Immigrants Have Probably Made More Valuable Contributions To America Than Every Republican In Mississippi Combined

Anyone think they don't come from immigrant antecedents? Even "Native Americans" just got here-- from Siberia-- before the rest of our ancestors. They probably came looking for a better life... or maybe they were feeling from oppressors. My grandfather came from the Pale with his family when he was a young boy, fleeing Cossacks and tsarist pograms. The U.S. turned his family away but-- for some reason I never quite understood-- allowed my grandfather and an older sister to enter the U.S. The 11 other members of the family wound up in northwest Brazil. I only met any of them once-- when as just a child, and because I could speak a little Spanish (a relative of Portuguese, their language)-- I was their guide at the 1964 World's Fair. They told me most of the extended family lived in Salvador, Belém and Recife. They were generally successful-- penniless when they arrived, like my grandfather, devoted to education, hard work and entrepreneurship as a way out of poverty generationally.

My grandfather, my idol, was a socialist and a successful small business owner. His first grandchild-- me-- was the first to go to college, embraced his socialism and his ethos of hard work and entrepreneurship. A few years I sighed when I realized I had paid over a million dollars in federal income taxes. Who likes to pay that to the federales? Well... I didn't, but I thanked God that I had done so well for that to be my share. I may have been grumpy about paying that much but I was also glad to be able to and to contribute (especially after having gone to a free state university and having needed to avail myself of food stamps when I was getting on my feet at one time).

So what made me blurt that out today? I read a report from New American Economy: New American Fortune 500 in 2019: Top American Companies and Their Immigrant Roots. Although I wound up running a division of a Fortune 500 company, an AOL-TimeWarner record label, my own company-- the one I founded-- like my grandfather's was far from a big company. I sold mine to a big company though. "Immigrant entrepreneurs," the report began, "have long been an important part of America’s economic success story. Some of the largest and most recognizable American companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants, including household names such as Apple and Costco, as well as newcomers to the Fortune 500 list like Broadcom and Intuit. Even Levi’s was created by two immigrants, Levi Strauss from Germany and Jacob Davis from Latvia, who invented that now iconic staple of the American wardrobe-- blue jeans... [M]ore than two out of every five Fortune 500-- the 500 largest corporation by revenue in the country-- had at least one immigrant or child-of-immigrant founder. This pattern has continued over the years since. This year, we find that an even higher share-- almost 45 percent-- of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children."

This year they found that "44.6 percent, or 223 companies, in the Fortune 500 were founded by immigrants or their children. Of those companies, 101 were founded directly by foreign-born individuals while another 122 were founded by the children of immigrants. Of this year’s crop of New American Fortune 500, several notable new companies made the cut.

New American Fortune 500 companies brought in more than $6 trillion in revenue.

These New American firms make important contributions to both the U.S. and the global economy. In fiscal year 2018, the 223 New American companies on the 2019 Fortune 500 list brought in $6.1 trillion in revenue. To put it in context, that figure is greater than the GDP of many developed countries-- including Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom. In fact, a country with a GDP equal to the revenues of the New American Fortune 500 firms would be the third largest economy in the world, behind only the United States and China.

New American Fortune 500 companies employ 13.5 million people.

These companies are a strong driver of job creation. On average, each New American Fortune 500 company employs 60,629 workers, 10.7 percent more than the average number of workers at non-New American Fortune 500 firms. Together, New American Fortune 500 firms employ over 13.5 million people-- a population that would rank as the fifth largest state in the country, just after New York but easily beating Pennsylvania.

Seven states have at least ten New American Fortune 500 firms.

When we compare companies at the state level, New American Fortune 500 firms are significant players in some states’ economies. Among the states that have 10 or more New American Fortune 500 companies, New York, America’s original immigrant gateway, leads the pack with 35 firms. California comes in second with 29 New American Fortune 500 companies, followed by Illinois with 21, Texas with 18, Virginia with 12, and both Florida and New Jersey with 10 each. Given their number and size, these New American companies have an outsized impact on each state’s economy. For example, in New York, the Fortune 500 companies brought in revenue that equaled 56.3 percent of the state’s total GDP and employed almost 2 million people around the world. In Illinois, New American companies brought in combined revenue equal to 70.3 percent of the state’s GDP.

Immigrant entrepreneurs play an indispensable role in our economy.

The New American Fortune 500 is only one example of how immigrants and their children create American jobs and drive our economy. Medium and small businesses are also vital to the U.S. economy, employing many more millions at neighborhood stores, restaurants, professional services, and other local businesses. Immigrants have a significant role to play here, with nearly 3.2 million immigrants running their own businesses. Data from 2017 also shows that immigrants continue to be more likely to be entrepreneurs than their U.S.-born counterparts. This increased propensity for business creation among immigrants is crucial for the U.S economy, as research shows that nearly all net job growth in the United States is attributed to new firms and startups.

Stef Kight explainedfior Axios readers why this matters: "The share of the most successful and globally recognized U.S. companies that have immigrant founders is growing, according to NAE's Hanna Siegel and Andrew Lim, while the Trump administration has tried to make it more difficult for immigrants to come to the U.S., often claiming that they take American jobs and lower wages."

Generally this welcoming attitude towards immigrants has been a shared American value, although there has also always been an ugly minority-driven racist, nativist, xenophobic strain-- stain-- as part of the country's polity-- even a Know Nothing Party that these ideas were based on. But now we actually have one of them in the White House.