More Than 10% Of America's 400 Richest Billionaires Are Immigrants - Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Common Stock (NYSE:BRK/A), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)

Forbes recently published its annual list of the 400 richest Americans, with Bill Gates leading it for the 23^rd consecutive year, trailed by Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN CEO Jeff Bezos and Berkshire Hathaway's (NYSE: BRK-A) Warren Buffett.

What was unexpected to many was the number of immigrants that made it to the list. More than 40 out of these 400 billionaires were born outside of the United States.

These 42 immigrant billionaires came from 21 different countries and have amassed a combined net worth of $250 billion, according to Forbes’ calculations. Among them are Tesla Motors Inc TSLA’s South African founder Elon Musk and Alphabet Inc GOOGL GOOG’s Russian co-founder Sergey Brin.

Source: Forbes

Six of these immigrants came from Israel, five from India, four from Hungary and another four from Taiwan.

Other immigrants include legendary Hungarian investor George Soros, and Ukranian businessman Len Blavatnik.

Interestingly, a recent report from the Kauffman Foundation said “immigrants are twice as likely to become entrepreneurs as native-born Americans… The risk-taking that defines an immigrant’s experience in starting anew in a country often continues to benefit immigrant entrepreneurs as they channel a healthy appetite for risk in a way that leads to new business ideas.”

Below is a full list of the immigrant billionaires that made it to the 2016 Forbes 400 list.

Name	Net Worth	Country Of Origin	Year Immigrated
Sergey Brin	$37.5 billion	Russia	1979
George Soros	$24.9 billion	Hungary	1956
Len Blavatnik	$18.2 billion	Ukraine	1978
Thomas Peterffy	$12.6 billion	Hungary	1965
Elon Musk	$11.6 billion	South Africa	1990s
Rupert Murdoch	$11.1 billion	Australia	1985
Patrick Soon-Shiong	$9.2 billion	South Africa	1980
Jan Koum	$8.8 billion	Ukraine	1992
Pierre Omidyar	$8.1 billion	France	1973
Micky Arison	$7.2 billion	Israel	1950s
Shahid Khan	$6.9 billion	Pakistan	1967
John Tu	$5.3 billion	China	1971
David Sun	$5.3 billion	Taiwan	1977
Jeffrey Skoll	$4.1 billion	Canada	1993
Igor Olenicoff	$3.7 billion	Russia	1957
Isaac Perlmutter	$3.6 billion	Israel	1960s
Dagmar Dolby & family	$3.5 billion	Germany	1976
Steven Udvar-Hazy	$3.5 billion	Hungary	1958
Roger Wang	$3.4 billion	China	1970
John Catsimatidis	$3.3 billion	Greece	1949
Tom Gores	$3.3 billion	Israel	1968
Kieu Hoang	$3.1 billion	Vietnam	1975
Romesh T. Wadhwani	$3 billion	India	1969
Do Won & Jin Sook Chang	$3 billion	South Korea	1981
Michael Moritz	$3 billion	United Kingdom	1976
Andrew & Peggy Cherng	$2.9 billion	China, Burma	1966, 1967
Haim Saban	$2.9 billion	Israel	1983
Jorge Perez	$2.8 billion	Argentina	1960s
Mortimer Zuckerman	$2.7 billion	Canada	1977
Peter Thiel	$2.7 billion	Germany	1968
Douglas Leone	$2.7 billion	Italy	1968
Min Kao	$2.7 billion	Taiwan	1970s
C. Dean Metropoulos	$2.5 billion	Greece	1956
Bharat & Neerja Sethi Desai	$2.5 billion	Kenya, India	1976, 1978
Noam Gottesman	$2.3 billion	Israel	1960s
Rakesh Gangwal	$2.2 billion	India	1970s
Jerry Yang	$2.2 billion	Taiwan	1978
John Kapoor	$2.1 billion	India	1964
Alec Gores	$2.1 billion	Israel	1968
Kavitark Ram Shriram	$1.9 billion	India	1970s
Charles Simonyi	$1.8 billion	Hungary	1967
Jen-Hsun Huang	$1.7 billion	Taiwan	1973

Source: Forbes

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