BusinessWeek ran a story late last month by Vivek Wadhwa (Wertheim Fellow at the Harvard Law School and executive in residence at Duke University) on the percentage of new businesses in the U.S. that are started by immigrants. And the message was that immigrants make up a higher than expected proportion of the American entrepreneurial community.

Wadhwa has argued for several years now that immigrants in the U.S. are heavily involved in entrepreneurship. But last month the Small Business Administration released a report that supported his contention.

According to the study, roughly 16.7 percent of all new business owners in this country are immigrants, yet immigrants make up only 12.2 percent of the workforce in the U.S. It also found that immigrant-owned businesses contributed roughly $67 billion to the country's business income, out of a total of $577 billion in 2000.

According to Wadhwa, the study also shows that the more dynamic the local business environment, the greater the percentage of immigrants involved in starting business.


Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Eduardo Jose Bernardino