In 2022, 92 American citizens born abroad made it to the annual Forbes Billionaires list. That is, 13% of the 735 American citizens on the list are immigrants.
With a combined net worth of $711 billion, these foreign-born American citizens represent 15% of all the wealth of American billionaires. And they built their fortunes on their own – 92% of them started from scratch, compared to 71% of the 628 billionaires born in the United States.
These immigrants come from 35 different countries and all continents except Antarctica. The richest person in the world, Elon Musk, of Tesla and SpaceX ($219 billion), is one of three people born in South Africa. Five others come from other parts of Africa, including Tope Awotona ($1.4 billion), founder and CEO of the scheduling software company Calendly. At 12 years old in Lagos, Nigeria, Awotona witnessed his father being shot and killed in a carjacking. Three years later, he and his family moved to Atlanta, Georgia.
Other newcomers to the billionaires list include mobile gaming guru Adam Foroughi of AppLovin ($1.3 billion), who was born in Iran a year after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and Jordanian magnate Ramzi Musallam ($4 billion), from the private equity sector.
But it is Israel that provided the most immigrants to this year’s list, adding ten names in total, including brothers Tom and Alec Gores ($6 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively), who stocked shelves in their father’s grocery store in Flint, Michigan, before becoming major players in private equity. Oracle CEO Safra Catz ($1.5 billion), also born in Israel, is one of the 10 immigrant women with billionaire fortunes.
Eight billionaires were born in Canada, including real estate icon Mortimer Zuckerman ($3 billion), the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants who settled in Montreal.
China and India are also among the top contributors to the list, with seven new billionaires each.
In total, nearly half (41) of the foreign-born billionaires derived their wealth from technology. The finance and investment industry comes in a distant second, with 16 immigrant billionaires. In fact, Silicon Valley has become so reliant on immigrant entrepreneurs that prominent local residents have begun seeking a less political term for immigration.
“We shouldn’t call the highly skilled workforce that comes here immigration,” said venture capitalist and investor Jason Calacanis in a recent episode of the podcast “All-In.” “We should swap that for talent acquisition. We should look at it as, ‘America is trying to bring in more talent so we can win among the most important industries.’”
With Forbes