Tech as We Know It Would Not Exist Without Immigrants | Hacker News Reader

Tech as We Know It Would Not Exist Without Immigrants

wired.com

3 pointspencilpup2235 comments

> Big name founders, from eBay’s Pierre Omidyar to Elon Musk, are immigrants. If you count the first-generation offspring of immigrants, the number grows.

We should actually calculate the ratio of immigrants vs total population and compare it with the ratio of immigrant founders vs total founders. But it's something the article doesn't bother doing.

Obviously, if comparison was found to be not in favour of immigrants, I would expect a barrage of excuses, like "They didn't have had access to certain privileges! How can you expect them to have success at the same rate!", which defies the point of this article.

> Innovation is bred when diverse viewpoints intersect, and that only happens if you can get all of those diverse ideas in the room

only? We are now at the point where there can be innovation ONLY if there is diversity? :D

(Note that's entirely possible that the ratio is in favour of immigrants. But the article doesn't give any number).

Frankly I am quite fed-up with the 'diversity propaganda' that we are force-fed every day, however I have to recon that North-Korea which is probably the least diverse country on earth, is not exactly booming with cool and novel ideas ;-)

The problem I see with 'immigrants enthusiasts' is that they choose to focus only on a few successful examples and ignore the bad apples. Even if we don't speak about terrorism, yesterday the OCDE published a report that say only one in six immigrants come in France for work.

> North-Korea which is probably the least diverse country on earth

yet correlation !== causation. You will find that it's not exactly booming with cool ideas most likely because it's a brutal socialist dictatorship gone bad (but is there one that's gone well?)

I remember when the National Foundation for American Policy research came out that someone here worked out the numbers.

Ahh, here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11310031

"about 60/215.5 = 28% of founders are immigrants" while "immigrants make up about 13% of the US population".

As I recall, some of the companies were started in the US to get access to US-based funding, that is, the founders were all from another country, moved to the US for the company, but are not immigrants in the sense of staying here for the long term.

If my memory is right, this would skew the numbers higher.

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