In the past fifteen years immigrants have doubled their presence in the market for American entreprenership.
In 2010 29.5% of new entrepreneurs were people born someplace other than the United States, up from a 13.4% foreign-born showing among new entrepreneurs in 1996, according to a new study from the Kauffman Foundation’s Index of Entrepreneurship.
Here’s New York Mayor Bloomberg’s noncommittal statement on the study:
Mayor Bloomberg is quick to come out against anti-immigration measures, but New York is hardly a regulation-free haven friendly for small business growth.
Talented immigrants come to the US by obtaining an H-1B visa. Yet these visas are notoriously difficult to obtain. Application slots routinely fill up on the first day the application is available. The US government will grant 85,000 H-1B visas this year (20,000 of which are reserved for applicants who have completed master’s degrees in the US). About 170,000 souls are expected to apply — most of those within an hour of when applications open.
Visa procedure is federal law, not the product of state law. New York’s entrepreneurial culture rich with influence form overseasis particularly hard-hit by tough immigration standards that restrict the number of talented immigrants permitted to make a legal home on our shores.
Yet New York City’s traditional attitude welcoming foreign “poor, yearning to breathe free” has long since ceded to corporate culture unfriendly to small business entrepreneurship. Regulations abound restricting liberty.
From food truck wars to rent-controlled apartments that drive up citywide rental costs; from back-door minimum wage hikes to smoking bans outdoors: New York is not a fertile ground for the growth of liberty.
And New York is only the tip of the iceberg! Other immigrant-rich American cities similarly stifle entrepreneurial growth. Arizona famously keeps trying to pass laws that will allow folks to report people on site for being BIA (Brown in America). Florida is so deep in FEMA flooding bail-outs that it’s difficult for residents to get private flood insurance, and this has slowed real estate sales. And California? California is so busy irrigating its desert to make rice paddies that the state is teetering on bankruptcy.
The purpose of government is to keep the commons from tragedy, but the American federal government and many states have long since grown their own entitlements over demographics’ best interests.
Maybe birtherism (not the bad one) is due for a renaissance. Foreign-born leadership might not be the worst thing for getting government back on the right track.
Follow me on Twitter! @KatCiano
