“Studies have shown that the children of immigrants tend to be sources of innovation and growth in an economy [emphasis added]:
When immigrants arrive, they not only fill gaps in the work force but pay taxes and spend money on housing, transport and consumer goods. Productive capacity increases and there is a ripple effect across the economy. And studies show that their offspring tend to be among the country’s best-educated and initiative-taking young people.
Forbes magazine reported that an astounding 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. The 40% figure is especially astounding when you consider that the foreign born population of the United States has been steady at 10.5% since 1850. Bloomberg highlighted a report that showed the inventiveness of immigrants:
‘[P]olicy makers should flag a recent study that found more than three-quarters of patents from America’s top ten patent-producing universities, including MIT, Stanford, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, were the result of breakthroughs by immigrants. Those universities produced 1,466 patents—a fraction of the total awarded—but many were in such cutting-edge fields as information technology and molecular biology.’,
http://www.dailymarkets.com/stock/2012/07/04/america%E2%80%99s-trente-glorieuses/