Mark Cuban on immigration policy: ‘We’re being really, really, really stupid’

DALLAS — Tech billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban wasn’t shy Tuesday night when asked about the country’s immigration policy. When it comes to recruiting and retaining the world’s best talent, he said, the country’s got it wrong.

“Right now, we’re being really, really, really stupid by taking really, really, really educated people who could do a lot for our really, really important economy and sending them home,” he said.

Cuban expressed his views to an audience of entrepreneurs Tuesday night during Dallas Startup Week, a five-day free event that’s organized by the Dallas Entrepreneur Center. He was answering a question from a University of Texas at Dallas student from India, who said he and other international students face constant challenges with raising money and staying in the U.S., even if they have great ideas.

Cuban, who’s invested millions in startups and regularly appears on the “Shark Tank” TV show, said he agrees the system is broken. He said it’s “crazy” that he’s had to look up the immigration status of entrepreneurs or their families when considering whether or not to make an investment in their companies.

“Just to be brutally honest, we’re doing it the wrong way,” he said. “And I think even in this administration, they’re trying to improve it and trying to make it better, but it’s not happening fast enough.”

Cuban is a member of the New American Economy, a bipartisan organization founded by New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg that advocates for immigration policies that benefit the economy. The group also includes Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar, Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang and numerous mayors and company executives.

Almost half of Fortune 500 companies were started by immigrants or the children of immigrants, according to a 2017 study by the Center for American Entrepreneurship, a nonpartisan policy and advocacy organization. The list includes some of the country’s most famous founders: Henry Ford, Estee Lauder and Walt Disney.

Many of the country’s most famous tech founders — including Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, and Sergey Brin of Google and parent company Alphabet — are immigrants, too.

And Cuban’s NBA team has some of the league’s most well-known immigrants on its roster — Luka Doncic and Dirk Nowitzki.