Small Business Wants Immigration Reform for More Than Cheap Labor

All businesses need more customers, and small businesses know that immigrants are customers. Many are lower income people and they are definitely consumers; clothing, food, cars, etc..    - - Donna Poisl

By Patrick Clark

Business leaders often portray U.S. immigration reform as a necessary means to increasing the supply of workers, whether as high-skilled engineers for the technology sector or, say, minimum-wage housekeepers for the hotel industry. A pair of recent polls suggest that small business owners also see immigrants as important customers, job creators, and taxpayers.

In a survey released today by the Main Street Alliance and the American Sustainable Business Council, 82 percent of Democrat small business owners and 62 percent of Republicans supported a road map to citizenship for immigrants already living in the U.S. as well as for future immigrants. Seventy-one percent of the 515 respondents, meanwhile, said that immigration policies should encourage economic integration, and that such policies would strengthen the customer base for small businesses.
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