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by Sherman Baldwin, LCR Capital Partners | Originally published in The Times of India
America’s “Superpower” lies in merit, skills and “grit” based immigration governed by a set of secure and structured policies and processes. America is the only nation on earth founded upon an idea. As such, America is uniquely positioned to be the world’s talent magnet and entrepreneurial growth engine of the global economy for the next century. We must take advantage of our unique ability to attract people who yearn for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Before entertaining any creative solutions pertaining to immigration, the first step must be to secure America’s borders and partner with Mexico to secure their borders as well. Given a more secure border and a structured orderly process, the path forward for America retaining its leadership role in the world throughout the 21st century is to attract the most successful, the most talented and the most resilient people from all other countries.
Over the past two decades, 55% of the Founders of Silicon Valley “Unicorns” (start-up companies that achieve >$1B valuation) have been first-generation immigrants. (Anderson, 2022) America needs to shift our thinking on immigration away from it being a problem to solve, and towards it being an immense opportunity for American economic growth. According to the American Immigration Council (AIC), there are many more immigrants or children of immigrants creating American jobs in our economy. “As of 2021, almost 44%, or 219 companies, in the Fortune 500 were founded by immigrants or their children.” (AIC)
As the home of Silicon Valley and global success stories from Google to Apple, America tops the global ranking of the best countries to be an entrepreneur. With a highly-skilled workforce, competitiveness and openness for business, as well as having easy access to capital for entrepreneurs, America rates highly across the board. Given that, it is no surprise that America is ranked first in the overall “best countries for entrepreneurship” in the CEOWorld Entrepreneurship Index study from 2021.
All other countries around the world are formed by geography, ethnicity, religion or some tribal history. However, America is founded on the ideas of freedom, democracy and capitalism. America is currently experiencing a renaissance of domestic manufacturing and entrepreneurship as we realized that we need more secure and reliable supply chains for all of our industries after the Covid pandemic. According to the US Census Bureau, over the past two years more than 10 million new companies have been started in America. To make this surge of domestic growth successful we need talent, skills, capital and a willingness to take entrepreneurial risk. Immigrants are willing to take immense risk to pursue opportunity…
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