Business
In America, Immigrants Really Do Get The Job Done
June 14, 2022
By Michale Blanding
Far from being a drain on the U.S. economy, William Kerr’s research finds immigrants are a driver of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Kerr, the Dimitri V. D’Arbeloff–MBA Class of 1955 Professor of Business Administration, has researched the economic effects of global migration of workers for more than a decade, sometimes partnering with his wife, Sari Pekkala Kerr, an economist, and senior research scientist at Wellesley College, herself an immigrant from Finland.
“IMMIGRANTS AS A GROUP CAN HAVE A DYNAMIC EFFECT ON AN ECONOMY”
Kerr concludes that countries shutting the door on legal immigration are following the wrong approach. Far from being a drain on an economy, immigrants are actually an engine that helps drive innovation and growth—and could even become more vital to global competitiveness in the future.
Highly skilled immigrants are key to prosperity
In his recent working paper with Pekkala Kerr, for example, the researchers combined several databases that survey business owners across the United States. They found that even though foreign-born people make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, immigrant entrepreneurs create some 25 percent of new companies, and that number continues to rise.
Why are immigrants more entrepreneurial?
Researchers aren’t exactly clear on why immigrants are more entrepreneurial, says Kerr.
In their study, Kerr and Pekkala Kerr also found that wages and benefits for jobs created by immigrant-led firms were lower than native-led firms. That gap could reflect that some immigrant startups are family businesses or employ newly arrived immigrants willing to work for less.
Immigrants account for large percentage of patents
Outside immigrant business owners, Kerr’s previous research shows that immigrants contribute to the innovation of larger companies, accounting for roughly a quarter of U.S. patent filings. These contributions are reshaping U.S. invention in dramatic ways.
Kerr notes that certain aspects of the U.S. immigration system have been influential for these tight connections of skilled immigrants to STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) work.
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