Immigrant households earned nearly $8 billion in 2016 and contributed $2.5 billion to local, state, and federal taxes in 2016, according to a new research brief released by New American Economy in partnership with the City of Dallas.

In addition to their financial contributions, the report shows the critical role the foreign-born population plays in the Dallas workforce. Immigrants make up a significant portion of several of the area’s most important industries, including science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), manufacturing and construction. Immigrants also account for nearly one-third of all entrepreneurs in the city. The more than 20,000 immigrant entrepreneurs in Dallas generated close to $496 million in business income in 2016.

The research also finds that immigrants eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are making significant economic contributions. More than 93 percent of the DACA eligible population in the Dallas metro area are employed, contributing $161 million in taxes and holding nearly $700 million in spending power.

The brief, New Americans in Dallas, finds:

• Immigrant households earned $7.9 billion in 2016. Of that, foreign-born households contributed $1.9 billion in federal taxes and $591.1 million in state and local taxes. They were left with $5.4 billion in spending power.
• Immigrant households support federal social programs. The foreign-born contributed $847.7 million to Social Security and $218.9 million to Medicare.
• A quarter of the population, immigrants were responsible for 40 percent of overall population growth from 2011 to 2016.
• Immigrants account for nearly one third of the city’s entrepreneurs. Despite making up 24 percent of the overall population, immigrants represented 32.2 percent of entrepreneurs in Dallas in 2016. The 20,405 immigrants who own their own business generated $495.9 million in business income.
• Immigrants helped to preserve 14,617 local manufacturing jobs in 2016. Because of the role immigrants play in the workforce helping companies keep jobs local, by 2016 immigrants living in Dallas had helped create or preserve more than 14,000 manufacturing jobs that would have otherwise vanished or moved elsewhere.
• The DACA-eligible population in Dallas contributed $161 million in taxes and held nearly $700 million in spending power. In 2016, the 63,396 immigrants eligible for DACA—of whom 93.4 percent were employed—contributed $89 million in federal taxes and $72 million in state and local taxes, leaving them with $698.6 million in spending power.

Read the full research brief here.