Aug 072012
 
What's the Impact of Immigrant-Owned Small Businesses on the U.S. Economy?

Immigrant-owned small businesses employ 14 percent of all people working for American small-businesses and 18 percent of all small-business owners in the U.S. are immigrants. The widely publicized (New York Times, Business Week, Huffington Post) new study from the Fiscal Policy Institute’s Immigration Research Initiative identifies immigrant-owned small businesses and their impact on the U.S. economy. The immigrant share of small-business owners is higher than their share in the overall population—18 vs. 13 percent—as well as the immigrant share of the labor force, 16%. As I’ve speculated before, this could be […] Continue reading >

Dec 072011
 
Crossing Borders for Love or Business

Two recent issues of The Economist featured articles exploring international marriage and diaspora business networks. Let’s take a look at each article from American Robotnik’s perspective. International Marriage and You Most Central Europeans I know in the U.S. (“my generation”) have come or stayed because of love and its legal expression, marriage. In “Herr and Madame, Señor and Mrs”, the thrust of the argument is that even though they’re tricky to define and data are scarce, international marriages are on the rise because “they reflect—and result from—globalization”. The U.S. […] Continue reading >