Immigrants are a little more likely to own businesses than their U.S.-born counterparts, but they are a lot more likely to own Main Street businesses such as grocery stores, restaurants, and barber shops, finds a new study released today by the Fiscal Policy Institute and Americas Society/Council of the Americas. Immigrants make up 16 percent of the labor force and 18 percent of business owners, but 28 percent of Main Street businesses (defined as retail, food services and accommodation, and neighborhood services such as nail salons, beauty shops, and gas stations).
“These are types of businesses that don’t often get a lot of attention from economic development officials. But anyone thinking about economic growth should pay attention: these businesses play a big role in neighborhood revitalization, and they can be an important economic step up for entrepreneurs,” says David Dyssegaard Kallick, director of the Immigration Research Initiative at the Fiscal Policy Institute and author of the report.
The report includes data on the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the country, and focuses in depth on three case studies that hone in on ways state and local government can help make the most of of immigrant entrepreneurship: Philadelphia, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Nashville.
Immigrant households are significant contributors to Virginia’s economy and help the state outperform the country as a whole in education, labor force participation, and household income.
Almost 40 percent of foreign-born Virginians age 25 or over have a bachelor’s degree, according to recently released 2013 American Community Survey data. That’s a much higher share than among adults in the U.S. as a whole, whether native-born or foreign-born.
This report shows that legalizing undocumented immigrants, paired with labor standards enforcement, would boost economic productivity. Reform would remove barriers to advancement for newly legalized immigrants, create a level playing field for businesses, and align our systems of taxation, social services, and social insurance so that they would function as they are supposed to.
“Immigration reform, done right, would be good for immigrants, but it would also be good for all Americans,” said David Dyssegaard Kallick, the director of the Fiscal Policy Institute’s Immigration Research Initiative. “I don’t want to overstate the gains—we’re talking about 5 percent of the labor force. Still, those gains are real, and they’re important.”
A proposal is gaining ground in New York State that would allow all students—including those who are undocumented immigrants—equal access to the state’s Tuition Assistance Program. Last year, the Fiscal Policy Institute published an analysis of the costs and benefits of the proposal. This report digs deeper into the fiscal and economic benefits to New York State, and shows that if the proposal were financed through the income tax the cost to a typical taxpayer would be 87¢, the price of a donut.