A new report released this week again makes it clear why the continued push for immigration reform has to become an argument steeped in economics.
"The New American Fortune 500," a report from the Partnership for a New American Economy, found that immigrants or their children founded more than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies in the United States.
Despite the fact that immigrants have made up only 10.5 percent of the American population on average since 1850, there are 90 immigrant-founded Fortune 500 companies, accounting for 18 percent of the list. When you include the 114 companies founded by the children of immigrants, their share of the Fortune 500 list grows to over 40 percent.
The report also found that the newest Fortune 500 companies are likely to have an immigrant founder. Just shy of 20 percent of the newest Fortune 500 companies – those founded in the 25-year period between 1985 and 2010 – have an immigrant founder. Additionally, researchers discovered that Fortune 500 companies founded by immigrants or children of immigrants, like International Business Machines, employ more than 10 million people worldwide.
Immigrant-founded Fortune 500 companies alone employ more than 3 million people, a figure equivalent to the entire population of Connecticut.
And revenue generated by Fortune 500 companies founded by immigrants or children of immigrants is greater than the GDP of every country in the world outside the United States, except China and Japan. Fortune 500 companies that boast immigrant founders or children-of-immigrant founders have combined revenues of $4.2 trillion – $1.7 trillion of that amount comes just from companies founded by immigrants.
These are the numbers that President Barack Obama, immigrant advocates and lawmakers in support of comprehensive immigration reform should be touting.
There is no denying that immigrants make a significant contribution to the American economy, whether as owners of Fortune 500 companies or simply as pickers on farms desperate for immigrant labor.
Immigration reform is an economic necessity – one that should be sold as such by the president and those in favor of reform. This is an argument that crosses all sides, and one that even the dumbest or most bigoted conservative lawmaker cannot deny.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was right to highlight the role of immigrants in America's economic growth during a keynote speech to the Council on Foreign Relations at the Future of U.S. Immigration Policy symposium.
Bloomberg's proposals call for green cards for graduates with advanced degrees in essential fields; a new visa for entrepreneurs with investors ready to invest capital in their job-creating idea; more temporary and permanent visas for highly skilled workers; guest worker programs to ensure agriculture and other key sectors can thrive; and a re-evaluation of visa priorities. These ideas place a focus on the nation's economic needs and can be included with any reform bill and receive support.
So why is the dialogue and congressional push not going in this direction? Let's remember that seven of the 10 most valuable brands in the world come from the American companies founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. Furthermore, many of America's greatest brands – Apple, Google, AT&T, Budweiser, Colgate, eBay, General Electric, IBM and McDonald's, to name just a few – owe their origins to a founder who was an immigrant or the child of an immigrant.
Immigrant contributions to these United States are undeniable and continue to be very much economically driven. Let's make sure the dialogue and lobbying efforts for immigration reform is also an economic one and not the simpleton version—that is, being sorry for "illegals" who need amnesty.
The writer is the founder of NewsAmericasNow, CaribPR Wire and Hard Beat Communications.
