Often anti-immigration groups lecture about immigrants taking jobs away from American employees. Given a recent BusinessWeek.com article, the more appropriate question seems to be: how many American jobs do immigrants create?
The article pointed to two telling stats. First, the article found that when the number of H-1B visas increased, the number of patent applications went up. Conversely, the article noted that when the number of H-1B visas decreased, the number of patent applications went down.
Second, the article pointed out that, over the last decade, more than half of all Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants. Further, those start-ups employed 450,000 workers and had $52 billion in sales during 2005.