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November 20, 2014. As President Obama puts immigration back on the front burner of the national debate, a story in Bloomberg Business Week focuses on the important role immigrants are playing in the Detroit economy, using some data from a Fiscal Policy Institute report to make the case: The 18th-largest U.S. city ranks 135th in the number of foreign-born residents, said Steve Tobocman, director of Global Detroit, a nonprofit agency that promotes legal immigration as an economic catalyst. Still, in 2007 they accounted for 11 [...]

October 15, 2014. A story in Vox stresses the role of immigrant entrepreneurship, citing FPI's work on the subject. Economic research shows repeatedly that, overall, immigrants don't displace U.S.-born workers. How can this be? One part of the answer is that immigrants are not just workers, they are also entrepreneurs, so they create jobs for themselves and also for others. (Another part of the story, which is not covered in this piece, is that immigrants also expand consumer demand, so at the same time as more [...]

September 22, 2014. This opinion piece by Galen Spencer Hull celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month by focusing on immigrant and minority businesses. Tennessee has one of the fastest-growing immigrant communities in the U.S., earning Nashville the sobriquet as an “Ellis Island.” Immigrants are making notable contributions to the region’s economic development. Music City has become a hub, attracting a steady stream of immigrants. Davidson County alone has an immigrant population of about 40,000, or 7 percent of the total, followed by Williamson County (4 percent) and [...]

September 18, 2014. The Baltimore Sun ran a long editorial about the city's efforts to attract 10,000 new families to the city, with a particular focus on immigrants, including this reference to FPI's work: ...a 2012 report from the Fiscal Policy Institute's Immigration Research Initiative found that immigrants made up 9 percent of Baltimore's population but 12 percent of the workforce and a remarkable 21 percent of business owners.

August 27, 2014. The National Journal looked at immigrant small business owners, highlighting an aspect of the Fiscal Policy Institute's 2012 report that few others have focused on: which immigrant groups are the most entrepreneurial? Greek immigrants, in fact, have the highest percentage of people in the labor force who are small business owners. According to a report from the Fiscal Policy Institute's Immigration Research Initiative, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 75,000 Greek immigrants in the U.S. labor force. And of [...]

July 19, 2014. A New York Times story about Miami's economic growth is grounded in data from the Fiscal Policy Institute about immigrant business owners. Of immigrants in the Miami metro area, the article says: Their relative wealth has allowed them to ramp up businesses like import-export companies and banks, and to open restaurants that dish out arepas from Venezuela, coxinhas from Brazil and alfajores from Argentina. Partly as a result of that influx, the Miami-Fort Lauderdale region eclipsed Los Angeles in 2012 as the [...]

July 2, 2014. A Los Angeles Times article about a report by our colleagues at the Iowa Policy Project talks about the economic and tax contribution of immigrants to the state of Iowa. The Iowa report was developed with data that the Fiscal Policy Institute developed with the Economic Policy Institute, and the article also mentions the FPI report directly: About 120,000 immigrants live in Iowa, and nearly 75,000 are in the U.S. illegally, Fisher said. With Iowa's median age trending upward, immigrants help bolster Iowa's [...]

February 5, 2014. In an opinion piece that ran in the Detroit News, Andrew Wainer makes the case that immigrants can be an important part of a strategy for economic revitalization of Detroit. While the jumping-off point of the article is Michigan Governor Rick Snyder's proposal for highly skilled immigrants who would be tethered to Detroit by a geographically restricted Visa, Wainer makes the case that it's not just highly skilled immigrants who count, and that regular immigration, without special Visas, have been an important [...]

February 1, 2014. An opinion piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette suggests that, since immigrants are somewhat more likely than U.S.-born workers to be business owners, immigration could also hold economic growth potential for Pittsburgh. FPI has data suggesting that this potential shouldn't be exaggerated, but that there is also real potential there. The article quotes FPI's report on immigrant small business owners, saying: National data show that foreign immigrants are more likely than U.S. natives to form small businesses. A study by the Fiscal Policy [...]

December 31, 2013. Northern Voices Online considers the prospects for immigration reform, focusing on the economic benefits that political action would bring, focusing on the immigrant role in small business ownership. The Fiscal Policy Institute Businesses mentioned in a June 2012 study that immigrant owned businesses employ nearly five million Americans in 2010 and generated an estimated $776 billion in revenue.

December 30, 2013. The Latino Post reviews reports about the economic impacts of immigrants on the U.S. economy, including one by the Fiscal Policy Institute. Research proves that immigration and economic progress go hand in hand. Contrary to fears that immigrants will take American jobs and make unemployment even worse, studies show that mending our broken U.S. immigration system would actually help end America's job crisis.... According to a 2012 study from the Fiscal Policy Institute, immigrant-owned small businesses employed nearly five million Americans in 2010 and [...]

December 26, 2013. An opinion piece in the Baltimore Sun draws extensively from the Fiscal Policy Institute's research on small business ownership, and describing city efforts to make it clear that immigrants are welcome. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said Baltimore is "open for business, particularly in the area of Latino immigrants. We've actively recruited Latino immigrants to Baltimore, and when they come here, they're thriving. Many have opened businesses, employed individuals. ... I think it's a win-win."