There is a particular kind of clarity that comes from arguing a policy position that you have also lived. At the Immigration Policy and the Economics of Innovation conference held January 22, 2026, J-P Conte — managing partner and Hoover Institution overseer whose initiative organized and funded the event — did not speak from a position of abstraction. He spoke as the son of two immigrants, each of whom came to the United States at a time when the decision to do so carried substantial personal risk.
His father left France following the Nazi occupation and eventually built a career as a tailor and clothing salesman, forming relationships with Wall Street professionals whose mentorship later shaped J-P Conte’s own trajectory into business. His mother left Cuba seeking independence and opportunity. Both arrived without significant resources. Both built lives in the United States that became the foundation for the next generation’s ambitions. It is a story J-P Conte has told publicly on multiple occasions — and it is the story that motivates his investment in research on immigration’s economic effects.
From Personal History to Institutional Action
J-P Conte established the J-P Conte Initiative on Immigration at the Hoover Institution in October 2024, naming economist Paola Sapienza as its inaugural J-P Conte Family Senior Fellow. The initiative sits within the Hoover Program on the Foundations of Economic Prosperity and is structured to generate original research on immigration’s multifaceted economic effects — labor market dynamics, innovation, firm formation, and trade.
His stated goal for the initiative has been to bridge the gap between academic research and practical policy decisions — to build, over time, a body of evidence rigorous enough to guide policymakers who are otherwise operating on instinct, ideology, or anecdote. That goal is personal in origin but institutional in scope.
What He Said at the January Conference
At the January 2026 conference, J-P Conte asked those assembled to consider what the American technology industry would look like if prominent immigrant founders had not been permitted entry. “Just think of a scenario where none of those people were here,” he said. The question was not rhetorical ornamentation — it was a direct challenge to anyone inclined to treat immigration restriction as a low-cost policy option.
He then stated his central premise plainly: “The beauty of America is immigration and innovation. And immigration is key to that innovation.” For J-P Conte, the conference was the second in what he intends to be a sustained, multi-year effort to put the economics of immigration on the same rigorous analytical footing as other questions that shape US competitiveness. His family’s story is the reason why. The research is the method.
