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>Is Garrett Camp an immigrant? Sure sounds like it. But is that really in the spirit of "founded by immigrants"?

Yes, Garrett Camp is an immigrant. He just happens to be white and from Canada and is thus perceived less as "those other people" and more "American" because he blends in. If he came from Sudan would you consider him to be "more of an immigrant"? Your own comment implies this bias even if you didn't mean for it to sound that way.

>Your own comment implies this bias even if you didn't mean for it to sound that way.

I see your point, but I disagree in this situation. If there was no context around the discussion, you'd be exactly right. But there is context, and the context is the immigration ban put in place by the president. That immigration ban excludes people from specific countries. This article was very obviously written to show how important immigration is as a way to counter the reasoning that bore the immigration ban, but I feel it cheapens the point when you include immigrants who are not part of the ban.

Basically, if the point of the article was just "immigrants are good", then yes, you're right. But since the point of the article is "this immigration ban is bad!", it makes sense to restrict the discussion to people from countries actually listed on the ban.

To put it another way, what if the article mentioned Canadian immigrants, South African immigrants, German immigrants, British immigrants.... but no Iranians? No Syrians. No Iraqis. The conclusion of the article could then be portrayed as "see? muslim immigrants don't do anything useful anyway! ban them!" For every immigrant you put in the article that isn't affected by the ban, the case for the ban becomes stronger. That's why I think we should limit our conversation to the context implied by the article's conclusion.

> But there is context, and the context is the immigration ban put in place by the president.

Yes, your point only makes sense if the context of the immigration topic was limited to a travel ban in the countries that the Trump administration is currently focused on. But there is an even larger context of this administration's statements regarding immigration. If you are looking to apply larger contexts then keep in mind Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions' statements regarding immigration:

-- Steve Bannon: "When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think... A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society." (He dislikes Asian executives in SV).

-- Steve Bannon: "Don’t we have a problem with legal immigration? Twenty percent of this country is immigrants. Is that not the beating heart of this problem?" (He dislikes legal immigration from any country, not just muslim majority countries).

-- Jeff Sessions: "The H-1B program is a “tremendous threat” to American professionals." (He wishes to curb visa programs for highly educated and professional immigrants).

At the end of the day, an immigrant is an immigrant. If Steve Bannon or yourself are accepting Canadian and South African immigrants' contributions, but wish to isolate those contributions from those of Sudanese, Muslim or Asian immigrants then there is a deeper bias problem that must be talked about. The current travel ban might be of 6 muslim majority countries, but you cannot ignore the very real statements by the Trump administration about their intention to stop legal immigration from as many sources as possible.

When you keep that context in mind, it makes less sense to add nuance to the situation and start isolating contributions of immigrants based on the countries they are from.

Agreed.

It's like No True Scotsman fallacy but applied in converse in terms of "true immigrant".

Camp is an immigrant. Case closed.

> I feel the inclusion of people like Camp and Musk hurts the point the story is trying to make.

I think the point of the article still stands. The current immigration ban is limited to a handful of countries, but xenophobic bigotry generally extends towards anyone not born in the US.

You think immigrants smart enough to co-found a billion dollar startup want to come to a country that hates the idea of immigration so much they want to build a wall they know won't work?

Considering the amount of people who are against the idea of building an expensive US/Mexian wall in the US, even among people on the right (for financial, efficacy, etc reasons), I doubt immigrants would expect life to be much different in the US. Besides maybe Mexican immigrants who may join communities affected by policies limiting illegal immigration at the southern border.

At least from a cultural perspective for the majority of legal immigrants I'm sure day-to-day life isn't much different than before the wall plan. There are still more than enough good people in the US. Especially in urban areas where most immigrants end up.

As someone who has applied for an American Visa, my main concern would be more about the available Visas suddenly changing after I've established a life there. The process is quite complicated and stressful, and the T1 visa was the most common one for my type of work. For T1 you had to get it renewed each year.

That was a concern even in a pre-Trump US. The immigration policies there definitely need some work. And have for a long time. I was happy to see Trump saying he was looking at Canada's immigration policy (where I'm from) as a good example.

It will always be stressful for legal immigrants when the immigration policies are currently in political flux.

I agree. My first instinct when reading the headline, sadly, is not to first find merit in the argument begin made but to question the true motivation for the argument being made.

The headline itself is somewhat disingenuous. It might as well read "51% of people who aggressively seek opportunity are highly successful." Now just swap out 'people' with 'immigrant' and use it to veil the actual motive. ... Disingenuous indeed.

A better way to make the argument would be to identify what these successful immigrants have in common and suggest that these attributes might be good filters for permitting immigration. But I suspect that the results would not validate the author's true motivations.