Behind every immigrant-owned restaurant, clinic, trucking company, or startup is a larger economic story. The State of Immigrant Entrepreneurship in America study examines how foreign-born business owners are shaping communities across the U.S., at a time when immigration is still more commonly discussed through politics than through the businesses, jobs, and local investment immigrants create.
For this 2026 study, Mendoza Law analyzed 2023 U.S. Census Bureau business-owner data alongside national immigration and economic research from Pew Research Center, the Migration Policy Institute, USAFacts, the American Immigration Council, Forbes, and other organizations. The analysis examines business ownership across major metros, industries, gender, race, and ethnicity.
The findings show that immigrant entrepreneurship spans nearly every part of the American economy. Immigrants are opening businesses at a higher rate than native-born Americans, filling storefronts, hiring workers, and building companies that range from neighborhood services to some of the country’s largest corporations.
America’s Immigrant Population
The U.S. immigrant population entered 2025 at a record high. By January, 53.3 million people living in the country were foreign-born, accounting for 15.8% of the population. By June, that figure had fallen to 51.9 million, or 15.4%, marking the first decline in the foreign-born population since the 1960s.
The population itself reflects decades of migration from many parts of the world. Mexico remains the largest country of origin, accounting for 22% of U.S. immigrants, followed by India, China, the Philippines, and Cuba. Viewed by region, Latin America accounts for 52% of the immigrant population, followed by Asia at 27%, Europe at 10%, Sub-Saharan Africa at 5%, the Middle East and North Africa at 4%, and Canada at 2%.
How Immigrants are Building Businesses and Creating Jobs
That population has also become a substantial part of the American workforce and its pipeline of new businesses. Immigrants make up about 19% to 20% of U.S. workers in 2024, or 30.8 million people, and they launch 25% of new employer businesses despite representing 15% of the population. Among businesses started in 2023, 91% of new immigrant-owned businesses had at least one employee, compared with 84% of businesses overall, and 25% of immigrant entrepreneurs planned to add staff in 2024.
That growth has been building for years. Immigrant entrepreneurship has increased 66% since 2003, and immigrants now account for more than 20% of new business formation overall. They also start more than a quarter of new businesses in seven of the eight fastest-growing U.S. industries. The pattern extends well outside highly educated professional circles: more than 2.1 million immigrant entrepreneurs without a college degree also contribute billions of dollars in economic activity.
That hiring pattern does not mean immigrant-owned firms are usually large employers. In 2023, immigrants owned 19.5% of U.S. employer businesses; however, those firms accounted for about 14.3% of private-sector employment. The gap suggests that many immigrant-owned companies operate with relatively small teams, even as they remain an important source of new jobs.
That early hiring activity sits beside a small-business-heavy ownership pattern. Fiscal Policy Institute analysis found that immigrant-owned businesses accounted for roughly one in seven private-sector jobs, while Census and related research show a large share of immigrant entrepreneurship remains concentrated in relatively lean employer firms. At the other end of the spectrum, immigrants or their children founded 231 companies on the 2025 Fortune 500, generating $8.6 trillion in fiscal 2024 revenue.
Top Cities Where Immigrant Entrepreneurs are Located
Our analysis of 2023 Census Bureau data found that immigrant employer-business ownership is especially concentrated in a group of technology centers, established immigrant gateways, and border communities. San Jose leads major U.S. metros, with 51.0% of employer-firm owners who reported birthplace information saying they were born outside the United States. Miami follows at 46.9%, with Los Angeles third at 43.2%.
Every metro in the top 10 sits above the 19.5% national benchmark in the Census owner data. Taken together, 326,253 of the 812,523 employer-firm owners who reported birthplace information across these metros were immigrants, producing a combined rate of 40.2%. The pattern stretches from San Jose and San Francisco to Miami, New York, Washington, D.C., McAllen, El Paso, Stockton, and Orlando.
Percentage alone does not capture the full scale. Los Angeles has the largest raw number of immigrant owners among the metros in our ranking, with 96,572, narrowly ahead of New York’s 93,225. San Jose leads because foreign-born owners make up such a large share of its reporting owner population, while Los Angeles and New York contain far larger overall pools of business owners.
The geography adds another dimension to the numbers. Bay Area technology centers appear alongside cities with long histories as immigrant gateways and communities shaped by cross-border commerce. The Census figures cover employer firms with paid workers, so they do not capture sole proprietorships and other nonemployer businesses that make up another part of immigrant entrepreneurship in these communities.
The Industries and Wealth Creation
Immigrant entrepreneurs are especially concentrated in parts of the economy Americans interact with every day. Accommodation and food services leads our Census analysis by a wide margin, with 37.3% of reporting employer-firm owners born outside the United States. Retail, transportation and warehousing, health care and social assistance, wholesale trade, and other services also sit above the 19.5% national benchmark.
Those sectors encompass restaurants, hotels, stores, freight operations, clinics, care providers, distributors, repair businesses, and other services woven into local commercial life. Together, they show how much immigrant entrepreneurship extends through customer-facing and service-oriented industries rather than existing primarily in the technology startups that receive much of the public attention.
Raw totals tell another side of the story. Professional, scientific and technical services has an immigrant ownership rate of 16.6%, below the national benchmark, yet it contains 117,066 immigrant owners because its overall business-owner population is so large. That is the second-highest raw immigrant-owner total in our industry analysis, behind accommodation and food services and ahead of retail trade.
The Biggest Immigrant Fortunes are Being Built Somewhere Else
The industries with the highest concentration of immigrant owners are different from those producing the largest personal fortunes. Forbes identified 125 foreign-born U.S. citizen billionaires in 2025 with a combined fortune of $1.3 trillion, representing 18% of the country’s billionaire wealth. An estimated 93% of the group were self-made.
Technology and finance dominate at this end of the economic spectrum. Fifty-three immigrant billionaires built their fortunes in technology and another 28 in finance, meaning the two sectors account for nearly two-thirds of the immigrant billionaires identified by Forbes. India leads the countries of origin with 12, followed by Taiwan and Israel with 11 each, among billionaires born across 42 countries.
The contrast helps show the range within immigrant entrepreneurship. Restaurants, retail, transportation, and health care contain some of the highest immigrant ownership concentrations, while technology and finance account for much of the extraordinary wealth at the upper end. Immigrant-owned businesses nationwide generate more than $1 trillion in annual revenue, spanning owner-operated neighborhood companies, large professional firms, and corporations with national or global reach.
Women vs Men Among Immigrant Entrepreneurs
Gender produces a smaller difference in overall immigrant ownership than the industry breakdown might suggest. Among female employer-firm owners who reported birthplace information, 20.6% were born outside the United States, representing 275,844 women. Among male owners, the immigrant share was 19.0%, or 546,115 men. Women account for 31.8% of employer-firm owners nationally but 33.6% of immigrant owners specifically.
The distribution becomes more varied once industry enters the picture. Women account for 46.2% of immigrant owners in educational services, 45.5% in other services outside public administration, and 44.2% in health care and social assistance. Real estate and rental and leasing reach 41.7%, followed by administrative and support services and finance and insurance.
Construction and transportation sit toward the male-dominated end of the data. Women represent 18.9% of immigrant construction business owners and 21.4% in transportation and warehousing. Accommodation and food services remains a strong common point between the genders, with immigrants accounting for 36.8% of female owners and 37.5% of male owners in the sector. Beyond hospitality, immigrant women have relatively strong representation in wholesale trade, other services, and health care, while immigrant men are more concentrated in retail and transportation.
The Racial Makeup of These Business Owners
Race and ethnicity produce some of the largest differences in our Census analysis. Among Asian employer-firm owners who reported birthplace information, 81.2% were born outside the United States. That represents 374,020 immigrant owners out of 460,894 reporting Asian owners, making foreign-born status especially prevalent within this group of business owners.
The immigrant share is 29.6% among Black or African American owners, 23.4% among American Indian and Alaska Native owners, and 21.1% among Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander owners. Among White business owners, the immigrant share is 11.4%. The Census Bureau’s broader minority classification records a 63.2% immigrant share, compared with 7.8% among owners classified as nonminority.
Ethnicity reveals another sizable divide. Among Hispanic employer-firm owners who reported birthplace information, 52.4% were immigrants, representing 164,572 of 314,265 owners. Among non-Hispanic owners, the immigrant share was 16.9%. These figures measure the share of business owners within each Census category who are foreign-born. They do not measure how likely someone from an entire racial or ethnic population is to own a business.
Raw owner counts provide another piece of context. Of the 821,959 immigrant business owners included in this portion of the analysis, 415,248 were classified as White and 374,020 as Asian. Black, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander owners make up smaller raw shares even though each group has an immigrant share above the national benchmark. Census respondents can report more than one race, so these figures should be viewed independently rather than as portions of a single 100% total.
Which Immigrant Groups Start the Most Businesses?
Country of origin adds another perspective. Mexican immigrants account for the largest raw share of immigrant business owners, reflecting the size of the Mexican immigrant population overall. Ownership rates look very different: 24.4% of Iranian immigrants own a business, followed by South Koreans at 23.1%, Brazilians at 21.0%, and Italians at 20.1%. Among newer founders, Asian immigrants accounted for 34% of new immigrant business owners in 2023.
What Immigrant Entrepreneurship Means for the U.S. Economy
The recent decline in the foreign-born population comes after decades in which immigrants became an increasingly large part of the U.S. workforce and business community. Immigrant-majority-owned businesses employ roughly one out of every seven private-sector workers, while broader research estimates that immigrants accounted for 18% of total U.S. economic output in 2023. Immigrant households also contributed $382.9 billion in federal taxes and $196.3 billion in state and local taxes in 2022.
No dataset can recreate an alternate American economy in which immigrant entrepreneurs were absent. The numbers can show what exists today: hundreds of thousands of foreign-born employer-firm owners, millions of jobs connected to immigrant-owned and immigrant-founded companies, and cities where the immigrant share of business owners reaches roughly twice the national benchmark. Congressional Budget Office projections estimate that the recent immigration surge could increase U.S. GDP by $8.9 trillion over the 2024–2034 period.
Behind those totals are people opening restaurants, health care practices, trucking companies, professional firms, and startups, then hiring workers and building businesses in communities around the country. For people facing immigration issues that could affect their work, family, or future in the U.S., an immigration lawyer can help explain the available legal options and what steps may apply. As immigration patterns change, the businesses immigrants create help explain what those population shifts could mean for the American economy.