Educated Immigrants Driving Innovation And Creating New Jobs

from the well,-look-at-that... dept

We've talked a great deal about why getting more educated immigrants into the US is a good idea. For some reason, way too many people assume that the job market is a zero-sum game, and that if a foreign person gets a job that somehow means one less job for an American. However, that doesn't appear to be the case. If that foreigner is helping to grow the market, it can often lead to a lot more demand. That's why it was good to see Congress at least appear willing to let in more skilled foreigners, especially in the area of high tech jobs. A recent Kauffman Foundation study supports this, by looking at foreign-born entrepreneurs, and noting that many of them came to the US as highly skilled, highly educated individuals in need of a job -- but later decided to start their own companies. In other words, they ended up creating many more jobs, rather than "taking jobs away." Yet, for some reason, many anti-immigration people would rather these individuals create those jobs in foreign countries and help those economies rather than our own.