Preventing Silicon Valley's 'Immigrant Exodus'

A new study from the Kauffman Foundation shows that the number of immigrant entrepreneurs in the United States has fallen slightly. But according to Vivek Wadhwa, an author of the study, the drop is especially steep in Silicon Valley, long a magnet for the brightest and most ambitious minds from around the world.

From 1995 to 2005, immigrants founded 52 percent of the startups in Silicon Valley. The updated research shows that since 2005, that dropped to 44 percent. Wadhwa joins NPR's Renee Montagne to discuss his findings.

On the reason for the drop in immigrant entrepreneurs in the past seven years

"Well, the No. 1 reason is because we won't give the foreign people who are already here visas to start companies. My research has also documented that there were 1 million skilled immigrants waiting for green cards, for permanent resident visas. And we had predicted if we don't fix the immigration system, they'd start leaving. Now this is in 2007, when we had published that research. Well guess what? They're leaving", according to a report in npr.  >>More here

SOURCE:  npr.org