- Research and Analysis
New Americans in Tyler
Published
New research released by the American Immigration Council—in partnership with the Tyler Area Chamber of Commerce and the Tyler Hispanic Business Alliance—shows that immigrants contributed $1.2 billion to the Tyler metro area’s GDP in 2019.
New Americans in Tyler highlights how immigrants fill crucial workforce gaps in addition to their financial contributions to the Tyler metro area, which included paying $75.8 million in federal taxes and $45.1 million in state and local taxes in 2019. Although immigrants made up 8.5% of the region’s overall population in 2019, they represented 12.4% of its employed labor force.
Key findings include:
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Immigrants foster an entrepreneurial spirit. In 2019, despite making up 8.5% of the Tyler metro area’s overall population, 17.5% of immigrants were entrepreneurs, meaning immigrants were 49.5% more likely to be entrepreneurs than their U.S.-born counterparts.
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Immigrants are filling critical workforce gaps. Although immigrants made up 8.5% of the region’s overall population, they represented 30.5% of construction workers, 19.0% of professional service workers, and 15.7% of all workers in the manufacturing industry in 2019.
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Immigrants are bringing much-needed talent. In 2019, 17.5% of immigrants in the Tyler metro area age 25 and older held at least a bachelor’s degree and 6.4% held an advanced degree (a master’s, professional, or doctoral degree).
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Immigrants help create or preserve local manufacturing jobs. In the Tyler metro area, immigrants strengthened the local job market by allowing companies to keep jobs on U.S. soil, helping create or preserve 900 local manufacturing jobs that would have otherwise vanished or moved elsewhere by 2019.
Help us fight for immigration justice!
The research is clear – immigrants are more likely to win their cases with a lawyer by their side. But very few can get attorneys.
Introducing the Immigration Justice Campaign Access Fund.
Your support sends attorneys, provides interpreters, and delivers justice.
Immigration Justice Campaign is an initiative of American Immigration Council and American Immigration Lawyers Association. The mission is to increase free legal services for immigrants navigating our complicated immigration system and leverage the voices and experiences of those most directly impacted by our country’s immigration policies to inform legal and advocacy strategies. We bring together a broad network of volunteers who provide legal assistance and advocate for due process for immigrants with a humane approach that includes universal legal representation and other community-based support for individuals during their immigration cases.