Any scan of the business pages will reveal anecdotally that foreign-born scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs are playing an important role in our high-technology economy. A Duke University study released yesterday on ”America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs” confirms that fact.

Conducted by a team of researchers at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, the study surveyed thousands of U.S. high-tech companies and examined a decade of patent records. The study found that:

• One-quarter of all engineering and technology companies launched between 1995 and 2005 had at least one key founder who was foreign-born. Those companies with at least one immigrant co-founder produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers in 2005.
• India was the most common home country among the foreign-born entrepreneurs, followed by the United Kingdom, China, Taiwan, and Japan. Most of the immigrant-founded companies were in the software and innovation/manufacturing services sectors.  
• Foreign nationals living in the United States were listed as inventors or co-inventors on almost a quarter of the patents filed from the United States in 2005.

Many members of Congress worry that the United States may be losing its edge in high technology industries. Yet the same Congress maintains a cap of 65,000 on H1-B visas that allow highly skilled immigrants to live and work in the United States, a cap that falls far below the actual needs of our nation’s resurgent high-tech sector.

The Duke study shows clearly why Congress should raise the cap — unless congressional leaders believe America already has too many high-tech companies and patents too many new inventions.