ABSTRACT
Even before the current “meltdown” of the US economy in late 2008, researchers, mayors, and even we as neighbors were assessing the impact of immigrants—highly educated and not—on our local economies. For example, between 1995 and 2005, immigrants founded more than 25 percent of all the engineering and technology companies in the United States (Wadhwa, 2007). Concomitant with these “highly educated” immigrant effects have been the powerful economic forces wielded by the often overlooked and less glamorous growing immigrant populations in many of our nation’s urban centers (Bowles, 2007).
