High-Tech Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the U.S.

In this study, we quantify the role of foreign-born founders in high-tech entrepreneurship in a nationally representative sample of rapidly growing "high-impact" companies. This class of companies drives job creation and aggregate growth in the U.S. We find that, while most previous studies have overstated this role, it is nonetheless very important. For instance, about 16% of the companies in our sample had at least one foreign-born person among their founding teams, and these high-tech companies display better performance in some respects than high-tech companies in our sample whose founders were all native-born. We also provide a profile of high-tech immigrant entrepreneurs. The vast majority are strongly rooted in the U.S., highlighting the need to build a coherent pathway to permanent status for highly-skilled immigrants.