Immigrants In Atlanta Have $19 Billion In Spending Power
Metro Atlanta Chamber launches ATL Action for Racial Equity to address systemic racism impacting Atlanta’s Black community.
Mike Stewart / Associated Press
Immigrants in metro Atlanta have more than $19.3 billion in spending power and paid nearly seven billion in state and local taxes in 2016.
That’s according to a new report from the nonpartisan immigration think tank New American Economy.
“Immigrants are working in the industries that are driving Atlanta and Georgia’s economy whether it’s construction, agriculture, fisheries, manufacturing, they’re hugely overrepresented in those industries, but they’re also starting their own companies,” said New American Economy Executive Director Jeremy Robbins.
Robbins said immigrants are 62.3 percent more likely to start a business than native-born residents.
The report, which uses 2016 Census data, found there are 78,831 immigrant entrepreneurs in metro Atlanta.
About 14.9 percent of immigrants in metro Atlanta have graduate degrees compared to 13.9 percent of all metro Atlanta residents.
White House immigration policies are making it harder for highly educated students and workers to stay in the U.S., Robbins said.
“We have this incredible talent pool that we’re arming but then we’re sending away to our competitors,” Robbins said. “So that’s something that you look at. This huge potential that immigrants bring to Georgia by bringing all these high skilled workers. Well, it could be even greater.”
New American Economy executive director Jeremy Robbins said a report on the top ten patent-producing universities in 2012 found that more than three out of every four patents universities like Georgia Tech were getting approved, had at least one immigrant named on the team.
The group refers to immigrants as anyone who is foreign born. Robbins estimates that of the nearly one million immigrants in Georgia, 398,000 of them are undocumented.
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg started the immigration think tank New American Economy in 2010, a coalition of 500 CEOs and mayors to “make the economic case for a smarter immigration policy.”
“Immigration is this huge debate that people use to fire up their their core constituents and win elections but then nothing ever gets done and so the immigration system remains broken,” Robbins said. “The theory of New American Economy is that if you can actually have a rational debate about the impact immigrants are having you could both get better policy but also find a way to break through the political logjam and have both sides talk.
How many immigrants are there? How many businesses are they starting? How many homes there buying and what they’re paying in taxes? What industries are they in? You can actually have a discussion: is immigration a good thing for our economy or bad? And how so?”
Map The Impact is an interactive map the group designed that breaks down data on a state, metro area and congressional district level.
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