Much of the public debate around immigration in the U.S. and its costs and benefits centers on economic effects like job competition and added stress to public programs and benefits. One significant factor that gets missed by all the rhetoric is the role of the immigrant entrepreneur.
Immigrants and children of immigrants are the quintessential American entrepreneurs. They work hard to get here, and then they keep working after they arrive. They’re nearly twice as likely to start a business as their native-born counterparts! According to research by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a whole 25% of all engineering and tech companies in the U.S. founded between 2006 and 2012 had at least one founder who was an immigrant. And not only have immigrants consistently been more entrepreneurial than native-born citizens, but in recent years that gap has been gradually growing.
These immigrant entrepreneurs have to be included in any serious reckoning of immigration and its costs and benefits. But regardless of their effect on the economy as a whole, we can look to these innovators as role models to study. What makes immigrants so likely to start their own businesses, and what can we learn from them?
Determined to Succeed
Entrepreneur Magazine says that of the companies in the U.S. Fortune 500, upwards of 40% were founded by first- or second-generation immigrants, even though immigrants only make up 13.5% of the total population. So what sets this population apart? What gives them the push to innovate and take risks where native-born Americans don’t?
One obvious distinction that sets the immigrant population apart is the simple fact of having gone through the immigration process. It takes determination and resilience to get through the process successfully, to be undeterred by setbacks and to keep trying and seeking out viable pathways to immigrate. For people to make it through the challenging, complex and ambiguous immigration system, they have to bring those qualities with them or pick them up on the way. And then they have to be able to deal with being an outsider once they arrive. And no matter how bad conditions are in your home country, it takes courage and a willingness to take on significant risks to get up and leave.
That determination and resilience serve them well in bringing them here and helping them adjust to their new environment, and it continues to serve many of them well as they go about making a living and starting their own businesses. And that’s one way we can emulate immigrant entrepreneurs. Even though native-born citizens haven’t had to go through the process, they can still learn to persevere and take hope from studying the determination that immigrant entrepreneurs bring with them.
Imagining Your Endgame
“To build a business from the ground up, you’ve got to be committed. You need to really want it,” says Steve Lewis, president of Ambient Edge. “It takes a big sense of imagination, too. You’ll never have the courage to lay those first bricks unless you’ve already got a blueprint you believe in.”
That sense of imagination is something we can learn from immigrants as well. For those who put in the work and are able to find a path to come to the U.S., it’s not something done on a whim. It’s a massive undertaking done for a reason. And that reason for many is the American Dream.
The American Dream is the imagined independence, stability and opportunity that, for many outside of the U.S., are simply not possible in their country of origin, whether that’s because of entrenched inequality or simply the lack of the safe, stable economic conditions you need to be able to start a business.
For many native-born Americans, we take those things for granted. By learning from the experiences of immigrant entrepreneurs, however, we can recognize the opportunities around us and allow ourselves to start dreaming about all the possibilities that come with them.
The Importance of Cross-Cultural Experience
Another factor that may contribute to more entrepreneurial activity among immigrants is the experience immigrants bring with them. Immigrants naturally have more experience in cross-cultural situations than many native-born Americans, and this means they’ve been exposed to more different perspectives, to more varied ways of doing business. That exposure can lead to more creative ideas, to thinking beyond the way it’s normally done. Having experienced different markets in different countries, and coming from a more marginal community in the U.S., immigrants can also find niche markets whose demands are not being met or identify products and practices from outside the U.S. that could also be successful here.
Native-born American entrepreneurs can learn from these immigrants by stepping outside of their bubbles and seeking out cross-cultural experiences as well. That can mean traveling and studying markets and products in other countries, or simply visiting distinct fringe communities in the U.S. Travel beyond one’s home environment is an excellent way to expand your perspective, find new ideas, and get beyond customary ways of thinking.