomic

benefits related to employment and wages.

o “A one percentage point increase in the

immigration share in the population

increases income per person by about

6%.” 108

o Over the long run, a 1% increase in

immigration flow to a state has been

associated with an up to 0.9% increase

in income per worker in the state. 109

http://cdn.bipartisanpolicy.org/wpcontent/uploads/sites/default/files/BPC_Immigration_Econo

mic_Impact.pdf, accessed March 5, 2017. This study used

data from the Department of Homeland Security Yearbook

of Immigration, the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Estimates

of the Resident Population by Single Year of Age and Sex

for the United States, the U.S. Census Bureau National

Population Projections Summary Tables, and the National

Science Foundation Science and Engineering Indicators

and Science and Engineering Doctorates

108

Ortega, Francesc and Giovanni Peri, “Openness and

income: The roles of trade and migration,” Journal of

International Economics, December 2013, pp. 231-251,

available at

http://giovanniperi.ucdavis.edu/uploads/5/6/8/2/56826033/or

tega_peri_openness_and_income_2014.pdf, accessed March

5, 2017, p.247 This study uses data from the NBER-UN

dataset, and the International Trade database (BACI).

109

Peri, Giovanni, “The Effect of Immigrants on U.S.

Employment and Productivity,” Federal Reserve Board of

San Francisco Economic Letter, 2010-26, August 30, 2010,

pp. 1-5, available at http://www.frbsf.org/economicresearch/files/el2010-26.pdf, accessed March 5, 2017, p.3 .

This paper summarizes research by Peri (2009) and Perri

and Sparber (2009).

June 2017

•

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

1,470 economists recently signed an open

letter highlighting some of the benefits of

immigration to innovation and productivity:

o “Immigration brings entrepreneurs who

start new businesses that hire

American workers.” 110

o “Immigration brings young workers

who help offset the large-scale

retirement of baby boomers.” 111

o “Immigration brings diverse skill sets

that keep our workforce flexible, help

companies grow, and increase the

productivity of American workers.” 112

o “Immigrants are far more likely to work

in innovative, job-creating fields such as

science, technology, engineering, and

110

111

112

“An Open Letter from 1,470 Economists on Immigration,”

New American Economy, April 2017, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/04/NAE-Economist-Letter-April2017.pdf, accessed April 12, 2017.

“An Open Letter from 1,470 Economists on Immigration,”

New American Economy, April 2017, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/04/NAE-Economist-Letter-April2017.pdf, accessed April 12, 2017.

“An Open Letter from 1,470 Economists on Immigration,”

New American Economy, April 2017, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/04/NAE-Economist-Letter-April2017.pdf, accessed April 12, 2017.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

math that create life-improving

products and drive economic growth.” 113

IV.IMPACT OF IMMIGRANTS ON

ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITY

KEY TAKEAWAYS

113

•

The literature supports the idea that

immigrants are more likely to start new

businesses. The rates of immigration

entrepreneurship are typically higher for

high-tech sectors of the economy.

•

As of 2015, 14.6 percent of the Fortune 500

companies have a foreign-born CEO and 15.4

percent of the Fortune 500 Companies have a

foreign-born founder. These percentages rise

to 19.6 percent and 22.8 percent respectively

when looking at high-tech industries.

•

Data from the Survey of Business Owners

show high shares of business ownerships by

immigrants, especially in sectors that involve

high-tech industries, and among recentlystarted firms.

“An Open Letter from 1,470 Economists on Immigration,”

New American Economy, April 2017, available at

http://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/04/NAE-Economist-Letter-April2017.pdf, accessed April 12, 2017.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

A. The Impact of Immigrants on New Business

Starts by Sector

Immigrants are a vital part of new business growth

and entrepreneurship, particularly among high-tech

sectors such as engineering and technology. 114 This

section provides an overview of the literature that

examines the prevalence of entrepreneurship and

ownership in immigrant populations. Along with the

prevalence rates in the data, ownership and new

business start rates are calculated using publicly

available sources. These analyses are consistent

with the literature and further suggest that

immigrant ownership has likely been increasing over

the past decade. Using these prevalence measures

and characteristics of immigrant owned firms, an

estimate of the aggregate impact of new businesses,

particularly those in high-tech sectors, founded by

immigrants is determined for the U.S. economy.

B. The Relationship between Entrepreneurship

and Immigration Status, Particularly in HighTech Sectors

Literature Review

The literature supports the idea that immigrants are

more likely to start new businesses. The rates of

immigration entrepreneurship are typically higher

114

Stangler, Dane and Jason Wiens, “The Economic Case for

Welcoming Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” The Kauffman

Foundation, September 8, 2015, available at

http://www.kauffman.org/what-wedo/resources/entrepreneurship-policy-digest/the-economiccase-for-welcoming-immigrant-entrepreneurs, accessed

March 7, 2017.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

for high-tech sectors of the economy. There are two

measures used to evaluate immigrant

entrepreneurship: the share of business founders

and the business formation rate.

a. Share of Business Founders

The literature supports the idea that the immigrant

share of business founders is high relative to the

share of immigrants in the labor force.

•

“To measure business startup activity, we use

panel data created by matching consecutive

months of the 2007-2011 Current Population

Survey (CPS). Immigrants represent 24.9 percent

of all new business owners in the United

States.” 115

•

“The immigrant share of new entrepreneurs rises

dramatically in our sample from 16.7% in 1995 to

27.1% in 2008” 116

•

“Immigrant entrepreneurs now account for 28.5

percent of all new entrepreneurs in the United

States, up from just 13.3 percent in the 1997

Index. This is close to the two-decade high of 29.5

percent in the 2011 Index, reflecting the United

115

Fairlie, Robert W. and Magnus Lofstrom, "Immigration and

Entrepreneurship," CESifo Working Paper Series No. 5298,

April 23, 2015, available at

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=25979

92, accessed March 1, 2017, p. 6.

116

Kerr, Sari Pekkala and William R. Kerr, “Immigrant

Entrepreneurship,” National Bureau of Economic Research,

July, 2016, available at

http://www.nber.org/papers/w22385, accessed March 1,

2017, p. 15.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

States’ increasing population of immigrants but

also the much higher Rate of New Entrepreneurs

among immigrants.” 117

These rates of immigrant ownership reported in the

literature are higher than the share of immigrants

in the labor force. The Bureau of Labor Statistics

reported that foreign-born workers accounted for

16.5% of the labor force in 2014. 118

The literature also supports the idea that the rate of

entrepreneurship is even higher for high-tech

businesses.

•

117

“We obtained responses from 2,054

engineering and technology companies

founded in the U.S. from 1995 to 2005. Of

these companies, 25.3% reported that at

least one of their key founders was an

immigrant.” 119

Fairlie, Robert W., Arnobio Morelix, E.J. Reedy, and

Joshua Russell, “The Kauffman Index, Startup Activity

National Trends,” The Kauffman Foundation, August 2016,

available at

http://www.kauffman.org/~/media/kauffman_org/microsites/

kauffman_index/startup_activity_2016/kauffman_index_sta

rtup_activity_national_trends_2016.pdf, accessed March 9,

2017, p. 6.

118

119

“Foreign-Born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics –

2014”, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of

Labor, May, 21, 2015, available at

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/forbrn_05212015

.pdf, accessed March 10, 2017.

Wadhwa, Vivek, AnnaLee Saxenian, Ben Rissing, and Gary

Gereff, “America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” Duke

Science, Technology & Innovation Paper No. 23, January 4,

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

•

“We analyzed Silicon Valley data by

selecting zip codes in the following

counties: Santa Clara, Alameda, San

Mateo and Santa Cruz. We received

responses from 126 companies that fit

these criteria. Of these, 52.4% reported

that their key founders were immigrants –

significantly higher than the California

average of 38.8%.” 120

•

“What we have found thus far suggests

that immigrants make a disproportionate

contribution to biotechnology

entrepreneurship in Massachusetts.

According to the U.S. Census, foreign-born

residents of Massachusetts are 14.4

percent of the total population. But we find

that 25.7 percent of biotechnology firms

have foreign-born founders.” 121

2007, available at

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=99015

2, accessed March 3, 2017, p. 11.

120

121

Wadhwa, Vivek, AnnaLee Saxenian, Ben Rissing, and Gary

Gereff, “America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” Duke

Science, Technology & Innovation Paper No. 23, January 4,

2007, available at

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=99015

2, accessed March 3, 2017, p. 31.

Monti, Daniel J., Laurel Smith-Doerr, and James McQuaid,

“Immigrant Entrepreneurs in the Massachusetts

Biotechnology Industry,” The Immigrant Learning Center,

Inc., June, 2007, available at http://www.ilctr.org/wpcontent/uploads/2011/08/immigrants_in_biotechnologyupdated.pdf, accessed March 6, 2017, p. 12.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

b. Business Formation Rate

The business formation rate is another metric to

measure immigrant entrepreneurship. This is the

percentage of people who become business owners

from one month to the next. The literature shows

that immigrants have a higher business formation

rate than native-born individuals and that the rates

have been increasing over time.

122

•

“Immigrants continue to be almost twice as

likely as the native-born to become

entrepreneurs, with the Rate of New

Entrepreneurs being 0.52 percent for

immigrants, as opposed to 0.27 percent for the

native-born.” 122

•

“The business formation rate per month

among immigrants is 0.51 percent; that is, of

100,000 nonbusiness-owning immigrants, 510

start a business each month. This rate of

business formation is higher than the

nonimmigrant rate of 0.28 percent, or 280 of

100,000 U.S.-born non-business owners per

month.” 123

Fairlie, Robert W., Arnobio Morelix, E.J. Reedy, and

Joshua Russell, “The Kauffman Index, Startup Activity

National Trends,” The Kauffman Foundation, August 2016,

available at

http://www.kauffman.org/~/media/kauffman_org/microsites/

kauffman_index/startup_activity_2016/kauffman_index_sta

rtup_activity_national_trends_2016.pdf, accessed March 9,

2017, p. 6.

123

Fairlie, Robert W. and Magnus Lofstrom, "Immigration and

Entrepreneurship," CESifo Working Paper Series No. 5298,

April 23, 2015, available at

June 2017

•

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

“Business formation rates are even higher

among immigrants than the nonimmigrant.

The business formation rate per month among

immigrants is 0.62 percent (or 620 out of

100,000). This monthly rate of business

formation is much higher than the nonimmigrant rate of 0.28 percent (or 280 of

100,000).” 124

See Table IV.1 for a full set of data sources relied on

in the literature and Table IV.2 for a full summary of

the business formation estimates in the literature.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=25979

92, accessed March 1, 2017, p. 67.

124

Fairlie, Robert W., “Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Small

Business Owners, and their Access to Financial Capital,”

U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy,

May, 2012, available at

https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/rs396tot.pdf,

accessed February 27, 2017, p. ii.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Table IV.1

Summary of Data Sources

Yea

Autho

Immigrant

Entrepreneursh

126

201

Kerr

and

Kerr

The Kauffman

Index – Startup

201

Fairlie

Morel

ix, et

Study

Activity

National

127

Trends

125

126

127

America

Commun

ity

Survey

Current

Populati

Survey

Restricte

d Access

U.S.

Census

Bureau

Longitudi

nal

125

Data

Independ

ent

Survey/

Manual

The Restricted Access Longitudinal Data include the

Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics database and

the Longitudinal Business database.

Kerr, Sari Pekkala and William R. Kerr, “Immigrant

Entrepreneurship,” National Bureau of Economic Research,

July, 2016, available at

http://www.nber.org/papers/w22385, accessed March 1,

2017.

Fairlie, Robert W., Arnobio Morelix, E.J. Reedy, and

Joshua Russell, “The Kauffman Index, Startup Activity

National Trends,” The Kauffman Foundation, August 2016,

available at

http://www.kauffman.org/~/media/kauffman_org/microsites/

kauffman_index/startup_activity_2016/kauffman_index_sta

rtup_activity_national_trends_2016.pdf, accessed March 9,

2017.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Immigration and

128

Entrepreneurship

2014

Fairlie and Lofstrom

Immigrant Entrepreneurs and

129

Small Business Owners

2012

Fairlie

High-Tech Immigrant

Entrepreneurship in the United

130

States

2009

Hart, Acs, and Tracy

Estimating the Contribution of

Immigrant Business Owners to the

131

Economy

2008

Fairlie

128

129

130

131

Fairlie, Robert W. and Magnus Lofstrom, "Immigration and

Entrepreneurship," CESifo Working Paper Series No. 5298,

April 23, 2015, available at

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=25979

92, accessed March 1, 2017.

Fairlie, Robert W., “Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Small

Business Owners, and their Access to Financial Capital,”

U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy,

May, 2012, available at

https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/rs396tot.pdf,

accessed February 27, 2017.

Hart, David M., Zoltan J. Acs, and Spencer L. Tracy, Jr.,

“High-tech immigrant Entrepreneurship in the United

States,” U.S. Small Business Association, Office of

Advocacy, July, 2009, available at

https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/rs349tot_0.pdf,

accessed February 24, 2017.

Fairlie, Robert W, “Estimating the Contribution of

Immigrant Business Owners to the U.S. Economy,” U.S.

Small Business Association, Office of Advocacy, November,

2008, available at

https://people.ucsc.edu/~rfairlie/papers/published/sba%20fi

nal%20report%20immigrant%20business.pdf, accessed

February 24, 2017.

June 2017

Study

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Yea

Author

Americ

Comm

unity

Survey

Current

Populati

Survey

Restricted

Access

U.S.

Census

Bureau

Longitudin

132

al Data

Indepe

ndent

Survey/

Manual

Estimating the

Contribution of

Immigrant

Business Owners

to the

133

Economy

Fairlie

America’s New

Immigrant

134

Entrepreneurs

Wadhw

Saxeian

, et al.

Immigrant

Entrepreneurs in

the

Massachusetts

Biotechnology

Monti,

SmithDoerr,

McQuai

132

The Restricted Access Longitudinal Data include the Longitudinal Employer

Household Dynamics database and the Longitudinal Business database.

133

Fairlie, Robert W, “Estimating the Contribution of Immigrant Business

Owners to the U.S. Economy,” U.S. Small Business Association, Office of

Advocacy, November, 2008, available at

https://people.ucsc.edu/~rfairlie/papers/published/sba%20final%20report%

20immigrant%20business.pdf, accessed February 24, 2017.

134

Wadhwa, Vivek, AnnaLee Saxenian, Ben Rissing, and Gary Gereff, “America’s

New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” Duke Science, Technology & Innovation

Paper No. 23, January 4, 2007, available at

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=990152, accessed

March 3, 2017.

June 2017

Industry

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

135

The Impact of

Immigrant

Entrepreneurs

and Professionals

on U.S.

Competitiveness

Anders

on and

Platzer

Silicon Valley’s

New Immigrant

137

Entrepreneurs

Saxeian

136

Immigrant

Entrepreneur

ship

201

Kerr and Kerr

200

The 11

states

present

in the

Longitudi

nal

Employer

Househol

Dynamics

database

27.1%

139

135

Monti, Smith, Laurel Smith-Doerr, and James McQuaid, “Immigrant

Entrepreneurs in the Massachusetts Biotechnology Industry, June 2007,

available at

http://www.issuelab.org/resource/immigrant_entrepreneurs_in_the_massa

chusetts_biotechnology_industry_2007, accessed Match 4, 2017.

136

Anderson, Stuart and Michaela Platzer, “American Made: The Impact of

Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Professionals on U.S. Competitiveness,”

National Venture Capital Association, November, 2006, available at

http://www.contentfirst.com/AmericanMade_study.pdf, accessed February

24, 2017.

137

Saxeian, AnnaLee, “Silicon Valley’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” Public

Policy Institute of California, 1999, available at

http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_699ASR.pdf, accessed March

31, 2017.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

138

1992

The

Kauffman

Index –

Startup

Activity

National

Trends

201

Fairlie, Morelix,

et al.

201

U.S.

28.5%

Immigration

and

Entrepreneur

201

Fairlie and

Lofstrom

200

7201

U.S.

24.9%

139

138

140

141

Immigra

nts:

142

0.51%

Kerr, Sari Pekkala and William R. Kerr, “Immigrant

Entrepreneurship,” National Bureau of Economic Research,

July, 2016, available at

http://www.nber.org/papers/w22385, accessed March 1,

2017, p. 15.

States include CA, CO, FL, ID, IL, LA, MD, NC, OR, WA,

and WI.

Fairlie, Robert W., Arnobio Morelix, E.J. Reedy, and

Joshua Russell, “The Kauffman Index, Startup Activity

National Trends,” The Kauffman Foundation, August 2016,

available at

http://www.kauffman.org/~/media/kauffman_org/microsites/

kauffman_index/startup_activity_2016/kauffman_index_sta

rtup_activity_national_trends_2016.pdf, accessed March 9,

2017, p. 13.

141

142

Fairlie, Robert W. and Magnus Lofstrom, "Immigration and

Entrepreneurship," CESifo Working Paper Series No. 5298,

April 23, 2015, available at

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=25979

92, accessed March 1, 2017, p. 6.

Fairlie, Robert W. and Magnus Lofstrom, "Immigration and

Entrepreneurship," CESifo Working Paper Series No. 5298,

April 23, 2015, available at

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

ship

Nativeborn:

0.28%

Immigrant

Entrepreneur

s and Small

Business

Owners

201

Fairlie

201

Individua

ls ages

20-64

who do

not own

business

in the

first

survey

month.

High-Tech

Immigrant

Entrepreneur

ship in the

United States

200

Hart, Acs, and

Tracy

200

2200

"High

impact"

compani

es in the

high-tech

sector

Immigra

nts:

143

0.62%

Nativeborn:

0.28%

16%

144

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=25979

92, accessed March 1, 2017, p. 7.

143

144

Fairlie, Robert W., “Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Small

Business Owners, and their Access to Financial Capital,”

U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy,

May, 2012, available at

https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/rs396tot.pdf,

accessed February 27, 2017, p. ii.

Hart, David M., Zoltan J. Acs, and Spencer L. Tracy, Jr.,

“High-tech immigrant Entrepreneurship in the United

States,” U.S. Small Business Association, Office of

Advocacy, July, 2009, available at

https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/rs349tot_0.pdf,

accessed February 24, 2017, p. 5.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Table IV.2 (continued)

Summary of Results: Immigrant Share of Business

Founders and Business Formation Rates

Study

Estimating

the

Contribution

of Immigrant

Business

Owners to

the Economy

145

146

Yea

Author

Data

Range

200

Fairlie

19962007

Sample

U.S.

Immigra

nt Share

Founde

16.7%

145

Business

Formatio

n Rate

Immigran

ts:

146

0.35%

Nativeborn:

0.27%

Fairlie, Robert W, “Estimating the Contribution of

Immigrant Business Owners to the U.S. Economy,” U.S.

Small Business Association, Office of Advocacy, November,

2008, available at

https://people.ucsc.edu/~rfairlie/papers/published/sba%20fi

nal%20report%20immigrant%20business.pdf, accessed

February 24, 2017, p. 18.

Fairlie, Robert W, “Estimating the Contribution of

Immigrant Business Owners to the U.S. Economy,” U.S.

Small Business Association, Office of Advocacy, November,

2008, available at

https://people.ucsc.edu/~rfairlie/papers/published/sba%20fi

nal%20report%20immigrant%20business.pdf, accessed

February 24, 2017, p. 19.

June 2017

America’s

New

Immigrant

Entrepreneu

Immigrant

Entrepreneu

rs in the

Massachuset

Biotechnolog

y Industry

147

148

149

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

200

Wadhw

Saxeian

, et al.

Monti,

SmithDoerr,

McQua

19952005

2006

U.S.

engineerin

g and

technology

companies

with > $1

million in

sales or >

employees

Biotechnol

ogy

companies

founded in

New

England.

Excludes

subsidiarie

s of larger

companies

or multi-

U.S.:

25.3%

147

Silicon

Valley:

52.4%

148

25.7%

149

Wadhwa, Vivek, AnnaLee Saxenian, Ben Rissing, and Gary

Gereff, “America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” Duke

Science, Technology & Innovation Paper No. 23, January 4,

2007, available at

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=99015

2, accessed March 3, 2017, p. 11.

Wadhwa, Vivek, AnnaLee Saxenian, Ben Rissing, and Gary

Gereff, “America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” Duke

Science, Technology & Innovation Paper No. 23, January 4,

2007, available at

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=99015

2, accessed March 3, 2017, p. 31.

Monti, Smith, Laurel Smith-Doerr, and James McQuaid,

“Immigrant Entrepreneurs in the Massachusetts

Biotechnology Industry, June 2007, available at

http://www.issuelab.org/resource/immigrant_entrepreneurs

_in_the_massachusetts_biotechnology_industry_2007,

accessed Match 4, 2017, p. 2.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

national

corporatio

ns.

The Impact

of Immigrant

Entrepreneu

rs and

Professionals

on U.S.

Competitive

ness

200

Anders

on and

Platzer

19902005

U.S.

venture

capitalbacked

public

companies

25%

150

Silicon

Valley’s New

Immigrant

Entrepreneu

199

Saxeian

19801998

Percentage

technology

firms

started

between

1980 and

1998 with

Indian or

Chinese

immigrant

CEOs

24%

151

150

151

Anderson, Stuart and Michaela Platzer, “American Made:

The Impact of Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Professionals

on U.S. Competitiveness,” National Venture Capital

Association, November, 2006, available at

http://www.contentfirst.com/AmericanMade_study.pdf,

accessed February 24, 2017, p. 13.

Saxeian, AnnaLee, “Silicon Valley’s New Immigrant

Entrepreneurs,” Public Policy Institute of California, 1999,

available at

http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_699ASR.pdf,

accessed March 31, 2017, p. 23.

June 2017

ii.

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Descriptive Tables from Fortune 500

Companies

The literature has focused on all types of business,

but there is also a publicly available dataset that

provides ownership and founder information for

Fortune 500 companies in particular. Highlighted

below are statistics similar to those found in the

literature, as well as some potential explanations for

why the figures may be different for the Fortune

500.

•

As shown in Table IV.3, in the 2015 list of

Fortune 500 firms, 14.6 percent were headed

by foreign born CEOs and 15.4 percent were

founded by foreign-born individuals. Of

companies in the 2015 list in high-tech

industries, 19.6 percent were headed by

foreign-born CEOs, and 22.8 percent were

founded by foreign-born individuals.

•

The percentage of Fortune 500 companies

with a foreign-born founder is lower than the

immigrant share of entrepreneurs reported in

the literature using the recent Current

Population Survey data. As shown in Table

IV.2, estimates using Census data from the

past decade range from 24.9 to 28.5 percent.

However, the 15.4 percent share for Fortune

500 companies with a foreign-born founder

(Table IV.3) is consistent with the estimates

using older data. For example, data from 1996

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

to 2007 show immigrant entrepreneurship

share of 16.7 percent 152 (Table IV.2).

•

152

153

154

155

In 2015, Fortune 500 companies with foreignborn CEOs generated over $1.6 trillion in

revenue, and those founded by foreign-born

individuals generated over $1.8 trillion in

revenue. 153 These values are both larger than

the entire GDP of Canada in 2015. 154

Furthermore, in 2015, Fortune 500 companies

with foreign-born CEOs employed over 4

million people worldwide and Fortune 500

companies founded by foreign-born

individuals employed over 3.7 million people

worldwide. Both of these numbers are larger

than the entire population of Connecticut in

2015. 155

Fairlie, Robert W, “Estimating the Contribution of

Immigrant Business Owners to the U.S. Economy,” U.S.

Small Business Association, Office of Advocacy, November,

2008, available at

https://people.ucsc.edu/~rfairlie/papers/published/sba%20fi

nal%20report%20immigrant%20business.pdf, accessed

February 24, 2017, p. 18.

Fortune, “Fortune 500,” available at

http://beta.fortune.com/fortune500/2015/, accessed March 2,

2017.

The World Bank, “Gross Domestic Product 2015,” available

at http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP.pdf,

accessed March 17, 2017.

United States Census Bureau, “Annual Estimates of

Resident Population,” available at

https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/pr

oductview.xhtml?src=bkmkhttps://factfinder.census.gov/fac

es/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmkInfo

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Table IV.3

Percent of Foreign-Born CEOs and Founders among

U.S. Fortune 500 Companies

2015

Notes:

[1] High-tech industries include: Computers and

Office Equipment, Health Care: Pharmacy and

Other Services, Information Technology Services,

Aerospace and Defense, Computer Software,

Pharmaceuticals, Semiconductors and Other

Electronic Components, Network and Other

Communications Equipment, Electronics and

Electrical Equipment, Computer Peripherals,

Medical Products and Equipment, Scientific,

Photographic and Control Equipment, Chemicals,

and Energy.

[2] Information on founders was sourced from

Partnership for a New American Economy’s “The

New American Fortune 500” and supplemented with

information from online research on the country of

origin for founders of companies that have been

added to the list since 2010.

please.com,%20“State%20Population%20by%20Rank,%202

015, accessed March 17, 2017.

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

Sources:

[1] Fortune, “Fortune 500,” available at

http://beta.fortune.com/fortune500/2015/, accessed

March 2, 2017.

[2] Partnership for a New American Economy, “The

'New American' Fortune 500,” June 2011, available

http://www.renewoureconomy.org/sites/all/themes/pn

ae/img/new-american-fortune-500-june-2011.pdf,

accessed March 2, 2017, Appendix A.

[3] Biography, “Sergey Brin Biography,” November

2, 2016, available at

http://www.biography.com/people/sergey-brin12103333, accessed March 30, 2017.

[4] Biography, “Rupert Murdoch Biography,” October

17, 2016, available at

http://www.biography.com/people/rupert-murdoch9418489, accessed March 30, 2017.

[5] Viterbi, Andrew, “Reflections of an Educator,

Researcher, and Entrepreneur,” 2016, available at

http://www.biography.com/people/sergey-brin12103333, accessed March 30, 2017.

[6] Blagg, Deborah, “Kumar Mahadeva,” September

1, 2013, available at

https://www.alumni.hbs.edu/stories/Pages/storybulletin.aspx?num=2208, accessed March 30, 2017.

[7] Swartz, Jon, “SanDisk CEO Eli Harari Proves

He’s No Flash in the Pan,” June 28, 2010 available

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/m

anagement/profile/2010-06-27-sandisk-eliharari_N.htm, accessed March 30, 2017.

[8] McFadden, Robert, “Sidney Harman, Newsweek

Chairman, Is Dead at 92,” April 13, 2011, available

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/business/media/

14harman.html, accessed March 30, 2017.

[9] Business Insider, “Meet the Richest Tech Tycoon

in 14 Major Countries around the World,” July 19,

2014, available at

http://www.businessinsider.in/smallbusiness/tech/slidelist/38639795.cms, accessed

March 30, 2017.

iii.

Descriptive Tables from Survey of

Business Owners, 2007 and 2012

Another publicly available data source cited but not

used in the literature to determine foreign-born

ownership rates is the Survey of Business Owners

and Self-Employed Persons (SBO) conducted by the

Census Bureau. This survey collects information on

the characteristics of businesses and their owners.

The survey defines business ownership as possessing

at least 51% of a business’s stock or equity, sampling

1.75 million and 2.3 million nonfarm businesses with

receipts of at least $1,000 that filed Internal

Revenue Service tax forms in 2012 and 2007,

respectively. Respondents include firms with no paid

employees, in sectors 11 through 99 according to the

North American Industry Classification System

(NAICS), with the exceptions of NAICS 111,112, 482,

521, 525, 813, 814, and 92. The Census Bureau does

not claim the CBO data to be representative of all

U.S. businesses. Data from the 2012 SBO are only

provided as tabulated estimates of aggregate

numbers and percentages of businesses in the

United States; microdata are available only for the

2007 SBO.

It should be noted that analyses based on the SBO

are not directly comparable to analyses based on

June 2017

The Economic Impact of Immigration on the U.S.

datasets such as the CPS, which is employed in

multiple studies on immigrant share of business

founders (see Table IV.1). Major differences include:

1) business owners who are primarily wage and

salary workers are included in the SBO, but

excluded from the CPS; 2) the CPS data is collected

at the individual level, whereas the SBO data is

collected at the business level (thus multiple

businesses owned by one individual count multiple

times in the SBO but only once in the CPS); and 3)

only the “majority owner” with at least 51% of a

business is included in the SBO, while multiple

“minority

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