Why blocking immigrant entrepreneurs is an act of American economic self-harm

An entrepreneurship expert at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School, Neri Karra Sillaman is the author of ‘Pioneers: 8 Principles of Business Longevity from Immigrant Entrepreneurs’, published last year. In the book, she explores the positive impact that foreign-born entrepreneurs have had on global business. Here, she explains why the Trump administration’s visa ban on 75 countries – effective since January 2026 – will damage the US economy.

Immigrant success stories define the American Dream, so it’s disappointing that the US is now leading the backlash against one of the most beneficial economic trends of our time. That backlash has been evident throughout the presidencies of Donald Trump, himself the son of an immigrant who fled poverty. But it reached new heights on 14 January when the US State Department announced that it would pause visa processing from 75 countries that together constitute nearly 40 per cent of the planet’s population. The reason given for this decision was that nationals from these places “take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates” – and that this would only end if the government can ensure that “new immigrants will not extract wealth” from the US.

The political opposition to immigration is very real. Yet it has come at a time of stagnant growth, when the evidence of the positive economic contributions made by the movement of people is getting stronger. Not only does research show that immigrants in the US claim less welfare per capita than native-born Americans but foreign-born entrepreneurs are also major contributors to wealth creation.

According to the latest statistics, though first- or second-generation immigrants only make up about 27 per cent of the US population, this group has founded more than 46 per cent of the companies on the Fortune 500 list. Those companies employ more than 15.4 million people worldwide and generated $8.6trn (€7.3trn) in revenue in 2024 – a figure higher than the GDP of any country bar the US and China.

Outside the Fortune 500 companies, 80 per cent of billion-dollar start-ups have an immigrant founder or senior leader. Meanwhile, companies founded by someone who moved to a country generally grow faster and last longer than those of non-immigrants. My latest book, Pioneers, attempts to find out what lies behind those statistics by asking why those who put down roots somewhere new tend to be so successful in business, and what lessons we can learn from that.

I explored the stories of some of the most prominent examples of modern times, including many who come from those countries named in January’s ban. Though I’m an immigrant businesswoman myself, what I discovered surprised me. These entrepreneurs achieve success by going against conventional wisdom and offer strategies from which everyone can learn.

For example, while MBA students are typically advised to look outwards to spot gaps in the market, immigrant entrepreneurs tend to look inwards to create businesses rooted in their identities or experiences. Take Jan Koum, a Ukrainian immigrant whose experience of surveillance in the USSR and annoyance at the high cost of calling home from the US led him to create a fully encrypted and free communication platform: Whatsapp.

Immigrant entrepreneurs are also often good at building networks that help them to achieve their goals. Consider Hamdi Ulukaya, a Kurd from Turkey who turned a disused factory in New York state into the multi-billion-dollar food company Chobani. Ulukaya achieved his success by recruiting from the local community, integrating refugees into his workforce and rewarding his staff by giving them a 10 per cent stake in the business.

As Ulukaya’s story suggests, immigrant entrepreneurs’ success can also be attributed to their tendency to place purpose above profit. In Pioneers, I tell the story of Luis von Ahn, the computer scientist whose dream of democratising education led him to create the world’s top learning app, Duolingo. Von Ahn was born and brought up in Guatemala, one of the 75 countries whose nationals can no longer obtain immigrant visas for the US. Had that ruling been in place in 2000, when Von Ahn moved there, the US and the world would likely have been deprived of his invention.

We’ll never know what companies the US will miss out on if the new ban on visa-processing persists, nor how much wealth it will extract from the American people. But if the country continues to repudiate immigration, which made it great, it will create many opportunities for other states. Governments that are brave enough to stand up to the backlash can position themselves to attract the sort of entrepreneurial talent that has been proven to drive world-changing innovation, large-scale job creation and long-term growth.