Unemployment and immigration are at the forefront of this year’s election discussions. While immigrants are often accused of taking jobs from US workers, a recent study by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and the Partnership for a New American Economy suggests that the immigrant community is actually largely responsible for creating American jobs. The study, entitled “Immigration and American Jobs,” found that “from 2000 to 2007, an additional 100 foreign-born workers in STEM fields with advanced degrees from US universities is associated with an additional 262 jobs among US natives.” The study further states that there is “no evidence that foreign-born workers, taken in the aggregate, hurt US employment.” The entire study can be found on the Partnership for A New American Economy’s website:
http://www.renewoureconomy.org/sites/all/themes/pnae/img/NAE_Im-AmerJobs.pdf
In his Business Week article, “Fix U.S. Immigration Policy, Create Jobs,” Vivek Wadhwa, Director of Research at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering, highlights the results of the aforementioned study and provides research of his own. He “found that in a quarter of the U.S. engineering and technology companies founded from 1995 to 2005, the chief executive or lead technologist was foreign-born. In Silicon Valley, the percentage of immigrant-founded startups was much higher – 52 percent.” The article also examines proposed legislation regarding immigrant employment and explores the length that other countries go to in order to recruit foreign-born entrepreneurs:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/fix-us-immigration-policy-create-jobs-01032012.html
The bottom line is that if we want job creators, we need immigration policies that enable us to recruit and support more of these risk-taking immigrants who work around the clock to build their American Dream.
