Small Business: Big Opportunity for Immigrants

Since the recession hit in 2008, immigrants have founded many of the country’s start-up businesses. In 2011, 28% of all new businesses were created by immigrants. In fact, almost half of the top 50 start-up businesses were either founded or co-founded by some of the nation’s 40 million foreign-born occupants.

According to Jose Paglery of CNN money, “immigrants are over-represented in lower wage sectors like construction”; and when the recession hit, those immigrants were hit hard. In order to keep afloat in difficult times, some immigrants have turned to starting their own businesses. This line of correlations also rings true for high school dropouts, among which entrepreneurship is up. This is most likely due to the fact that, for those individuals, following a more traditional career path may be hard. This maybe why, in 2011, immigrants were twice as likely to start their own business than a native-born citizen.

Though there is little information on how many of these new business were created by illegal aliens, the effects of creating so many new businesses can be imagines. New businesses create jobs at a time when around 12 million Americans are still out of work. This drive for economic development by creating new small businesses and therefore, new jobs, is helping to lead the country out of the recession.

The Untied States has long been fertile ground for all immigrants to come plant their dreams. It is a place of opportunity where the blue-collar worker can feed an idea and watch it grow into a small business. Last year, immigrants launched at least 170,000 new small businesses. That is a lot of dreams, a lot of opportunity, being planted right here in the USA where dreams can become a reality and anyone has the chance to succeed.

Pagliery, Jose. “On the Rise: Immigrants Entrepreneurs”. CNNmoney.com. 8 May. 2012.

Eichler, Alexander. “Immigrants Twice as Likely to Start Businesses as US Born Citizens”. huffintonpost.com. 8 May. 2012.