Yes, Immigrants Really Are More Likely to Start Businesses — The Data Is Remarkably Consistent
“Research consistently shows immigrants are disproportionately likely to start businesses”
The argument in brief
The claim that immigrants are disproportionately likely to start businesses is true, and it holds up across decades of research. Immigrants make up about 14% of the U.S. population but own 17.5% of all businesses and founded 55% of America's billion-dollar startups. Multiple independent sources — from the Census Bureau to peer-reviewed economics research — all point in the same direction.
Data: American Immigration Council / U.S. Census Bureau, 2021
Why it spread
This claim resonates because it matches a deeply held cultural archetype — the driven immigrant who builds something from nothing. It is also genuinely useful to advocates and politicians across the spectrum, which means it gets repeated often and loudly. Fortunately, in this case, the emotional story and the data actually agree.
The claim is true, and it is one of the better-supported findings in immigration economics. Immigrants start businesses at higher rates than native-born Americans relative to their share of the population, and this pattern shows up consistently whether you are looking at small Main Street shops or Silicon Valley unicorns.
The numbers are striking at every level. The American Immigration Council, drawing on U.S. Census Bureau data, found that immigrants represent 17.5% of all U.S. business owners while making up just 13.6% of the population. The Small Business Administration confirms immigrants are more likely to be self-employed than native-born citizens. These are not cherry-picked figures — they reflect broad ownership patterns across industries and regions.
At the high end of the scale, the National Foundation for American Policy found that as of 2022, immigrants founded 55% of America's billion-dollar startup companies, despite being roughly 14% of the population. That is a massive overrepresentation. Companies like Google, eBay, and Yahoo all had immigrant co-founders.
The most rigorous academic work backs this up too. Economists Robert Fairlie and Magnus Lofstrom, writing for the IZA Institute of Labor Economics in 2015, analyzed multiple large datasets across different time periods and consistently found higher self-employment and business formation rates among immigrants. The Kauffman Foundation, which has tracked entrepreneurship for decades, found immigrants are nearly twice as likely to start a business as native-born Americans.
Researchers point to a likely explanation: immigrants who choose to move to a new country tend to be self-selecting for risk tolerance, ambition, and motivation — traits that also drive entrepreneurship. It is not that immigration itself creates entrepreneurs, but that people willing to uproot their lives for opportunity may be the same people willing to build something from scratch.
This claim spreads easily because it is true, but also because it fits a powerful cultural story. That combination means it sometimes gets cited without nuance — for instance, high startup rates do not automatically mean all immigrant-owned businesses thrive, or that immigration policy has no tradeoffs. The core finding, though, is solid.
Sources
- National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), 2022
Immigrants founded 55% of America's billion-dollar startup companies (unicorns) as of 2022, despite being roughly 14% of the U.S. population.
- Kauffman Foundation, 2012 and subsequent reports
Immigrants are nearly twice as likely to start businesses as native-born Americans, with immigrant entrepreneurship rates consistently higher across multiple Kauffman studies spanning decades.
- Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Advocacy
Immigrants are more likely to be self-employed than native-born citizens and represent a disproportionate share of small business owners relative to their share of the population.
- Stanford Graduate School of Business / Fairlie & Lofstrom (2015), IZA Discussion Paper
Peer-reviewed analysis by economists Robert Fairlie and Magnus Lofstrom found immigrants have higher self-employment and business formation rates than native-born workers across multiple datasets and time periods.
- American Immigration Council, 2021
Immigrants make up 17.5% of all business owners in the U.S. while comprising about 13.6% of the population, confirming disproportionate representation in entrepreneurship.
- U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey 2021
Census data show immigrant-owned businesses employ millions of workers and generate hundreds of billions in revenue, with immigrants overrepresented among business owners relative to population share.