Forty-two of the richest 400 individuals in the US are immigrants and they have injected billions of dollars into the economy of the country, according to this year’s Forbes 400 list. The combined worth of the 42 immigrants is up to $250 billion. At the top of the list is Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, with an estimated net worth of $37.5 billion.
The prestigious list includes the media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, the New York-based grocery tycoon, John Catsimatidis, the Tesla founder, Elon Musk, and Jan Koum, the creator of WhatsApp. Immigration is a contentious topic for many in the US, particularly with regard to the US economy. While the list may come as a surprise to some, though, the increasing number of successful foreign entrepreneurs is not something that has come out of the blue.
A recent report on entrepreneurship and immigration found that immigrants are 50 percent more likely to be successful business moguls than is the case for native-born Americans. The report also makes the argument that immigrants often benefit from their willingness to take risks, which led them to start afresh in a new country in the first place. This makes them more likely to channel that healthy appetite for taking risks into starting new business ventures.
The Harvard Business Review says that immigrants constitute around 15 percent of the general workforce of the US and around a quarter of all entrepreneurs in the country.