Well-educated immigrants are biggest innovators in US tech - CNET

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump may be wrong about one part of what makes America great. According to a recent study, more than a third of technological innovation in this country comes from people bo outside the US.

A Washington, DC-based think tank surveyed more than 900 individuals who have won prestigious awards or have been awarded inteational patents expected to make significant economic impact. It found that 35.5 percent of them were immigrants. That far exceeds the proportion of first-generation immigrants in the US population, which stands at about 13.5 percent, according to the report published Wednesday by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

The findings come during an election cycle where presidential candidates such as Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz have demonized "illegal immigrants" and pushed hard against immigration reform. Both Cruz and Trump have been critical of the H1B visa program that helps tech workers from outside the US fill positions at American companies. These findings call into question those assumptions and show how important immigration is to growing the US economy and pushing technology innovation to new heights.

The findings also help shatter the romantic myth in Silicon Valley that cocky college dropouts at brash startups are fueling technology innovation in this country.

"People may think technological innovation is driven by precocious college dropouts at startup companies, like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg," Adams Nager, ITIF economic policy analyst and the study's lead author, said in a statement. "In reality, America's innovators are far more likely to be immigrants with advanced degrees who have paid their dues through years of work in large companies."