Immigrants twice as likely to start businesses, report says

Silicon Valley, San Jose Business Journal
August 14, 2012

Immigrants start more than one in four new businesses in the United States, and are more than twice as likely to start a company than people who are born here, according to a new report.

The new “Open for Business” report, posted Tuesday, is the latest research from the Partnership for a New American Economy, a bipartisan group of politicians, business executives and others who are advocating immigration reform. I recently wrote a story about another study by the group, about immigrants’ roles in filing new patents.

The latest report found that immigrant businesses collectively generated more than $775 billion in revenue in 2011 and employ one out of every 10 people working for private companies. And the U.S. economy will continue to rely increasingly on businesses owned by immigrants: The income of immigrant-owned businesses grew by more than 60 percent over the past 10 years, while income from businesses owned by American-born people only grew by 14.4 percent.

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