On June 4, 2019, the Kenan Institute released a timely policy brief, “Immigrant Entrepreneurship: An American Success Story,” on the value of highly skilled and motivated foreign entrepreneurs to the U.S. economy. The brief states, “When looking at the founding of the United States’ largest startups…[t]he immigrant-founded startups employ an average of more than 1,200 workers each, and have collective values of $248 billion.”

This brief follows a March 2019 comprehensive analysis of the EB-5 immigrant investor programs for fiscal years 2014 and 2015. According to the March release,

The study, prepared by Economic & Policy Resources, Inc. (EPR), estimated the economic benefits and job creation contributions of all EB-5 regional center projects that were active in federal fiscal years 2014 and 2015 using the most geographically robust methodology employed to date and a comprehensive EB-5 regional center project activity data set supplied by IIUSA. The study also showed that the regional center program contributed more than $23 billion in labor income to the U.S. economy and resulted in nearly $55 billion—or 3 percent—added to U.S. economic output.

‘Economic activity and job creation effects of this scale represent a call to the EB-5 industry and legislative policymakers to take action,’ said Jeffrey Carr, one of the report’s co-authors and President of EPR. ‘Absent that action, the economic contributions quantified in this study will merely represent “lost opportunity” for the U.S. economy. Tens of billions of future foreign investment dollars and hundreds of thousands of new U.S. job opportunities hang in the balance.’ Robert Chase, Senior Economist at EPR, was the report’s other co-author.

The Kenan Institute brief concludes by encouraging U.S. policies, such as EB-5, to attract global entrepreneurs:

Despite the empirical evidence that high-skilled immigrants contribute significant value to the U.S. economy, major hurdles exist for them to obtain visas that allow for starting new ventures. In the current era of global talent competition, we suggest that there are specific policies that the United States can implement to lower barriers for immigrant entrepreneurs, benefit from high-skilled immigrants and foster associated entrepreneurial economic growth.

For more on EB-5 and job creation, click here.

For more on EB-5 and the economy, click here.