WASHINGTON DC, June 11, 2025 -- As Los Angeles endures the fallout from immigration raids targeting working families, new research by the American Immigration Council highlights the vital role immigrants play in sustaining and strengthening America’s largest cities.

Click on “Metro Area” on the map to see the new research.

Los Angeles has the second-largest immigrant population among America’s metro areas. One in four U.S. citizens lives with an immigrant parent there. As communities respond to the chaos and fear that resulted from June 6 worksite raids, the Council’s research shows how U.S. cities like L.A. are benefiting significantly from having large immigrant populations. This underscores the need for policies that protect immigrant families, instead of ramping up indiscriminate detention and deportation operations -- as proposed in Congress’s current spending bill. 

Explore more Los Angeles data here. 

Findings from the Council’s new research, which draws from 2023 census data, include:

• The 4.2 million immigrants in metro Los Angeles help drive prosperity in California and beyond: they paid $56.5 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2023.

• Los Angeles’s immigrant community plays a vital role in caretaking. At least two in five nurses and half of all health aides are immigrants. 

• Immigrants play a critical role in building more homes to ease L.A.’s housing crisis: over half of the city’s construction workforce are immigrants. 

• Immigrant entrepreneurs are creating jobs and strengthening the economy in L.A. and beyond. There are 425,400 immigrant entrepreneurs in metro L.A., making up nearly half of all entrepreneurs in the metro area, generating $13 billion in business income.

• Immigrants play an outsized role in driving innovation and technological breakthroughs. Immigrants made up more than one in three STEM workers in metro L.A.

“Immigrants are not a threat to our communities; they are the backbone of them,” said Nan Wu, director of research at the American Immigration Council. “In Los Angeles and cities across the country, immigrants are building homes, caring for our families, launching businesses, and driving innovation. If we want stronger, more resilient cities, the path forward is clear: protect immigrant families and invest in their success.”

Click on “Metro Area” on the map in order to explore other cities.

The Council’s new research on America’s 100 largest metro areas also includes insights on how immigrants strengthen cities that were among those included on a now-unpublished list of “sanctuary jurisdictions,” briefly hosted on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) website. Notable findings include:

• Immigrants play a critical role in funding our public services and infrastructure. In the 100 largest metro areas in the U.S., immigrant households paid over $577.4 billion in taxes in 2023. 

• Even as the U.S. economy is slowing down, immigrant entrepreneurs are generating jobs. Across the country’s top 100 metro areas, 29.8 percent of business owners were immigrants, generating $98.2 billion in business income.

• Immigrants are key to easing labor shortages in the healthcare industry. Immigrants made up 20.7 percent of nurses working in the country’s 100 largest metro areas. In so-called “sanctuary” cities like Las Vegas, Washington D.C., and San Francisco, at least one in three nurses are immigrants. 

Please reach out to the Council for additional insight on data from a particular metro area.