Land of Hope and Technology February 2016 | Page 8

ISSUE 1

Immigration and
multiculturalism.
Don’t close the
borders!
Setting aside the contribution of immigrants
to university generated research, consider
this stat alone: no less than 40 per cent
of Fortune 500 companies were setup by
immigrants. In the UK, one in seven new
companies is set up by an immigrant. Take
as an example, Steve Jobs, his father
migrated to the United States from Syria.

Immigrants are by their very nature entrepreneurial
If you find these stats surprising, then frankly
your surprise is a surprise. Immigrants are
by their very nature entrepreneurial – or
at least many of them are. They are more
inclined to take risks, more inclined to accept
potential failure as an inevitable hazard of
creating something new. Maybe it is because
immigrants have less to lose, or maybe it is
because the very nature of people who are
willing to uproot and move, sometimes halfway across the world, makes it more likely
they are entrepreneurially minded.
What many critics of immigration overlook is
that without them, Winston Churchill would
have been motherless, Isambard Kingdom
Brunel would have been fatherless, the
current Queen and Queen Victoria would
have both been husbandless, and for that
matter British classical music may never
have had a father. The man who did more
than anyone to define British classical music,
Handel, may never have moved to these
shores. Throughout its history, the UK has
been defined by immigration, from Romans
to Anglo Saxons, Norman to Vikings, to
refugees fleeing from the French revolution.

If you like eating in Indian restaurants, just be
grateful to Idi Amin, because without his cruel
policy of forcing Uganda’s Asian population
to leave, the eating establishments that the
British have come to love may never have
become so popular.
Associated with immigration is the rise of
multiculturalism, creating dynamic hubs, the
melding of ideas and re-fashioning of them,
cross fertilisation on a scale unique in history.