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TheView Immigration

We do not come to

America empty-handed

By Suketu Mehta

AmericA hAs succeeded, And Achieved iTs presenT
position of global dominance, because it has always been good
at importing the talent it needs.
Immigrants are 14% of the U.S. population, but they started
a quarter of all new businesses and earned over a third of all
the Nobel Prizes in science given to those affiliated with U.S.
universities. One of four U.S. tech companies established
from 1995 to 2005 had an immigrant founder, CEO, president
or chief technology officer, and by one analysis about 71%
of Silicon Valley tech workers are immigrants. The numbers
are even more impressive at the top: of the 25 biggest public
tech companies in 2013, 60% were founded by immigrants
or their children, such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, son of a Syrian
immigrant, and Google’s Sergey Brin, who came from Russia
at the age of 6.
In 2008, Bill Gates stated before Congress that for every
tech worker the country lets in, five American jobs are created.
Over half of all billion- dollar tech startups have an immigrant
founder. Today they employ half a million
Americans. Immigrants or their children
For founded 43% of the 2017 Fortune 500
immigrants, companies, which employed more than
the family 12 million people worldwide in 2016.
isn’t a To shut off this incredible well-
chain. It’s a spring of talent would be to cut off
safety net America’s brain to spite its muscles. △ 80% of the benefits you’re entitled to.
Because that talent has an increasing Newly sworn-in One way this financial Armageddon
number of countries vying to get it to U.S. citizens can be averted, according to a report by
come to their shores. on Jan. 22 in the trustees of the Social Security Ad-
As the populations of developed countries get older, they Lowell, Mass. ministration, is to increase immigration,
need the vigor of immigrants all the more, because they are illegal as well as legal. Because immigrant
young. Immigrants in the U.S. are some 14% of the popula- workers are younger, they will work lon-
tion but constitute 16.9% of the workforce, and these work- ger and pay more into the system. Ac-
ers are younger than native-born workers. Half of Americans cording to a 2013 projection, immigrants,
are over 40, and the U.S. will become a nation of geezers as the both legal and illegal, will contribute half
baby boomers retire. And most immigrants don’t come here a trillion dollars into the Social Security
with their parents, so their Social Security taxes go toward pay- trust fund over the following 25 years.
ing for others’ parents. Immigrants also have more children Over the following 75 years, they will
than the native-born, so their children will continue subsidiz- contribute at an even faster rate, for an
ing both the graying native-born and their increasingly less estimated total of $4 trillion.
fecund children.
Americans are retiring in larger numbers, and they’re living Much of this Money will dispropor-
longer. In 1960, there were about five workers paying Social tionately benefit the native-born. Most
Security taxes for every retiree or disabled person receiving undocumented immigrants pay into the
benefits; by 2013, there were fewer than three. And Americans system but are ineligible for most bene-
aren’t making enough babies. In 2018, the U.S. fertility rate fits. According to the Social Security Ad-
fell for the fourth straight year, to 1.7 babies per woman; the ministration, undocumented immigrants
replacement rate is 2.1. paid $13 billion in payroll taxes in 2010 JOSEPH PREZIOSO — AF P/GET T Y IMAGES
Starting next year, the Social Security Administration will and received only $1 billion in benefits.
spend more money than it collects. By 2035, its $2.9 trillion Immigration reduces the Social
reserves will be completely gone, and the Administration Security deficit by hundreds of billions
will only have enough money coming in to pay you of dollars; the greater the number of

28 Time June 3–10, 2019