Immigrants Build America’s Most Valuable Companies

A common narrative from politicians on the right is that immigration is economically disastrous. President Trump has argued that “immigration costs our country billions and billions of dollars each year.” In an interview, Vice President JD Vance went further, arguing that under former President Biden “all net job creation — you heard me right, 100 percent of net job creation under the Biden administration — has gone to the foreign-born.”

Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has called the H-1B visa system “a scam that lets foreign workers fill American jobs.” But despite the fairly consistent narrative on immigration’s economic impacts from elected Republicans, most Americans think immigration has positive economic benefits. And new data continues to bear this out.

Nearly 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies in 2025 (231 out of 500) were founded by immigrants or their children. In fiscal year 2024, “these 231 Fortune 500 companies generated $8.6 trillion in revenue — an amount that, if compared with national GDPs, would rank as the third-largest economy globally.” What’s more, immigrants are founding not just industry giants but also some of the most dynamic and innovative companies, too — startups.

According to an analysis by National Foundation for American Policy, “[i]mmigrants have founded or co-founded 59 percent (455 of 775) of America’s privately held startup companies valued at $1 billion or more.” And even startups that aren’t founded by immigrants often have immigrants in key leadership roles. The analysis found that nearly 80 percent of America’s unicorn companies (privately held, billion-dollar companies) were either founded by an immigrant or have an immigrant in a key leadership role, like vice president of engineering.

Take a specific immigrant population as an example. Indian immigrants to the United States have, alone, founded 96 billion-dollar startups.

Today, there are approximately 3.2 million Indian immigrants in the United States. Tha…