A new non-partisan study on entrepreneurship gives some credence to the tech industry’s stance that American innovation benefits from robust immigration.

The study from the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-partisan think tank based in Arlington, Va., shows that immigrants started more than half of the current crop of U.S.-based startups valued at $1 billion or more.

These 44 companies, the study says, are collectively valued at $168 billion and create an average of roughly 760 jobs per company in the U.S. The study also estimates that immigrants make up over 70% of key management or product development positions at these companies.

The foundation examined 87 U.S. companies valued at $1 billion or more as of Jan. 1, as tracked by the Journal’s Billion Dollar Startup Club. The authors of the study used public data and information from the companies to create biographies of the founders.

The three highest valued U.S. companies with immigrant founders include car-hailing service Uber Technologies Inc., data-software company Palantir Technologies Inc. and rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Inc.

Stuart Anderson, the study’s author and the foundation’s executive director, says the findings show that the U.S. economy could benefit from the talents of foreign-born entrepreneurs even more so if it were easier for them to obtain visas.

Tech leaders including Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates have called for increasing the number of H-1B visas that let skilled foreign workers stay in the country. They argue that immigration greatly benefits the tech community, and that it is difficult for companies to hire foreign-born workers and for immigrant entrepreneurs to start businesses due to the visas’ constraints.

Critics argue that tech executives are simply looking for cheaper labor, and some politicians, as well as Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, aim to curb the work visa program. A bill introduced by Republican presidential candidate and Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) in December that the lawmakers say aims to reform the H-1B visa program would require petitioners to hold an advanced university degree, have worked at least 10 years overseas and not get paid materially less than U.S. workers.

Either way, the process to secure a visa is lengthy and cumbersome. The visas are capped at 85,000 per year — 65,000 are set aside for foreign workers applying for the first time and 20,000 are for foreign students graduating from American universities. In 2015, the lottery to obtain a visa hit capacity within one week, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The USCIS said it received nearly 233,000 H-1B petitions during the filing period.

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The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which funded the study, estimated the EB-JOBS Act provision would create 1 million to 3.2 million jobs over 10 years.

According to the study, founders of billion-dollar startups most often hail from India (14), followed by Canada and the U.K., with eight each, then Israel (7) and Germany (4). Two originated from France and the Collison brothers, the co-founders of payments startup Stripe, make up the pair from Ireland.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/03/17/study-immigrants-founded-51-...

Pakistanis Make Up Silicon Valley's Largest Foreign-Born Muslim Group

There are 35,000 Pakistani-born Muslims in San Francisco Bay Area,  or 14% of the 250,000 Muslims who call the Bay Area home, according to the study. Bay Area Muslim community constitutes 3.5 percent of the area’s total population and is one of the highest concentrations of Muslims in the country.

As of 2013, South Asian Muslims, including Pakistanis, have the highest income levels, with nearly half (49%) of them having a household income above $100,000. In comparison, those groups with the lowest proportion of household incomes above $100,000 were Hispanic Muslims (15%), Afghans (10%), and African American Muslims (10%).

http://www.riazhaq.com/2016/05/pakistanis-make-up-silicon-valleys.html

2022 Inventor of the Year: (Pakistani-American UET Lahore Alum) Tahir Ghani Keeps Moore’s Law Alive
Often called ‘Mr. Transistor,’ Tahir Ghani has filed more than 1,000 patents and introduced some of Intel’s most revolutionary changes in transistors over his 28-year career.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/inventor-of-y...


Today’s computer chips feature billions of transistors on a square of silicon about the size of your thumbnail.

By 2030, Intel aims to increase that number to about a trillion.

Tahir Ghani, Intel senior fellow and director of process pathfinding in Intel’s Technology Development Group, is behind those plans.

In his 28-year career at Intel, Tahir has filed more than 1,000 patents and led teams responsible for some of the most revolutionary changes in transistors. Innovations from his teams include strained silicon, High-K metal gate, FinFet transistors and, most recently, RibbonFET transistors.

For his accomplishments, Tahir is honored as Intel’s 2022 Inventor of the Year.

“For his entire nearly 30-year career, Tahir has role-modeled this relentless commitment to technology innovation in pursuit of Moore’s Law,” says Sanjay Natarajan, Intel senior vice president and co-GM of Logic Technology Development. “His contribution to semiconductor technology is enormous, and I am proud to call him one of the industry’s greatest inventors.”

While many experts in industry and academia have predicted the demise of Moore’s Law, Tahir says Intel has new ideas that keep it alive.

“It won’t die on my watch,” says Tahir, who works at Intel’s Gordon Moore Park campus in Hillsboro, Oregon. “Moore’s Law only stops when innovation stops.”

Watch “In My Own Words” as Tahir talks about his job and what it means to keep Moore’s Law alive.