Cristina Jimenez
Obama Can’t Ignore Immigration Policy While Focusing on the Economy
Despite the strong and decisive support from the immigrant electorate, many say immigration reform won’t be in the agenda during the first year of the Obama administration. The economy is everyone’s priority.
But some recent entrepreneurship reports indicate that the new administration should not ignore immigration policy when trying to help the economy.
A new study for the Small Business Administration by Rob Fairlie of UC Santa Cruz found that immigrants are nearly 30 percent more likely to start a business than non-immigrants, and they represent 16.7 percent of all new business owners in the United States. Nearly 30 percent of all new business owners per month in New York, Florida, and Texas, are immigrants.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report reveals that immigrant entrepreneurs are an essential source of job creation. The report found that minority-owned startups create more jobs than startups by white Americans, because the latter tend to be one-person firms.
According to the Center for an Urban Future, immigrant entrepreneurs have emerged as key engines of economic growth in our cities. In New York City, for example, the borough of Queens—known to be a magnet for immigrants, has become a leading source of job creation.
When discussing the potential of immigrant entrepreneurs as an engine for economic growth in our troubled economy, Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at Harvard and Business Week columnists, said that immigration reform is essential for this immigrant entrepreneurial spirit to continue and expand. The solution, he said, is not to increase the number of working visas, “we need more green cards.”
These findings clearly show, as U.S. News reports, that when figuring out a way to stimulate our economy, “smoothing out our complicated immigration system is a stimulus policy in itself.”
Cristina Jimenez: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 8:30 AM, Nov 25, 2008 in Economy | Immigration
Permalink | Email to Friend | Comments (1)
Comments
Media Release www.ThisWorldNow.com
For Immediate Release It’s Our World. We Live Here.
November 24, 2008 The Time is Now.
For more information please contact:
Garrett DeHart, garrett@garrettdehart.com
(404) 219-4905
Launching into the Future
www.thisworldnow.com officially launches December 1st
Atlanta, Georgia—On Monday, December 1st ThisWorldNow.com, a groundbreaking Web 2.0 media portal designed around a variety of today’s progressive social, economic and political issues, with special launch emphasis on the Immigrants’ Rights movement, will be available to the public. Thousands of activists, advocates, policy-makers, and documented as well as undocumented workers can access the website that will change the way people communicate, network, build coalitions and simply learn from and with one another.
“We are facing a future riddled with important social and socioeconomic issues,” stated the creator of ThisWorldNow.com, Garrett DeHart. “Immigrants’ rights, the environment, poverty, women’s issues, healthcare, mass globalization, civil rights, LGBT rights, war and conflict—to name a few—drive our current debate and the solutions we find, will shape our future. ThisWorldNow.com allows people all over this nation to participate in assisting both in the creation of such solutions and in the change the future brings.”
Using cutting edge design, security and technology, ThisWorldNow.com hosts blogs, videos, photos, profiles, news, and more. Organizations and advocates can share their calendars of events, calls to action, agency newsletters, and ideas for networking and organizing. Individual users can share videos, blogs, news stories and art, all the while connecting with other organizations and individuals
“ThisWorldNow.com is designed to consolidate all the information on the web about a particular issue—like Immigrants’ Rights—and to create a space where new voices can be heard,” said DeHart. “Imagine MySpace joins YouTube and Blogspot with a bit of Huffington Post all poised upon progressive issues, and you have ThisWorldNow.com.”
On December 1, 2008 users can log-in to ThisWorldNow.com, create an on-line profile, connect with friends and colleagues, write blogs and news stories, share videos and photos, and generally connect with other like-minded individuals and organizations. Similarly structured like other popular social networking sites, ThisWorldNow.com allows its users to connect based on progressive social issues. The Immigrants’ Rights Movement is the highlighted issue during the launch.
“The Immigrants’ Rights Movement has dominated our moral and cultural debates in this nation,” said Jerry Gonzalez, the Executive Director of GALEO (Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials). “We expect that there will be meaningful and significant immigration reform in the near future. ThisWorldNow.com allows like-minded people, and those that care about this issue and other important social and political issues, to unite on-line and further our movement thereby becoming an integral component as well as an asset to this ongoing debate.”
On January 12, 2009 ThisWorldNow.com will host a Blog for Change Day featuring Immigrants’ Rights. Users will be encouraged to write their thoughts about Immigrants’ Rights in a blog. “Thousands of blogs about Immigrants’ Rights will generate some much needed press,” said DeHart. “This press won’t be from the typical news pundits that we hear all the time, but by actual people who have their own stories to tell. ThisWorldNow.com creates the stage for them to be heard.”
For more information regarding Blog for Change Day and for online tutorials, log-in to www.thisworldnow.com.
###
Posted by: Garrett DeHart | November 25, 2008 11:20 AM