Research suggests link between the arrival of immigrants in a region and the region's subsequent economic growth through entrepreneurial activity. Yet, a gap remains in our understanding of whether higher rates of immigration might impact regional entrepreneurship by also boosting the quality of the region's entrepreneurship. We leverage country-wide publicly available administrative data of immigrants migrating to the United States on H-1B and H-2B visas to find that the arrival of high-skilled immigrants through new H-1B visas increases regional entrepreneurship. A doubling of immigrants is associated with an increase of 6% in the three-year quality-adjusted entrepreneurship at the city (CBSA) level and 5.8% at the neighborhood (ZIP Code) level. In contrast, continuing H-1Bs and the arrival of unskilled immigrants (H-2Bs) largely do not increase regional entrepreneurship. The effect of immigrants is concentrated in increasing the quality, rather than the quantity, of startups. Heterogeneity analyses suggest the effect is sensitive to the concentration of immigrant enclaves, but not to the overall income or education of the receiving region.
