I see the similar dynamics between American citizens and immigrant workers. Immigrants, in general, are more risk-averse. They do not want to lose a work visa or to disrupt the green card process. As a result, they become yes-men and avoid challenging and unsolicited projects. Of course, it is not always the case, but I feel that in general Americans have some psychological advantage in career advancement.
It's more subtle than that. Let's say you get 100 risk points to spend. An American might say, I'll spend 75 points on setting up my own business. An immigrant would say, I've already spent 50 risk points on coming to America, I don't have 75 to spare.
I agree. I think that immigration itself is a risky undertaking. One has to abandon everything familiar, which is by no means easy, regardless the difficult circumstances. Besides, all the rich kids in the US today we are discussing and capitalists are the descendants of immigrants.
I would not say that immigrants are risk-averse, but I think that obtaining a visa or green card mainly keep them from entrepreneurial ventures. Or maybe language barriers.
Actually my experience growing up in NYC (and this may be an outlier, but I see it elsewhere) is that immigrants are more likely to be entrepreneurial because traditional employment is off limits due to language, cultural, and educational barriers–and sometimes outright discrimination. That's why there are New York archetypes of Korean green grocers, Chinese dry cleaners, Greek diner owners, etc (albeit these are rapidly shifting). The large number of Jewish-owned businesses in NY speaks to the historical discrimination against Jews (and not just some stereotypical belief about business acumen). Not exactly social networking and cloud computing, but entrepreneurship nonetheless.
It really depends on where the immigrants come from and what their values are. I've read that Chinese immigrants out-earn their US-born counterparts. Second generation Chinese do even better. It wouldn't surprise me if this were also true of Indians, Koreans and a slew of other nationalities, too.
