Joel Kotkin

Immigration is good for the economy, argues Joel Kotkin in the following viewpoint. The higher-than-average birth rates among immigrants, as well as an entrepreneurial spirit among the most recent newcomers, is helping to counteract America’s current economic recession, Kotkin claims. Immigrants provide a growing consumer market for the technical, energy, and financial services industries, and foreign-born entrepreneurs are starting up small manufacturing, retail, and service businesses, he contends. Kotkin is a senior fellow at the Davenport Institute for Public Policy at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, California.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. According to Kotkin, why have the assets of Houston’s Royal Oaks Bank increased since 2001?
2. What percentage of the businesses in Nick Patel’s suburban property developments are occupied by immigrants, according to...