Accounting for just 6.3 percent of the overall population, immigrants were responsible for nearly a quarter of overall population growth in the Indianapolis region between 2009 and 2014, and held $2.3 billion in spending power in 2014 alone.

The brief, New Americans in Indianapolis, finds:

• Immigrants contributed $9.2 billion to the GDP of Greater Indianapolis in 2014. They also paid $522 million in federal taxes and $290 million in state and local taxes, and held more than $2.3 in spending power.
• Growth in the foreign-born population accounted for 24 percent of overall population growth between 2009 and 2014.
• Due to an increase in foreign-born residents, total housing values in the metro area increased by $6.6 billion between 2000 and 2014.
• There were 7,241 immigrant entrepreneurs in the Greater Indianapolisarea in 2014, and together, they earned $136 million in business income that year.
• Because of the role immigrants play in the workforce, helping companies keep jobs on U.S. soil, immigrants living in Greater Indianapolis in 2014 helped create or preserve 5,740 local manufacturing jobs that would have otherwise vanished or moved elsewhere.
• Immigrants play an outsize role in Greater Indianapolis’ key industries, accounting for over 15 percent of workers in the recreation and accommodation industry, 14 percent of construction workers, and 11 percent of manufacturing workers.
• In the fall of 2014, 2,815 students enrolled in colleges and universities in the metro area were international students, and together they supported 1,103 local jobs.

Read the full research brief here.