Sunday, July 1, 2018

“Murderers.” “Rapists.” “Animals.” “Invaders.” What About Entrepreneurs?



By Caroline Baum

“Murderers.” “Rapists.” “Animals.” “Invaders.” What about entrepreneurs?
In his frequent tirades on immigrants, President Donald J. Trump distorts the facts, invents statistics and relies on inflammatory language to describe those who leave their country of origin to seek a better life in the United States. And he completely ignores the positive role immigrants play in the U.S. economy.
What Trump refers to as a “flood” of immigrants pouring across the U.S. southern border with Mexico has slowed to a trickle in the last two decades. Rather than “invade” and “infest” our nation, immigrants offer an antidote to what ails us.
Designating immigrants as “murderers” and “rapists” flies in the face of data that show that undocumented immigrants are much less likely to commit crimes or be incarcerated than their native-born counterparts. And legal immigrants are even less likely offenders than their illegal counterparts.
Before you insist that Trump is protesting illegal immigration, consider that his administration has tried to clamp down on all forms of legal immigration, starting in week one with a travel ban targeting seven Muslim-majority countries and moving on to the issuance of fewer visas, limits on the number of refugees and asylum-seekers, an end to DACA, or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and even an effort to deny immigrant entrepreneurs the opportunity to establish a business in the U.S.
It is on this last category that
I want to focus.
It’s no secret — except, perhaps, to the Trump administration — that immigrants tend to be more entrepreneurial than native-born Americans. Which makes perfect sense. Immigrants have to work harder because of an initial handicap, so to speak. They are different: they are “the other.” In order to succeed, they have to overcome the stigma associated with the color of their skin, perhaps, or their native customs — and excel at what they do just in order to be accepted.
Scholars of immigrant entrepreneurship theorize that immigrants have “intrinsic capabilities — risk propensity, high education, unique knowledge, or identity — that increases the likelihood of entrepreneurship compared to their host country counterparts,” according to a Kauffman Foundation review of immigration research.
Immigrants are twice as likely to start a business as native-born Americans, for example. Forty-three percent of the 2017 Fortune 500 companies were founded or co-founded by a first- or second-generation immigrant, according to the Center for American Entrepreneurship. Those 216 companies generated $5.3 trillion of revenue and employed 12.1 million workers worldwide last year, according to the CAE.
In other words, in their role as entrepreneurs, immigrants are providing employment opportunities for Americans — high-paying jobs at established companies — not stealing jobs from American workers.
“The net result of immigrants’ innovation and entrepreneurship is job creation,” according to an article by John Dearie, founder and president of the CAE, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum.
Immigrants’ success isn’t limited to business. Immigrants have been awarded 39%, or 33 of 85, of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics since 2000, according to the National Foundation for American Policy. The three-fold increase in the period 1960-2017 compared with 1901-1959 illustrates the positive impact of legislation that ended some of the “national origin” quotas (The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965) and increased quotas for employment-based green cards (Immigration Act of 1990).
Economists may disagree about a lot of things, but there are two areas where they seem to have reached broad consensus, according to
Read the rest here.

7 comments:

  1. We also have dysfunctional pubic education institutions hostile to anything of free enterprise.

    None of the BS above is a reason to let the hordes in the US. In the end, it is still about cheap labor. You are also neglecting the disease the turd worlders carry, but I can only hope those disease will kill leftist and open border libertardians.

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    Replies
    1. The author of the article would have a very real problem with unlimited immigration into her ethnic homeland.

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    2. Re: The Lab Manager,
      ── None of the BS above is a reason to let the hordes in the US. ──

      The kind of rhetoric used by the likes of you ─"letting hordes in", or calling immigrants "invaders"─ suggest you and others of your ilk have a deep-seated hostility towards market forces and people's freedom to establish relationships as they see fit, in this case concerning the relationship between American consumers, employers and investors and immigrants, whether the documented or undocumented kind.

      There aren't "hordes" of people trying to "come in" (come in to what, would be the question, since a territory is not a venue or a home), but people acting upon market signals coming from a market that is beckoning them: there are jobs unfulfilled, there is opportunity for young entrepreneurs willing to invest time and sweat.

      You may eschew these signals, blinded by your petty and obnoxious prejudices, but the signals are very real and the market forces that create and broadcast them are very real.

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    3. Re: Paul Hansen,

      ── The author of the article would have a very real problem with unlimited immigration into her ethnic homeland. ──

      Paul, I don't know how many times it has been told to you that immigration cannot be 'unlimited'. It is limited by the Market. Proof of this is the negative flow of immigrants this country experienced during the Obama administration when the economy tanked and Obama's 'recovery' efforts, misguided and ill-advised, were making things worse. Your rhetoric seems to respond not to reality but to an irrational fear of foreigners. Fear and paranoia, however, are not justifications for public policy. Consistency with individual freedom and moral principles are justifications for public policy instead. Such policies would be much more in tune with the necessities of a Market that demands labor in times of growth.

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    4. “Unlimited” = not centrally planned

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    5. I'm trying to make a point at how certain people advocate for immigration for everyone else, but not for their ethnostates.

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    6. Re: Paul Hansen,

      You weren't making a point. You were questioning the author's sincerity without base or merit.

      Delete