Approximately Fortune 500 Companies Founded By Immigrants Or Their Children

Bringing out the important part played by Immigrant entrepreneurs in US’s economic success story, a new report suggests that nearly 44% companies on the 2022 Fortune 500 list were founded by immigrants or their children.

Immigrants or the children of immigrants, according to Washington, DC-based advocacy group, The American Immigration Council, founded some of the largest and most recognizable American companies, including Apple and Costco.

A Canadian-born stem cell biologist, Derrick J. Rossi, whose parents themselves emigrated from Malta, founded even Moderna, the pharmaceutical company and vaccine producer.

Since its first New American Fortune 500 report in 2011, the Council has found that over 2 out of every 5 Fortune 500 companies had at least one immigrant or child-of-immigrant founder.

This pattern has continued over the years since, the report said noting 43.8%, or 219 companies, in the 2022 Fortune 500 list were founded by immigrants or their children.

Of those companies, 102 were founded directly by foreign-born individuals while another 117 were founded by the children of immigrants.

In fiscal year 2021, the 219 New American companies on the 2022 Fortune 500 list brought in $7.2 trillion in revenue.

To put it in context, that figure is greater than the GDP of many developed countries—including Germany, Japan, and the U.K, the report noted.