Imagining America without immigrants

Would the United States be a global power without immigrants? If there was no Google, Procter & Gamble, Bank of America, eBay, Apple, Uber, etc., would it still be a powerful economy?

All these companies are unified by an underlying thread. They all were founded or co-founded by immigrants, or their children.

This question is being raised as Trump formally scrapped DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) on 6 September. DACA allowed entry of undocumented immigrants as children into the US.

Although many Americans perceive immigrants as consumers and workers, it is a fact that they were the world’s largest economy’s crucial employers and job creators.

Alexander Graham Bell, an immigrant from Scotland, floated AT&T in 1875, while AP Giannini, a second-generation Italian immigrant, started Bank of Italy in 1904, in San Francisco.  Bank of Italy is now known as Bank of America. Then, Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, the son of a Syrian immigrant and Google’s co-founder, Sergey Brin, is the son of Russian immigrants. The list is endless. And all the aforementioned companies are trailblazers.

According to CNN Money, one estimate states that two out of every five Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their offspring.

A study conducted in 2016 by New American Economy, an advocacy group for immigration reform, stated that American Immigrants or their children employ 18.9 million people globally and have generated revenues of around $4.8 trillion.

In addition to these behemoths, they are also sounders of millions of start-ups in the US as well. In 2014, immigrants generated $65.5 billion through their businesses and there about close to three million Self-Employed Immigrants.

In a nutshell, the US is a country of immigrants is the answer we can derive from the above study, and their story is not yet over.

If you are looking to Migrate to the US, get in touch with Y-Axis, a leading consultancy for immigration services, to apply for a visa.