Small Business Resource » Immigration

High-Tech Immigrant Entrepreneurs

admin — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:43:00 +0000

Immigrants are critical to the well-being of the U.S. economy. And that most certainly includes immigrant entrepreneurs.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy released a new study by David Hart, Zoltan Acs, and Spencer Tracy, Jr. titled “High-tech Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the United States.”

Among the findings of a survey of “rapidly growing high-impact, high-tech companies” were:

• “We find that about 16% of the companies in our sample had at least one foreign-born person among their founding teams. This estimate is lower than that found in most previous studies of high-tech immigrant entrepreneurship. Nonetheless, our data show that immigrants play a crucial role in this vital economic activity.”

• “Policymakers are rightly concerned that government should sustain a healthy climate for starting and running high-impact, high-tech companies like those in our sample. Immigration policy, as it affects highly educated and highly experienced foreign-born individuals who might be drawn into high-tech entrepreneurship, is an important element of that climate.”

The full study can be read here.

What are the necessary policy measures? Provide broadbased tax and regulatory relief to spur entrepreneurship and investment in general, while implementing immigration reform that opens more doors for legal immigration.

Raymond J. Keating
Chief Economist
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council

Immigration and Employers

admin — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:54:00 +0000

In case you missed it, read a July 16 Wall Street Journal editorial titled “Blame the Employers.”

The piece noted that the Obama administration is now following the misguided Bush administration’s blame-the-employer policies regarding immigration enforcement. The editorial highlights the problems with the government’s E-Verify system/database to verify the legal status of workers, and the fact that E-Verify cannot catch identity fraud.

And as for the proposal to go to a national biometric ID card, the Journal asks: “But if national ID cards are the silver bullet, why does Europe have so many illegal immigrants despite ID systems that have been in place for decades?”

The Journal correctly concludes: “The broader issue is that the Obama Administration, like its predecessor, has accepted the premise that the key to curbing illegal immigration is a crackdown on employers. That premise is false. Our illegal workforce results from a government policy that severely limits foreign access to U.S. labor markets… What U.S. employers need is legal access to willing workers, not more red tape in the form of a federal worker-verification system.”

Raymond J. Keating
Chief Economist
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council

Immigrants Impact on States and Localities

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:08:00 +0000

The assumption in too many political debates is that immigrants are a net negative on state and local government budgets – especially undocumented workers. But economic reality is quite different.

In late April, the Immigration Policy Center published a valuable report highlighting the findings from a variety of studies looking at immigrations, and their effects on states and localities.

The report sums up:

Accurately assessing the costs and contributions of immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants, is a challenge, but research shows that between one-half and three-quarters of undocumented immigrants pay federal and state income taxes, Social Security taxes, and Medicare taxes. Moreover, all immigrants (legal and undocumented) pay sales taxes (when they buy anything at a store, for instance) and property taxes (even if they rent housing). … [A] number of state studies … have found that immigrants in general—and the undocumented specifically—contribute to the public treasuries and economies of many states and localities.

Read the entire report here.

The bottom line is that immigrants are a net plus to government’s coffers, and undocumented immigrants are a net plus to state and local economies.

What we need now, and have for some time, is immigration reform that provides real border security, greatly expands and accelerates legal avenues for immigration, and provides a path to legalization for undocumented workers otherwise following the law and contributing to our nation.

Raymond J. Keating
Chief Economist
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council

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