Report: Immigrant Biz Powered NYC's Comeback
Report: Immigrant Biz Powered NYC's Comeback
A new AS/COA-Fiscal Policy Institute report finds that immigrant owners of Main Street businesses help to make neighborhoods economically viable and safe.
New York City's revitalization since the 1970s has been spurred by an oft-overlooked force: Main Street immigrant business owners, whose ranks have risen rapidly during the past four decades, according to a new report.
The study found that although New York City's nonimmigrant population has remained largely static since 1980 (after the 1970s' "white flight" dropped the city's population by 1 million), the immigrant population has surged to 3.1 million from 1.7 million. That has been the main driver in the rebound to a record 8.4 million city residents. New York City's population is now 37% foreign-born.
"They—along with people who stuck it out in depopulated neighborhoods and a mixture of other newcomers—helped revive neighborhood after neighborhood, playing an important role in making New York the global city it is today," writes David Dyssegaard Kallick, director of Immigration Research Initiative at the liberal Fiscal Policy Institute. His organization and the Americas Society/Council of Americas conducted the nationwide study on the impact of mom-and-pop businesses.
The report, "Bringing Vitality to Main Street," argues that although skilled immigrant entrepreneurs in high-tech industries get the lion's share of the attention, owners of Main Street businesses from grocers to dry cleaners have outsize economic value by making neighborhoods attractive and safe....
