The main point of Jonathan Bowles’ piece Immigrant Entrepreneurism: An Engine for Economic Recovery is that immigrant entrepreneurs are the ones who can, and most likely will, help kick start the city’s economic recovery. Using statistics, historical background, and neighborhood studies, Bowles develops this idea, showing how immigrants have successfully contributed through starting up their own businesses, which have positively impacted their local communities and the general economy. As a result of these new businesses, a variety of jobs in different sectors have popped up and employment has consequently been on the rise. In heavily immigrant communities there has been a tremendous growth in businesses, while in the city the increase has been nominal. Bowles goes on to explain how and why immigrants, who are 30 percent more likely than non-immigrants to start businesses, have not achieved their entrepreneurial potential in New York. Because of limited financial literacy, little credit history, and language barriers, they struggle to expand their businesses, let alone keep them stay afloat. There are ways to help them, Bowles suggests, such as developing a new framework for small businesses in immigrant communities and ensuring that city economic development officials help these immigrants expand their businesses outside of the five boroughs.

While I found this article compelling, I found a major flaw in it. Since the Great Recession in 2007, our economy has been very vulnerable and still needs a great deal of help to return back to its prime in the mid 2000’s. I believe that entrepreneurs would help boost our economy, but not in the immigrant sector specifically, as Bowles points out. We should not limit the focus on immigrant entrepreneurialism, but rather we should broaden the idea to young entrepreneurs in general. Since it is difficult to find a job nowadays, it would behoove both young people and the economy if people fresh out of college were to be creative and start their own businesses: they would not be unemployed but rather self employed, and consequently there would have more employed people contributing to the growth of the economy. The important point is not that immigrants should be the ones who are the entrepreneurs. Rather, if younger people are the ones who are starting new companies, there would be fresh ideas and the market would develop at a faster pace. I am not saying immigrants should not contribute, but instead perhaps the focus should be on young immigrants. Since the market has a chance to start anew after its unfortunate crash in 2007, we must find a way to ensure that the youngest people are entrepreneurs so that there will be a fresh vibrancy in the market that will last for a long time.