Of course, immigrants do make up a large share of the entrepreneurs in high-immigration CMSAs like San Francisco or Los Angeles. The findings in Table 6 indicate that it would not be correct to describe immigrants in San Francisco or other high-immigrant CMSAs as particularly entrepreneurial. But what is important about the findings in Table 7 is that there is little difference between immigrants and natives within the same metro area. With the possible exception of the Washington-Baltimore CMSA, there is no city where the inclusion of immigrants can be said have a significant effect on the overall level of entrepreneurship. Nearly two-thirds of the nation's immigrants live in the nine CMSAs shown in Table 7, and immigrants make up 25 percent of the workforce in these CMSAs.
Immigrants appear to have no impact on the overall level of entrepreneurship in a metropolitan area.
Self-Employment in the Central Cities One argument often made by advocates of high immigration is that immigrants start businesses where they are most needed. This in turn revitalizes blighted and declining cities by creating businesses where no other entrepreneurs wish to locate. Stories of immigrant businesses in inner-city neighborhoods have been a common theme in news coverage of immigrant entrepreneurship in recent years. Only self-employment within the central city is reported. In all four cities, immigrant self-employment is actually lower, not higher, than that of natives.