7 ms·

Getting Schooled: The Role of Universities in Attracting Immigrant Entrepreneurs

54 points by rustoo 5y ago

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Why does the United States feel entitled to drain the intellectual capital of countries that are least able to afford losing it? These discussions always end up going on about "the good of the country" but never about the good of other countries or the good of humanity. "The good of the country" really means for the good of the top 0.001%, which is where the purported benefit mostly ends up. If the US is going to hoover up all of the intellectual capital it can, it at least needs to acknowledge that this is harming other countries and accept some of the burden of repairing some of the damage this causes without attaching a bunch of strings that primarily benefits the US. Don't be surprised when so much of the world is resentful of you if you keep up this type of behavior.
- pram 5y ago
  Does the “intellectual capital” not have agency? Are they being forced?
- bluthru 5y ago
  Correct, brain drain only exacerbates wealth stratification on a global scale and inhibits local development. It is not generosity, it is an empire absorbing potential competition.
- WaitWaitWha 5y ago
  At a blush I agreed with you, but then I thought a bit more, and now disagree. The presumption is that the local intellects will be developed, if just developed nations would not take them. This is not as likely. The counter, where foreign educated people come back to home country is. This way the birth nation gains the foreign nation's intellect.(plenty of anecdotal evidence) Will this be the case all the time? Of course not. The follow up question is, how many will return, where is the break even, where is the educational level, etc
- FredPret 5y ago
  I think hundreds of millions of units of “intellectual capital” (these are human beings with the right to make life choices) would wait in line to get hoovered up by the US
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- sremani 5y ago
  In India there is a saying - "Brain drain is better than brain in drain".
- huitzitziltzin 5y ago
  Not a good take. These individuals have the choice of where to go. What should we say? You can’t come? Also - don’t forget that many immigrants (both high and low skilled) send money home. This can improve outcomes over time in their home countries. Finally... ignoring a language barrier, what’s stopping you from moving to one of these countries? If you have valuable skills and they are suffering brain drain, you can potentially help. If you don’t want to or if that sounds ridiculous, now you understand the position of a high skilled resident of one of those countries
  - the_local_host 5y ago
    > Not a good take. These individuals have the choice of where to go. What should we say? You can’t come? The US does say "you can't come" to most people who aren't highly skilled, so this choice of where to go comes out of the aligned interests of the US and the migrant, not a general principle.
    - geebee 5y ago
      In fact, the US says "you can't come" to highly educated would-be immigrants who don't have a STEM designation.
      - huitzitziltzin 5y ago
        I have the same reply to the parent of your comment: we do and I think that’s a really bad move on our part!
    - huitzitziltzin 5y ago
      I agree that we say you can’t come and feel it is a terrible mistake to do so. I would favor much more liberal immigration policies and guest worker programs at all skill levels. This particular paper is about more skilled migrants.
- akomtu 5y ago
  The so called developing nations are often dictatorships that want to get rid of their "intellectual capital" because it destabilizes the dictator's position.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  >Why does the United States feel entitled Why do you feel people choosing to go to the US is the US feeling entitled? Do you believe these 'brains' aren't capable of assessing their own self interest? >These discussions always end up going on about "the good of the country" but never about the good of other countries or the good of humanity. That's because you're proposing restricting people from attending foreign universities 'for the good of humanity' which is on its face ridiculous. > "The good of the country" really means for the good of the top 0.001%, which is where the purported benefit mostly ends up. And those 'brains' who choose to go where they want get no benefit? Who are you to tell them what to do? >If the US is going to hoover up all of the intellectual capital it can, it at least needs to acknowledge that this is harming other countries and accept some of the burden of repairing some of the damage this causes without attaching a bunch of strings that primarily benefits the US. The US now owes other countries for accepting immigration, apparently. This is of course insane.
- gryn 5y ago
  your assuming that these 'brains' will find a use in their home country, and that's where your wrong. 1) no one is forcing people to move out of their country. it's a personal choice of each of these individuals. 2) as a real life example, in my home country I know of plenty smart people with or without diplomas that ended up in jobs that have nowhere near close of a place to use their 'brains' even if they really want to and not from a lack of trying just a lack of opportunities. what good is having having a sharp brain and a PhD if the only local job opportunities are: door to door salesman, fruits and vegetables vendor, cashier, farmer, goat herder, working in a call center.
- OminousWeapons 5y ago
  > Why does the United States feel entitled to drain the intellectual capital of countries that are least able to afford losing it? Why do other countries feel entitled to drain all the manufacturing jobs and mid wage work from the United States' middle class and working class citizens that are least able to afford losing it? Competition creates winners and losers in various sectors and people go to where opportunities are. That's just life.
  - nirav72 5y ago
    >Why do other countries feel entitled to drain all the manufacturing jobs and mid wage work from the United States' Blame U.S corporations and U.S policy for that. The other countries that provide such labor aren't the ones forcing the U.S to do that.
    - OminousWeapons 5y ago
      Blame ex-US companies and ex-US tax policy for ex-US brain drain. The US isn't forcing people to come here in the same way that China / Singapore / India / Vietnam aren't forcing US corps to shift production there; people follow incentives.
medymed 5y ago
Having a more direct pathway to citizenship through university/graduate studies, if properly regulated, could be a tremendous benefit to the country rather than forcing graduates into H1B serfdom. Such a pathway would require careful oversight and restrictions to avoid abuse (like creating fake degree programs), but the benefits to everyone involved could vastly outweigh the costs. Interested in what others would think about this.
- anovikov 5y ago
  I think it doesn't exist precisely because it will create innumerous diploma mills that will also be now passport mills... Fake degrees are already a thing and they are bad for economy and society as they are, and very little can be done about them - economic incentive is too high.
- newsclues 5y ago
  But doesn’t this type of migration lead to brain drains? If you take the best talent from the developing world and move them all to America for education and then capture their talents through migration, you deprived the developing world of the talent they need to develop and thrive, which puts the developing world even further behind! Seems like if we want to help the developing world we need to train and equip their talented people and ensure they have the security and infrastructure to build their homelands into developed nations with established trade routes, etc. Or we can continue to exploit developing countries by snatching their top talent. It’s not modern day slavery, but it seems to be uncomfortably close in its exploitation.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    "Brain drain" is a net benefit to the source country. Brains are worthless on their own without higher education and the know-how that's gained from being an expat to a developed country. It's very much a win-win arrangement.
    - afiori 5y ago
      It is a win for the home country only if the expat comes back, then they get access to an educated individual that would have been hard to train internally.
___luigi 5y ago
Universities are not about classes, it's about network out-side the classes. We all know that from experience, but Covid shaped us as a society in different ways. Companies will become global. Being a digital nomad will be normalized, and the difference between an entrepreneurs will be about ecosystem and entrepreneur status in the country. Network effects will be always there, but not as before.
- bachmeier 5y ago
  > Universities are not about classes, it's about network out-side the classes. That statement is true for a small set of elite universities. For the vast majority of higher education, the most important things are classes, degrees, and the jobs that result. If by "classes" you mean "lectures" then sure, lectures are a pretty small part of the university.
  - ___luigi 5y ago
    I come from no-name university in the global south, and network/friends is the very important thing. Literally, I have many friends who traveled the world, worked in different places, and then came back to start a business together (with homies). > That statement is true for a small set of elite universities. In fact, elite universities tend to have good program and the prestige can take to places.
    - wombat-man 5y ago
      Yes, networking and making friends is big. but just learning a lot of the nuts and bolts for what is now my profession was also pretty big. Some people can self learn but the discipline and help from professors brought me a long ways.
- Aperocky 5y ago
  I reckon I had very little network effect at unis, nor did I really remember any of the classes. But it's still useful as a time where I get to think about what I want to do and actually try them (software, hah) with abundance of freedom. That part was really important.
hervature 5y ago
This seems to be opportunistically timed with Biden’s immigration bill that will give all PhDs in STEM from a US institution a green card. Biden has already asked that the Republicans pass the law by piecemeal. As someone about to finish their PhD, I’m hopeful this portion will pass.
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  Someone from Oxford University is out, someone with a PhD from Yoknapatawha State College is in. In other words, the bill is a bailout for struggling US institutions, but this would be expected from our current president.
geebee 5y ago
I have serious reservations about empowering universities to bestow green cards or residency upon would-be immigrants. I highly value the good people who will come to the US, but I don't trust universities to handle this responsibility, as PhD programs have clearly become very abusive of their students. Low participation among US citizens in graduate (especially doctoral) level STEM PhD programs is often attributed to poor math and science preparation in K-12 or college level education in the US. While there is some support for this explanation, a RAND study of US citizens with STEM undergraduate degrees and high GRE scores found that the aversion to PhD programs is rational and market based. In short, the aversion to PhD programs makes sense - even for those who are capable and prepared to enter them - when those students have other options. Professional school programs, including Law, MBA, and professional health care doctorates (MD, DDS, PharmD) have shorter completion times, standardized and consistent completion schedules, vastly lower attrition rates, better employment prospects, and higher salaries. I'd like to draw a bit more attention to attrition rates. I was a doctoral student at UC Berkeley in Industrial Engineering - I mastered out to a good hob in industry, but it was not entirely voluntarily. The doctoral attrition rate was around 50% for my cohort. This is pretty typical, attrition rates are 35-50% for PhDs in science and engineering. By contrast, the attrition rate for the MD program at UCSF medical school is less than one half of one percent. This is pretty standard for elite law schools as well. It's not an exaggeration to say that elite PhD programs in STEM have an attrition rate 70-100 times higher. Now, every time I bring this up on HN, someone does point out (reasonably) that dropping out (especially mastering out) of a PhD program in, say, computer science is very different from dropping out of med school. Someone with a BS and MS in computer science from Berkeley faces a very different professional future in tech than someone who drops out of med school faces in medicine. However, these attrition rates are astoundingly high. They are so high that we need to ask these universities - if PhDs are in such critically short supply that we must grant you the power to bestow US residency on those who receive them from you, why are your attrition rates 100 times higher than a comparably elite law or medical school? These programs should face a reckoning. When a job gets lousy, when a program gets abusive, the market tends to correct itself. Talented people abandon the field in favor of other paths, a shortage emerges, and employers (including universities) need to sweeten the deal to draw people back into the field. The RAND institute recommended several ways universities could make STEM doctoral degrees competitive with professional degrees. But as long as they can offer aa path to residency and citizenship that is denied through other paths, there's no need to attract people with that choice. There's no need for a market correction when the government will fix this by giving you control over the degrees people who would like to live and work in the United States are allowed to have. In closing, I want to be clear I support a system for skilled immigration - the US needs this. However, I remain skeptical of the need to specifically privilege graduates of US stem programs, especially at the doctoral level. If we take this approach, expect people with choice to show even greater aversion to STEM PhDs.
tryonenow 5y ago
Why does it not make more sense to cultivate local talent, instead of effectively poaching from other countries, and creating negative wage pressure by expanding the labor supply and importing people who are willing to work for far lower wages?
phenkdo 5y ago
As someone who argues for the H1b program, I wish the US opts for a points-based system (a la the Canadian system) and make the (current lottery) H1b a 5/10 year temporary green-card based on points. * Points for education level MS/PhD, * Salary indexed to COL, * Job location (Kansas earns higher points vs SF), * some points for scholarly merit (patents, peer-reviewed publications) and so on... This would address the some legitimate concerns of US workers, make the process transparent and orderly, but also keep the tech economy rolling. The current system is asinine and needs serious reform. This is one of the greatest things the US has - immigrant entrepreneurs == entrepreneur^2 - and would be foolish to shut it down.
- dotcommand 5y ago
  Isn't H1-B a program for foreign workers, not entrepreneurs? Everything you listed (education,salary,job location,etc) has to do with workers, not entrepreneurs.
  - phenkdo 5y ago
    Actually there's quit a bit of overlap, many H1bs go onto start companies, some apply for an h1b through their own startup. Either way the immigrant entrepreneur almost universally say they find the US just "liberating" (compared to say India).
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Careful with the Canadian system: it never actually checks for employability. The degree doesn't have to be recognized for it to be counted in the score. That's how you end up with "Engineers" driving taxis that are incapable of passing the PE exam (they are free to enroll, but would have to re-take pretty much the whole degree to have a shot at passing it).
- zaptheimpaler 5y ago
  Interesting point from the paper: > the average age for when immigrant founders got their social security number is close to 26 years old,which is a rough proxy for when these immigrants entered the United States. On the other hand, the average age at founding a VC-backed company is 49 years old, which indicates that the majority of founders, even in the latter part of the sample,likely immigrated to the United States before 2004
ArkanExplorer 5y ago
The Anglosphere is awash with these kind of visas and universities. The ultimate outcome is to enrich University executives, drive down the quality of education (due to rampant cheating, overlooked when the students are paying customers), and to flood the local economy with cheap labour - typically young men from countries with gender imbalances. If the USA wants to attract immigrant entrepreneurs the simplest way to do it is to enact open borders agreements with other high-HDI countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev... And secondly to ensure gender equality and diversity at the underlying intake level by mandating a maximum 49% males from any one country, and a maximum 10% of the total from any one country.

54 points by rustoo 5y ago

Why does the United States feel entitled to drain the intellectual capital of countries that are least able to afford losing it? These discussions always end up going on about "the good of the country" but never about the good of other countries or the good of humanity. "The good of the country" really means for the good of the top 0.001%, which is where the purported benefit mostly ends up. If the US is going to hoover up all of the intellectual capital it can, it at least needs to acknowledge that this is harming other countries and accept some of the burden of repairing some of the damage this causes without attaching a bunch of strings that primarily benefits the US. Don't be surprised when so much of the world is resentful of you if you keep up this type of behavior.

pram 5y ago
Does the “intellectual capital” not have agency? Are they being forced?
bluthru 5y ago
Correct, brain drain only exacerbates wealth stratification on a global scale and inhibits local development. It is not generosity, it is an empire absorbing potential competition.
WaitWaitWha 5y ago
At a blush I agreed with you, but then I thought a bit more, and now disagree. The presumption is that the local intellects will be developed, if just developed nations would not take them. This is not as likely. The counter, where foreign educated people come back to home country is. This way the birth nation gains the foreign nation's intellect.(plenty of anecdotal evidence) Will this be the case all the time? Of course not. The follow up question is, how many will return, where is the break even, where is the educational level, etc
FredPret 5y ago
I think hundreds of millions of units of “intellectual capital” (these are human beings with the right to make life choices) would wait in line to get hoovered up by the US
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
sremani 5y ago
In India there is a saying - "Brain drain is better than brain in drain".
huitzitziltzin 5y ago
Not a good take. These individuals have the choice of where to go. What should we say? You can’t come? Also - don’t forget that many immigrants (both high and low skilled) send money home. This can improve outcomes over time in their home countries. Finally... ignoring a language barrier, what’s stopping you from moving to one of these countries? If you have valuable skills and they are suffering brain drain, you can potentially help. If you don’t want to or if that sounds ridiculous, now you understand the position of a high skilled resident of one of those countries
- the_local_host 5y ago
  > Not a good take. These individuals have the choice of where to go. What should we say? You can’t come? The US does say "you can't come" to most people who aren't highly skilled, so this choice of where to go comes out of the aligned interests of the US and the migrant, not a general principle.
  - geebee 5y ago
    In fact, the US says "you can't come" to highly educated would-be immigrants who don't have a STEM designation.
    - huitzitziltzin 5y ago
      I have the same reply to the parent of your comment: we do and I think that’s a really bad move on our part!
  - huitzitziltzin 5y ago
    I agree that we say you can’t come and feel it is a terrible mistake to do so. I would favor much more liberal immigration policies and guest worker programs at all skill levels. This particular paper is about more skilled migrants.
akomtu 5y ago
The so called developing nations are often dictatorships that want to get rid of their "intellectual capital" because it destabilizes the dictator's position.
LegitShady 5y ago
>Why does the United States feel entitled Why do you feel people choosing to go to the US is the US feeling entitled? Do you believe these 'brains' aren't capable of assessing their own self interest? >These discussions always end up going on about "the good of the country" but never about the good of other countries or the good of humanity. That's because you're proposing restricting people from attending foreign universities 'for the good of humanity' which is on its face ridiculous. > "The good of the country" really means for the good of the top 0.001%, which is where the purported benefit mostly ends up. And those 'brains' who choose to go where they want get no benefit? Who are you to tell them what to do? >If the US is going to hoover up all of the intellectual capital it can, it at least needs to acknowledge that this is harming other countries and accept some of the burden of repairing some of the damage this causes without attaching a bunch of strings that primarily benefits the US. The US now owes other countries for accepting immigration, apparently. This is of course insane.
gryn 5y ago
your assuming that these 'brains' will find a use in their home country, and that's where your wrong. 1) no one is forcing people to move out of their country. it's a personal choice of each of these individuals. 2) as a real life example, in my home country I know of plenty smart people with or without diplomas that ended up in jobs that have nowhere near close of a place to use their 'brains' even if they really want to and not from a lack of trying just a lack of opportunities. what good is having having a sharp brain and a PhD if the only local job opportunities are: door to door salesman, fruits and vegetables vendor, cashier, farmer, goat herder, working in a call center.
OminousWeapons 5y ago
> Why does the United States feel entitled to drain the intellectual capital of countries that are least able to afford losing it? Why do other countries feel entitled to drain all the manufacturing jobs and mid wage work from the United States' middle class and working class citizens that are least able to afford losing it? Competition creates winners and losers in various sectors and people go to where opportunities are. That's just life.
- nirav72 5y ago
  >Why do other countries feel entitled to drain all the manufacturing jobs and mid wage work from the United States' Blame U.S corporations and U.S policy for that. The other countries that provide such labor aren't the ones forcing the U.S to do that.
  - OminousWeapons 5y ago
    Blame ex-US companies and ex-US tax policy for ex-US brain drain. The US isn't forcing people to come here in the same way that China / Singapore / India / Vietnam aren't forcing US corps to shift production there; people follow incentives.

medymed 5y ago

Having a more direct pathway to citizenship through university/graduate studies, if properly regulated, could be a tremendous benefit to the country rather than forcing graduates into H1B serfdom. Such a pathway would require careful oversight and restrictions to avoid abuse (like creating fake degree programs), but the benefits to everyone involved could vastly outweigh the costs. Interested in what others would think about this.

anovikov 5y ago
I think it doesn't exist precisely because it will create innumerous diploma mills that will also be now passport mills... Fake degrees are already a thing and they are bad for economy and society as they are, and very little can be done about them - economic incentive is too high.
newsclues 5y ago
But doesn’t this type of migration lead to brain drains? If you take the best talent from the developing world and move them all to America for education and then capture their talents through migration, you deprived the developing world of the talent they need to develop and thrive, which puts the developing world even further behind! Seems like if we want to help the developing world we need to train and equip their talented people and ensure they have the security and infrastructure to build their homelands into developed nations with established trade routes, etc. Or we can continue to exploit developing countries by snatching their top talent. It’s not modern day slavery, but it seems to be uncomfortably close in its exploitation.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  "Brain drain" is a net benefit to the source country. Brains are worthless on their own without higher education and the know-how that's gained from being an expat to a developed country. It's very much a win-win arrangement.
  - afiori 5y ago
    It is a win for the home country only if the expat comes back, then they get access to an educated individual that would have been hard to train internally.

___luigi 5y ago

Universities are not about classes, it's about network out-side the classes. We all know that from experience, but Covid shaped us as a society in different ways. Companies will become global. Being a digital nomad will be normalized, and the difference between an entrepreneurs will be about ecosystem and entrepreneur status in the country. Network effects will be always there, but not as before.

bachmeier 5y ago
> Universities are not about classes, it's about network out-side the classes. That statement is true for a small set of elite universities. For the vast majority of higher education, the most important things are classes, degrees, and the jobs that result. If by "classes" you mean "lectures" then sure, lectures are a pretty small part of the university.
- ___luigi 5y ago
  I come from no-name university in the global south, and network/friends is the very important thing. Literally, I have many friends who traveled the world, worked in different places, and then came back to start a business together (with homies). > That statement is true for a small set of elite universities. In fact, elite universities tend to have good program and the prestige can take to places.
  - wombat-man 5y ago
    Yes, networking and making friends is big. but just learning a lot of the nuts and bolts for what is now my profession was also pretty big. Some people can self learn but the discipline and help from professors brought me a long ways.
Aperocky 5y ago
I reckon I had very little network effect at unis, nor did I really remember any of the classes. But it's still useful as a time where I get to think about what I want to do and actually try them (software, hah) with abundance of freedom. That part was really important.

hervature 5y ago

This seems to be opportunistically timed with Biden’s immigration bill that will give all PhDs in STEM from a US institution a green card. Biden has already asked that the Republicans pass the law by piecemeal. As someone about to finish their PhD, I’m hopeful this portion will pass.

HarryHirsch 5y ago
Someone from Oxford University is out, someone with a PhD from Yoknapatawha State College is in. In other words, the bill is a bailout for struggling US institutions, but this would be expected from our current president.

geebee 5y ago

I have serious reservations about empowering universities to bestow green cards or residency upon would-be immigrants. I highly value the good people who will come to the US, but I don't trust universities to handle this responsibility, as PhD programs have clearly become very abusive of their students. Low participation among US citizens in graduate (especially doctoral) level STEM PhD programs is often attributed to poor math and science preparation in K-12 or college level education in the US. While there is some support for this explanation, a RAND study of US citizens with STEM undergraduate degrees and high GRE scores found that the aversion to PhD programs is rational and market based. In short, the aversion to PhD programs makes sense - even for those who are capable and prepared to enter them - when those students have other options. Professional school programs, including Law, MBA, and professional health care doctorates (MD, DDS, PharmD) have shorter completion times, standardized and consistent completion schedules, vastly lower attrition rates, better employment prospects, and higher salaries. I'd like to draw a bit more attention to attrition rates. I was a doctoral student at UC Berkeley in Industrial Engineering - I mastered out to a good hob in industry, but it was not entirely voluntarily. The doctoral attrition rate was around 50% for my cohort. This is pretty typical, attrition rates are 35-50% for PhDs in science and engineering. By contrast, the attrition rate for the MD program at UCSF medical school is less than one half of one percent. This is pretty standard for elite law schools as well. It's not an exaggeration to say that elite PhD programs in STEM have an attrition rate 70-100 times higher. Now, every time I bring this up on HN, someone does point out (reasonably) that dropping out (especially mastering out) of a PhD program in, say, computer science is very different from dropping out of med school. Someone with a BS and MS in computer science from Berkeley faces a very different professional future in tech than someone who drops out of med school faces in medicine. However, these attrition rates are astoundingly high. They are so high that we need to ask these universities - if PhDs are in such critically short supply that we must grant you the power to bestow US residency on those who receive them from you, why are your attrition rates 100 times higher than a comparably elite law or medical school? These programs should face a reckoning. When a job gets lousy, when a program gets abusive, the market tends to correct itself. Talented people abandon the field in favor of other paths, a shortage emerges, and employers (including universities) need to sweeten the deal to draw people back into the field. The RAND institute recommended several ways universities could make STEM doctoral degrees competitive with professional degrees. But as long as they can offer aa path to residency and citizenship that is denied through other paths, there's no need to attract people with that choice. There's no need for a market correction when the government will fix this by giving you control over the degrees people who would like to live and work in the United States are allowed to have. In closing, I want to be clear I support a system for skilled immigration - the US needs this. However, I remain skeptical of the need to specifically privilege graduates of US stem programs, especially at the doctoral level. If we take this approach, expect people with choice to show even greater aversion to STEM PhDs.

tryonenow 5y ago

Why does it not make more sense to cultivate local talent, instead of effectively poaching from other countries, and creating negative wage pressure by expanding the labor supply and importing people who are willing to work for far lower wages?

phenkdo 5y ago

As someone who argues for the H1b program, I wish the US opts for a points-based system (a la the Canadian system) and make the (current lottery) H1b a 5/10 year temporary green-card based on points. * Points for education level MS/PhD, * Salary indexed to COL, * Job location (Kansas earns higher points vs SF), * some points for scholarly merit (patents, peer-reviewed publications) and so on... This would address the some legitimate concerns of US workers, make the process transparent and orderly, but also keep the tech economy rolling. The current system is asinine and needs serious reform. This is one of the greatest things the US has - immigrant entrepreneurs == entrepreneur^2 - and would be foolish to shut it down.

dotcommand 5y ago
Isn't H1-B a program for foreign workers, not entrepreneurs? Everything you listed (education,salary,job location,etc) has to do with workers, not entrepreneurs.
- phenkdo 5y ago
  Actually there's quit a bit of overlap, many H1bs go onto start companies, some apply for an h1b through their own startup. Either way the immigrant entrepreneur almost universally say they find the US just "liberating" (compared to say India).
908B64B197 5y ago
Careful with the Canadian system: it never actually checks for employability. The degree doesn't have to be recognized for it to be counted in the score. That's how you end up with "Engineers" driving taxis that are incapable of passing the PE exam (they are free to enroll, but would have to re-take pretty much the whole degree to have a shot at passing it).
zaptheimpaler 5y ago
Interesting point from the paper: > the average age for when immigrant founders got their social security number is close to 26 years old,which is a rough proxy for when these immigrants entered the United States. On the other hand, the average age at founding a VC-backed company is 49 years old, which indicates that the majority of founders, even in the latter part of the sample,likely immigrated to the United States before 2004

ArkanExplorer 5y ago

The Anglosphere is awash with these kind of visas and universities. The ultimate outcome is to enrich University executives, drive down the quality of education (due to rampant cheating, overlooked when the students are paying customers), and to flood the local economy with cheap labour - typically young men from countries with gender imbalances. If the USA wants to attract immigrant entrepreneurs the simplest way to do it is to enact open borders agreements with other high-HDI countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev... And secondly to ensure gender equality and diversity at the underlying intake level by mandating a maximum 49% males from any one country, and a maximum 10% of the total from any one country.