AMERICAN ENTREPRENEURS
By Mickayla Zinsli
Immigrants have played a key role in starting some of America’ s most iconic brands such as Google, eBay, Intel, and Procter & Gamble. Perhaps this is because there is something inherently entrepreneurial about leaving your home and starting a new life in a different country.
When discussing the benefits of the EB-5 program, we focus most of our attention on calculating the dollars invested, jobs created, or even the investment’ s impact on gross domestic product. Certainly, these are all impressive metrics, but maybe we are overlooking the greater impact of welcoming these foreign investors and their families into America.
Throughout history, immigrants have been disproportionally more entrepreneurial than native-born Americans. In 2012, immigrants were almost twice as likely to start a business. 1 Even more impressive is the percentage of Fortune 500 companies founded by immigrants or their children. In 2012, 18 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants. Taking into account the children of immigrants, this number jumps to 40 percent, or 114 companies, on the list.
This is even more surprising given that immigrants have made up only 10.5 percent of the American population on average since 1850. These entrepreneurial ventures and new businesses have made significant impacts on local economies as well as the nation. Considering just Fortune 500 companies, those backed by immigrants or their children employed more than 3.6 million people and had combined revenues of $ 4.2 trillion. 2
This seems to be a highly entrepreneurial group of individuals. One out of ten immigrant workers owns a business( 10 percent) and 620 out of 100,000 immigrants( 0.62 percent) start a business each month, according to the U. S. Small Business Administration. 3 From 2000 to 2016, a total of 55,294 EB-5 visas were issued. 4 Take, for example, the stories of the following EB-5 investors:
Robert Onnes
Originally from New Zealand, EB-5 investor Robert Onnes always had a passion for large-scale art work, making a name for himself as a sculptor in New Zealand. Onnes and his wife, Helen Opie, moved to Detroit, Michigan, permanently in March 2014 and began to realize his vision by investing in and rehabilitating a building in Detroit with a vision to bring back to life a historic factory, formerly known as the Lewis Metal Stamping and Manufacturing Plant. Immigrating to the United States provided the freedom to unleash this passion. The facility now provides 13 artists and sculptors a space to work and build their artistic careers.
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EB5 INVESTORS MAGAZINE