The founder and chief executive of language learning app Duolingo today urged the UK to do more to welcome high-skilled migrants.
Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn told the Standard: “It just makes no sense to close your doors to some of the brightest people in the world.
“Countries like the US and the UK talk a lot about competing with China — the only way you can do that is by attracting the best from the whole world rather than just from the 70 million inside the UK.”
The call comes as Home Secretary Suella Braveman faced a barrage of criticism after claiming the south coast was facing an “invasion” by migrants, the day after a firebomb attack in Dover.
Braverman was told to stop “discriminating” against Albanians to “excuse policy failures” during the migration crisis by the Albanian prime minister.
Edi Rama called for “mutual respect” on Wednesday as he struck out at the “insane” and “easy rhetoric” of targeting his citizens for the UK’s border failures.
Von Ahn blasted the tone of political discussion on immigration in the UK as “problematic”.
“We run a company where we hire a lot of immigrants,” he said.
“When people talk about immigration, they kind of pull everything together[but] the UK should be as open to qualified immigration as possible.”
The CEO grew up in Guatamala before moving to North Carolina as a teenager to study mathematics at Duke University. He launched Duolingo in 2011. The company is now worth $3.2 billion (£2.8 billion). Von Ahn controls around four million shares in the business worth $300 million.
The UK is the largest market for Duolingo subscribers outside the US.
