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CONTRADICTORY REPORTS ON IMMIGRATION RELEASED
Two reports on immigration were released this week and each report reached widely differing conclusions on the impact of immigration.  One of the reports was issued by Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a San Francisco Bay area group comprised of business and community leaders.  The other report was issued by the Center for Immigration Studies, well known for its advocacy of immigration reform.
The Center for Immigration Studies report was prompted by the group’s belief that the stories of immigrant success are largely anecdotal and are not an indicator of how well immigrants are really faring.  The information gathered showed that it is no longer the case that immigrants are more entrepreneurial than native-born Americans.  According to their numbers, in 1960 13.8% of immigrants owned their own business, while only 9.6% native-born American did.  By 1997, the numbers had equalized, with 11.3% of immigrants and 11.8% of native-born Americans owning their own business. 
The Center study cited three primary reasons for the change.  First, the longer a person has been in the US, the more likely they are to start a business.  Because immigrants today have often been in the US for only short period of time, less entrepreneurship is to be expected.  Second, more immigrants today do not have a high school diploma – 28%, contrasted with only 8% of the native-born population.  This report, however, does not cite the fact that a larger percentage of immigrants have a bachelor’s degree or higher than among the native-born.  The Center’s final reason for their statistics is increased immigration from countries that do not have a strong entrepreneurial tradition.
The Joint Venture Silicon Valley report, which has been released in each of the past seven years, does not address only immigration, but details the overall conditions in the valley.  According to information presented in the report, immigration has had a significant impact on the demographics of the region.  For example, people who consider themselves white are only 49% of the population, a number that is even lower in the area’s schools, where the population is 39% white, 31% Hispanic, 26% Asian/Pacific Islander, 4% African-American, and 0.2% Native American. 
According to AnnaLee Saxenian, one of the advisors on the Joint Venture report, attributes the changing demographics to a combination of traditional patterns of immigration and the immigration of skilled, high-tech workers.