Some 40% of Fortune 500 firms were founded by immigrants or their children… So were the firms behind seven of the ten most valuable brands in the world. Although the foreign-born are only an eighth of America’s population, a quarter of high-tech start-ups have an immigrant founder (see left-hand chart)… it is worrying that the proportion of start-ups in Silicon Valley founded by immigrants has fallen from 52% to 44% since 2005 … In America as a whole, the proportion has stopped climbing for the first time in decades… America has benefited enormously from immigrants’ resourcefulness and penchant for risk-taking, … But it lets in only 225,000 foreigners with special skills a year. This amounts to less than 0.1% of the total labor force.

~ Economist. From print edition.