What neither the article nor the underlying report resolve is, do immigrant founders of $1B+ companies representative of the same population of H1-B visa recipients?
For example, many of the founders came to the US to go to school in the US, including Harvard. Is that reflective of the general population of H1-B visa holders? If not, can the conclusions drawn from the very small number of $1B+ startups be used to make policy decisions about the vast majority of skilled immigrants?
> do immigrant founders of $1B+ companies representative of the same population of H1-B visa recipients?
You make a very good point here. The thing is that it is absolutely impossible to filter or select for future $1B+ startup founders.
Most immigrant tech startup founders in the Bay Area first come to the US as foreign students. They then get a job like most people, but also have to go through a long and difficult struggle with the U.S. immigration system in order to get a green card. Only after getting a green card, do most start a company (because self-sponsorship with your own company is prohibited on an H-1B visa). For their first 10 years or so in the U.S., they have no laurels to show, and nothing that sets them apart from a typical good software engineer at Google. There is no data point from which you predict that X person is going to become a future successful startup founder.
I am another example of this. Right now, I don't have much to show besides my work experience, some CS research I did in college, and a few GitHub projects. I'd definitely like to start a company some day. I think I am somewhat representative of the general population of H1-B visa holders. That I might some time in the future be far more successful, and a huge blessing to this country's economy, and to its people, cannot be positively predicted based on where I am in life today.
> many of the founders came to the US to go to school in the US, including Harvard
There is no official data that shows you where H-1B visa holders went for college. But I can take an educated guess. Everyone that I've met that is on an H-1B visa graduated from a US school. I would guess at least half of all H-1B visa holders studied in the US.
If you filtered by the ranking of the university that a foreign student attended, and said that only graduates from prestigious widely-famous universities are allowed to stay in this country, and every else from lesser universities, should get kicked out, then I would be kicked out along with them. My guess is that the majority of immigrant startup founders didn't go to Harvard/Stanford/MIT/etc.
The report described by the WSJ made that association which you and I agree is not reasonable to make.
While you are correct about official data, my comment concerns the report. The report identifies immigrant founders by college degree, including John Collison, Daniel Saks, Mario Schlosser, and Michelle Zatlyn, all from Harvard.
4/60 immigrant founders of $1B+ startups have a Harvard education. I do not think 6.7% of H1-B visa holders have a Harvard education.
I agree that it's unlikely that 6.7% of H-1B visa holders have a Harvard education. But about half the founders listed in the report[1] went to non-famous colleges.
The broader policy question raised by the report however is about the current extremely restrictive low limit of 85,000 on H-1B visas, which are crucial for any immigrant student to be able to stay in the US. The report tries to show one way in which immigrants are helpful, and yes it does focus very much on the most successful immigrants. That doesn't mean they don't have a valid point.
85,000 is less than 0.03% of the US population. Australia, with a population of 23 million, issued 120,000 skilled work visas in 2013. That is 0.5%. Nearly every other first-world country has a higher rate of skilled worker immigration than the United States. We keep it artificially down with the quotas. We determine the fate and future of an immigrant student in this country with a lottery, which to most people might sound like a cruel joke.
By "unlikely" you mean "mathematically impossible for the founder population to be representative of the H-1B visa holder population" right? Harvard doesn't graduate enough international students each year to maintain this ratio.
With your second sentence, are you trying to argue that about half of H-1B visa holder population went to famous colleges? Otherwise, what's your point?
My point is that the report gives anecdotes and numbers that cannot be used for sound policy decisions.
Anecdotes are nothing new. 100 years ago we would have read how Andrew Carnegie, son of poor Scottish weavers, became one of the wealthiest people in the US through his innovative steel company. While it's a valid point that immigrants can be helpful, it's also a valid point that the US has more than 100,000 citizens - neither point is all that useful. Or do you really think that most of the target audience won't be able to think of dozens of helpful contributions by immigrants, so need a reminder?
Numbers that cannot be used for policy decisions are also not new. I earlier give an example of the report "Most high tech companies are founded by founded by First/2nd gen immigrants", which is another statement that cannot be used to make a policy decision.
So you tell me, based on this report, are immigrants over- or under- represented as (co)founders of $1B+ startups? Should we have different policy changes if they are under-represented, vs. if they are over-represented? Or what if the number of immigrant founders is what we would except from population statistics?
Your views, frequently stated, are pro-immigration. That's fine. I support that, and I speak as an immigrant who is in turn the child of an immigrant.
But this report cannot be used to support your viewpoint other than with the trivial observation that there are ways in which immigrants are helpful.
For example, many of the founders came to the US to go to school in the US, including Harvard. Is that reflective of the general population of H1-B visa holders? If not, can the conclusions drawn from the very small number of $1B+ startups be used to make policy decisions about the vast majority of skilled immigrants?