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Credit: RenewOurEconomy.org Foreign-born entrepreneurship spurs job creation and small business revenue in the U.S., yet a new study indicates that immigrant start-ups are on the verge of decline for the first time in a decade.

Written by the project's team of researchers based in prestigious business schools and universities on almost every continent, this important book begins the process of discovering why and how female driven business start-ups often seem to spontaneously emerge in adverse environments. Is it randomness, luck, or chance that determine success or failure, or vital critical forces and the inherent qualities of the women involved? The research emerging from the FIE project points to answers to questions about the integration of immigrant communities, their interaction with host economic and business environments, and the role of women in that interaction.

I first wrote about this in an essay entitled, “The browning of the American farm,” an article published in High Country News and reprinted in Colorado Central Magazine in 2000. In that article I noted how the family farm was in declined among white Americans; however, the number of Latina/o owned and operated farms was increasing at a dramatic pace and in Washington State increased by more than 300 percent during that decade. Many of these farmers are Mexicans and a good portion is people from indigenous backgrounds.