[svnt]

First generation immigrants are still a tiny minority of the population. The fact that the entire team consists effectively of first generation immigrants says something, probably both about higher education and American culture.

[cameldrv]

One thing is that getting a PhD is a good way to get into the U.S. As a foreigner, many visa and job opportunities open up to you with the PhD.

For an American, it's less of a good deal. Once you have the PhD, you make somewhat more money, but you're trading that for 6 years of hard work and very low pay. The numbers aren't favorable -- you have to love the topic for it to make any sense.

As a result, U.S. PhD programs are heavily foreign born.

[sharadov]

A PHD is a faster path to a green card as well - especially for people born in China and India where the green card backlog is decades long.

[dragonwriter]

> First generation immigrants are still a tiny minority of the population.

About 1/8 of the US population is foreign-born, which is a minority but not a tiny one. In California, its over a quarter.

[pixl97]

I think you have completely the wrong takeaway here...

The US population is around 330 million. The world population is 8.1 billion people. What is that 4%? If you took a random sampling of people around the world, none of them would be Americans. You're going to need a lot more samples to find a trend.

Yet when you turn around and look at success stories, a huge portion of this is going to occur in the US for multiple reasons, especially for the ability to attract intelligence from other parts of the globe and make it wealthy here.

[svnt]

I understand, but reality has to factor in — to get representative you would have to narrow your sample to English-speaking, narrow it to legal for long-term employment in the US, narrow it to having received at least an American-level higher education…

[0xcafecafe]

Isn't some of it have to do with it being a self selecting sample? If you come to America to study, you were a good student in your resident country leading to more chances of success than the average local citizen. Their children might be smarter on average. Alternatively if you are coming fleeing persecutions you are enterprising enough to set up something for your children. That hard work inculcates a sort of work ethic in such children which in turn sets them up for success. Speaking from experience as an immigrant myself.

[svnt]

I think all those are true, but if so the percentages of first-generation immigrants should increase as you ascend the educational pyramid. I believe it does from undergrad to Phd, but not from general population to higher education, so clearly there are at least two very different worlds.

There is a motivation that comes with both trying to make it and being cognizant of the relative opportunity that is absent in the second-generation and beyond.

There are also many advantages given to students outside the majority. When those advantages land not on the disadvantaged but on the advantaged-but-foreign, are they accomplishing their objectives? How bad would higher education have been in Europe? What is the objective, actually?

[bugglebeetle]

> First generation immigrants are still a tiny minority of the population

Not in California. Last I remember, something like a quarter of the state’s population is foreign born.

[svnt]

It looks like you are roughly right, but still, a sampling of 8 students from this population is not likely to come up that way (by my calculation 1.4x10^-7)

> All Students in Higher Education in California

> 2,737,000

> First-Generation Immigrant Students

> 387,000

14% are first-generation immigrants

from: https://www.higheredimmigrationportal.org/state/california/

[AnimalMuppet]

That's still a 1-in-4^8 = 1-in-65536 longshot.

[dragonwriter]

Its really not; hiring within a single firm, especially for related functions, will tend fo have correlated biases, rather than being a random sample from even the pool of qualified applicants, much less the broader population.