Immigrant Entrepreneurs Found Companies, File Patents, and Generate Fiscal Surplus

Kam Ghaffarian, born in Iran, arrived in the United States on a student visa in 1976 and became a citizen in 1983. He later founded six companies that together employ about 3,500 people, including Intuitive Machines, which landed an unmanned spacecraft on the lunar south pole in 2024, and Axiom Space, which is developing a commercial space station.

On April 24, Ghaffarian rang the Nasdaq opening bell for the public listing of X-Energy, a small nuclear reactor company he started in Maryland in 2009. It was his second company to go public after Intuitive Machines in 2023.

Immigration and Economic Data U.S.

Census Bureau figures show 50 million residents, or 15 percent of the population, were born abroad as of the most recent count. Mexico accounts for 11.1 million of those residents, followed by India with 3.2 million and China with 2.6 million. Citi Research calculated that U.S. economic growth between 1990 and 2016 would have been 15 percentage points lower without migration.

The Cato Institute reported that immigrants generated a $14.5 trillion cumulative fiscal surplus, in 2024 dollars, from 1994 to 2023.

Foreign-born residents hold one in four U.S. patents, according to Deloitte Insights. There are 189 foreign-born billionaires in the United States with a combined net worth of $2.4 trillion; the companies they founded or lead employ more than one million people.

Amjad Masad, born in Jordan, moved to the United States in 2012 and co-founded Replit, which reached a $9 billion valuation in March. Shahid Khan, born in Pakistan, arrived nearly 60 years ago and built a fortune in automotive parts manufacturing. Noubar Afeyan, born in Lebanon, co-founded Moderna in 2010 after receiving more than 100 patents.