The world’s most creative entrepreneurs staying in U.S are immigrants, they contribute and succeed significantly. One of the economic prosperity of the country is the contribution by these immigrants’ entrepreneurs.
Immigration has re-emerged over the past 25 years as a potent force influencing the size and composition of the population in U.S. cities. According to a report, immigrants’ impact on population growth has a corresponding positive impact on a region’s wages, housing prices, rents, and cultural diversity. Similarly, the Brookings Institution finds that immigration has a positive influence on metro areas by reversing population losses, expanding the workforce, boosting home values and reducing vacancy and foreclosure problems. Further, the Fiscal Policy Institute has examined the economic role of immigrants in the country’s 25 largest metropolitan areas and finds that immigration and economic growth of metro areas go hand in hand.
There is a widespread agreement across a number of key economic planning groups that immigrant entrepreneurs create jobs and strengthen the economy. Yet, the US immigration system often forces out immigrant entrepreneurs driving them to other countries that are competing for international talent.
Though many people recognize that giants of immigrant entrepreneurship such as Google, eBay, thousands of other science and technology businesses are quietly making a difference by creating almost half a million jobs for Americans and generating revenue of more than $50 billion. The depth and breadth of immigrant entrepreneurs extend across the spectrum of enterprises, including neighborhood, growth, and transnational businesses.
Immigrants often move into low-rent neighborhoods that have little economic activity and deteriorating physical conditions. Many establish businesses as an alternative to working at low-wage jobs, usually within 3 to 10 years after they arrive. These businesses are typically small to moderate in size and include real estate firms, restaurants, food stores, nail salons, and gift shops.
There is no doubt that immigrant entrepreneurs and innovators play an important role. But they bring in additional revenue, and contribute significantly to the state’s economy. Highly skilled immigrants are vital to the state’s innovation industries and to the metropolitan areas within the state, helping to boost local economies.
Immigrant entrepreneurs not only contribute to large innovative companies, but also to small business formation in local communities. The sprawling Atlanta metropolitan area contains many examples of immigrant entrepreneurship. A potent combination of declining population growth and economic stagnation has led many cities and metropolitan regions to rethink how to strengthen their communities.
It’s a known fact that immigrants are risk takers by nature, are unusually successful entrepreneurs, more than twice as likely as native-born Americans to start their own firms.
As a result, immigration is one of the strategies to which communities are repeatedly turning to fuel economic growth. A budding place-based awareness of the important contributions that new and existing immigrants make to neighborhood revitalization is seen in the increasing number of cities pursuing a nexus of immigrant welcoming, integration, and economic development initiatives.
Research points out that “most immigrants establish their businesses without assistance from local banks, relying heavily on family labor, and family and personal savings to fund business growth.” Immigrant-founded businesses create jobs for Americans and strengthen the US economy, are represented in every industry and business size throughout the United States. Generate tax revenue, and provide valuable goods and services. Americans lives are touched every day by these immigrants.
Immigrants are essential to urban population growth and stability, although the drive and energy of immigrants will ultimately fuel their entrepreneurship, current immigration laws make it difficult for many who want to contribute to do so.
Local leaders must help national leaders understand that positive impacts of immigrants in cities are linked with the need for effective immigration policy at the national level.
At the national level, policymakers should enact comprehensive immigration reform that modernizes the U.S. immigration system, creating the necessary legal pathways that work for entrepreneurs, innovators, students, families, businesses, employers, and all types of workers.
Immigration reform, in addition to recognizing that immigrant entrepreneurs come through all immigration pathways-family, employment, refugee, and others-should also ensure better recognition of foreign-earned credentials in licensed professions so that skilled immigrants’ talent isn’t wasted in the places in which they already reside in the U.S.
In addition to modernizing and streamlining visa pathways, clearing backlogs, and providing a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented population, reforms must provide immigrants and the communities in which they live with the tools to prosper. Immigrant integration strategies should be a component of comprehensive immigration reform.
Ultimately, cities are the places where people go about their daily lives and where immigration and integration policies play out on a daily basis. Clearly, the extent of a place’s welcoming climate and the ability for newcomers to effectively integrate into a community are part of a place’s resiliency to economic vacillations.
With this trend, hope there is a growing recognition of the significance of immigration as economic factors, but also major rethinking of how individuals and communities accept and welcome newcomers and encourage their successful integration.