Dec 6, 2007 5:11 PM
Listen up, Lou Dobbs. Immigrants don’t drain the economy, they help grow the economy, a new report says.
New York City has historically been a port of entry for immigrants and has benefited from their residency. That’s still true, says “Working for a Better Life: A Profile of Immigrants in the New York Economy,” a report by the Fiscal Policy Institute. The report calls the immigrant presence a “central component” in the state’s economic growth.
Immigrants make up more than one in five state residents and nearly two in five city residents, adding $229 billion to the state economy last year alone. And they’re not all unskilled laborers. The report found immigrants constituting 21 percent of all chief executive officers, half of all accountants, and significant numbers of doctors, registered nurses and college teachers, while city neighborhoods with high concentrations of immigrants have seen a rapid growth in new businesses over the past few decades.
New York Daily News, Nov. 26