A World of Opportunity

Home

A World of Opportunity

Report - Business

A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITY
Immigrant entrepreneurs have emerged as key engines of growth for cities from New York to Los Angeles—and with a little planning and support, they could provide an even bigger economic boost in the future

AS THE STAKES OF ECONOMIC COMPETITION GROW EVER-HIGHER in America’s cities, mayors have sought to kick-start local economies by embracing everything from artists and biotechnology companies to sports arenas. For many of the nation’s urban centers, however, a more rewarding— if decidedly less glamorous—answer is hiding in plain sight: tappingtheir growing immigrant populations.

During the past decade, immigrants have been the entrepreneurial sparkplugs of cities from New York to Los Angeles—starting a greater share of new businesses than native-born residents, stimulating growth in sectors from food manufacturing to health care, creating loads of new jobs, and transforming once-sleepy neighborhoods into thriving commercial centers. And immigrant entrepreneurs are also becoming one of the most dependable parts of cities’ economies: while elite sectors like fi nance (New York), entertainment (Los Angeles) and energy (Houston) fl uctuate wildly through cycles of boom and bust, immigrants have been starting businesses and creating jobs during both good times and bad.

Two trends suggest that these entrepreneurs will become even more critical to the economies of cities in the years ahead: immigrant-led population growth and the ongoing trend of large companies in many industries moving to decentralize their operations out of cities and outsource work to cheaper locales. But despite this great and growing importance, immigrant entrepreneurs remain a shockingly overlooked and little-understood part of cities’ economies, and they are largely disconnected from local economic development planning.

Although much of the recent national debate over immigration has focused on the impact of immigrants on America’s labor market, this report concentrates squarely on immigrant entrepreneurs. The report documents the role that immigrant entrepreneurs are playing in cities’ economies, the potential they hold for future economic growth and the obstacles they encounter as they try to start and expand businesses. The study predominantly looks at immigrant entrepreneurs in New York City, yet also considers in detail immigrant-owned businesses in Los Angeles, Houston and Boston.

Based on 18 months of research, this work is built upon extensive data analysis, focus groups conducted with immigrant business owners and economic development experts, and roughly 200 interviews with business owners, immigration experts, ethnographers, local economic development offi cials, banking and microfi nance specialists and government offi cials.

Immigrant entrepreneurs have made decisive contributions to the U.S. economy for more than a century. Their legacy of entrepreneurship runs the gamut from the hundreds of Chinese laundries opened in San Francisco in the mid-19th century to the swarm of Eastern European pushcart vendors that lined the streets of New York’s Lower East Side early the following century. Although their place in the popular imagination is connected with small mom-and-pop businesses, fi rst-generation immigrants founded many of the country’s most enduring corporations: a short list includes Warner Brothers, Anheuser Busch, Goya Foods, Goldman Sachs, Paramount Pictures, Fortunoff, Max Factor and Sbarro. ...(From Introduction)

Download A World of Opportunity

PDF format, 727KB, 60Pages.

Center for an Urban Future, FEBRUARY 2007

This report was written by Jonathan Bowles with Tara Colton. It was edited by David Jason Fischer and designed by Caroline Jerome, D.C. Joel Kotkin

This report and all other publications issued by the Center for an Urban Future can be viewed at www.nycfuture.org. Please subscribe to our monthly e-mail bulletin by contacting us at (212) 479-3341.

CONTENTS:

PART I
INTRODUCTION 3
MAJOR FINDINGS 6
REVITALIZING THE APPLE 7
An overview of the impact immigrant entrepreneurs are having on New York City’s economy.
SEEDS OF GROWTH 13
A profile of fi ve New York City neighborhoods transformed
by immigrant entrepreneurs: Richmond Hill, Sunset Park, Brighton Beach, Flushing and Jackson Heights.
INDUSTRIAL STRENGTHS 17
Immigrant-run fi rms are putting their stamp on a growing number of sectors, from food manufacturing to wedding services.

PART II
TAPPING IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURS 26
FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH
The second part of this report focuses on the obstacles facing immigrant entrepreneurs in New York and what policymakers can do to support this growing part of the city’s economy.
SMALL BUSINESS BLUES 28
Immigrant entrepreneurs face many of the same barriers as other small businesses, including mounting real estate costs.
UNDERSTANDING RULES AND REGULATIONS 29
New York City’s regulatory environment can be a headache for most entrepreneurs, but language and cultural barriers make it particularly diffi cult for immigrants.
DISCONNECTED 32
Many nonprofi t business assistance organizations across the five boroughs simply aren’t reaching into immigrant communities.
CAPITAL CRUNCH 34
Limited access to capital is one of the key hurdles facing immigrant entrepreneurs in New York.
SMALL LOANS, BIG DREAMS 37
A handful of microenterprise organizations are helping immigrants get access to seed capital and critical advice on running a business.
CITY LIMITED 41
An examination of what the Bloomberg administration has and hasn’t done to support immigrant entrepreneurs.
TICKET TIME BOMB 44
Overzealous regulatory enforcement efforts are hurting immigrant-run fi rms.
RECOMMENDATIONS 46