What are the contributions immigrants make to communities in Florida?
The American Immigration Council has extensive data on the population size, educational and citizenship attainment, English proficiency levels, and tax contributions of Florida’s immigrant population.
The Council’s fact sheet, Immigrants in Florida, shows that one in five Florida residents is an immigrant, together making up more than a fourth of the state’s labor force.
The fact sheets also reveals that in 2014, Immigrant-led households in the state paid $17 billion in federal taxes and $6.4 billion in state and local taxes. As consumers, immigrant-led households spent $73.1 billion on Florida’s economy.
Other findings indicate that immigrant entrepreneurs in Florida generated $5.6 billion in business revenue in 2015. Immigrants accounted for 61.6 percent of business owners in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale/Miami Beach metropolitan area, 23.7 percent in the Orlando metro area, and 21.7 percent in the Tampa/St. Petersburg/Clearwater metro area.
In 2015, Florida was home to 2 million women, 1.8 million men, and 219,060 children who were immigrants. The top countries of origin for immigrants were Cuba (22.8 percent of immigrants), Haiti (8.3 percent), Mexico (6.8 percent), Colombia (6 percent), and Jamaica (5 percent).
In 2016, 2.5 million people in Florida (12.5 percent of the state’s population) were native-born Americans who had at least one immigrant parent.