Crain’s Cleveland Business: Personal View: New data show economic impact of immigrants

New American Economy, an immigration reform advocacy organization, last week launched “Map the Impact” — a campaign to highlight the vital economic contributions of immigrants in communities across the country.

Global Cleveland has joined this time of action to help promote the new research on the contributions of immigrants in the Cleveland metro area and highlight the critical need for immigration reform.

The Cleveland metro area is home to more than 113,352 foreign-born residents who are positively contributing to our workforce and economy.

In our congressional district alone, residents contributed more than $1.2 billion to state and federal taxes in 2014, and held $3.2 billion in spending power. And we have 7,405 immigrant entrepreneurs creating jobs and wealth, bringing their talent to communities that need it most.

One only needs to look to some of the Buckeye State’s most important industries to see the vital role immigrants play. Consider our computer systems design industry, which added $7.8 billion to the state GDP in 2013, where roughly one in seven workers are born abroad

Or consider our health care industry, where more than one in every four physicians in the state graduated from a foreign medical school, a likely sign that they were born in another country.

Read the full story from Crain’s Cleveland Business: “Personal View: New data show economic impact of immigrants“