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Comment by gingabriska | Hacker News Reader

But it isn't a proof that if the immigrants did not found these companies, someone local wouldn't have found them either.

Maybe it had taken some more time but, locals would have ended up setting up these either way.

A big maybe.

China is an example that screams, immigrants do not matter much for economic success.

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China economy is also an example that doesn’t scream for creativity.

> Maybe it had taken some more time but, locals would have ended up setting up these either way.

We're not talking about some local businesses. These are pretty much global companies with exceptional success. If Alphabet/Google was founded in the EU, it didn't matter how many small competitors would pop out elseware as they are currently.

There are a lot of other differences between America and China that make this a terrible comparison.

Japan, Korea, Germany are also in line and also India (with successful space program without immigrants). There are many countries which are successful without immigrants, some of them are even democracies.

>Japan, Korea, Germany are also in line and also India (with successful space program without immigrants).

This is just plain wrong, in the case of Germany. Germany has a huge immigrant population, and has since WWII when they brought in tons of Turks to be laborers there. There's an enormous Turkish population in Germany, and it's not new. Germany probably would not be where it is now without them.

Japan and Korea don't have many immigrants, it's true, but they were both occupied by the US for some time (and Japan still is, in a way, as is Germany).

80% of Germany is ethnic Germans (including repatriated Germans). No U.S. state is that homogeneous.

20% immigrants is still pretty huge for a European nation.

I hope your not including India in your list as an example of ethnic uniformity, are you even aware of the vast number of different cultures and languages spoken in India? India stands as the original melting pot since ancient times. Oh and it also has the one of the largest immigrant population in the modern world.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/03/india-is-a-...

FWIW, the richest man in Japan is the son of Korean immigrants.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son

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