March 15, 2022
Atlanta, GA
2021
Overall Score
4.08
Policy Score
3.67
Socioeconomic Score
4.50
Atlanta scores 4.08, owing to its strengths in Legal Support, Economic Prosperity, and Livability. The Economic Empowerment and Inclusivity categories offer some room for growth.
Atlanta is a global city on the rise. It boasts the fourth most Fortune 500 companies in America, and has experienced the largest entrepreneurial growth in the nation over the last decade, including more than 60,600 immigrant entrepreneurs. Part of what makes the city so attractive to multi-national companies and business owners from around the world is the city’s commitment to cultural diversity.
“We attract a diverse crowd of immigrants and Americans,” says Jennifer Gerndt, who directs the Goethe-Zentrum, Atlanta’s German Cultural Center. “And our staff is similarly varied. We represent dozens of countries among us. The one thing we all have in common, however, is that we love being part of an organization that welcomes everyone and encourages us all to step out of our local communities and be a part of a global community.”
It’s not surprising then, that Atlanta ranks 14th in New American Economy’s Cities Index, which rates the American cities most welcoming to immigrants. The metro area scored especially high in the category of Community, which looks at efforts to facilitate interactions and improve awareness between immigrants and American-born citizens.
At the Cultural Center, for example, Gerndt oversees events and services, which include everything from language classes and career training to wine tastings and art exhibits.
Gerndt agrees that building lasting ties between Atlanta’s foreign- and American-born residents is important. It helps foreign-born residents adapt to American life, while creating opportunities for Americans to learn about new cultures. “And that opens your worldview and makes life just a little more interesting and colorful,” she says. She calls this a “harmonious blending of cultures.”
[This] harmonious blending of cultures […] opens your worldview and makes life just a little more interesting and colorful.”
Case in point: The center held World Cup viewing parties, and even though Germany was eliminated and the Unites States wasn’t competing, more than 300 people still showed up to cheer on the remaining teams. “It was a great reminder that the United States and Germany are only part of the big picture,” says Gerndt.
Shortly after Lucia Jennings arrived in Valdosta, Georgia, from Rio de Janeiro to attend nursing school in 1975, someone from the local chamber of commerce knocked on her apartment door with a care package of maps, directories and a guide to the area’s best doctors. “I will never forget that,” says Jennings, now in her mid 60s. “It was such a simple act, and it made me feel so welcomed to the community.” She says the sentiment behind that gesture is a far cry from the hostile public discourse surrounding immigrants today. “Now there’s such a disconnect,” she says. “As we listen to so much noise, we have forgotten how so many people have contributed.”
Jennings soon married an American citizen and didn’t have to worry about her residency status. Still, she felt like an outsider who had to educate Americans about the Brazilian people and culture. “When I introduced myself, I often felt like people didn’t know that I was from a huge country with a rich culture,” she says. “I wanted them to know there was another Latin America besides Mexico. In response, Jennings created the Brazilian American Society and started organizing a Brazilian Carnival party, along with educational seminars at local schools. She also helped start the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce, to “change the perception that Brazil wasn’t just a place to play soccer, but also to do business.” She once even gathered thousands of signatures to convince Delta Airlines to add a Rio de Janeiro route.
We’re turning our back on kids who’ve grown up in this society, and these are people who are contributing.
In 1991, Lucia was hired by a global beverage retailer in Atlanta to assist engineers with the construction of a manufacturing plant in Brazil. She rose through the ranks, becoming global manager for ingredients, all while earning undergraduate and graduate degrees. “I work very hard, and I try to work smart focusing on my own goals,” she says. “I’m tenacious, and I’ve learned how to reinvent myself in the many roles I’ve been given or applied for.” In 2007, Atlanta Magazine named her one of the 55 “Most Influential Foreign-Born Atlantans.”
Jennings would like to see immigration reform that gives undocumented immigrants the opportunity to make social and economic contributions without fear of reprisal. “It’s tough if you don’t have the right papers to be accepted into society,” she says. “We’re turning our back on kids who’ve grown up in this society, and these are people who are contributing. They need to have direction.” She doesn’t agree with current policy that threatens deportation. Rather, the United States needs to embrace the people who are already here and more strictly control the number of future immigrants. “We have to look at this in a holistic way,” she says, but also in a more human way. “We let people into this country. We pay them to work, and then we don’t want them.” Jennings says she is a testament to the power of what one woman can achieve when she feels wanted.
Back in his native country of India, Dr. Raghupathy Sivakumar says he always dreamed of working for Microsoft or Oracle. “But here,” he says of the United States, “I fell in love with academia.” Dr. Sivakumar, who goes by Siva, did his undergraduate studies in computer science in Chennai, on India’s southeast coast. He quickly realized, however, that he wanted to venture elsewhere. “If I wanted to be at the cutting-edge of my research field,” he explains, “it was a no brainer: I had to be in the States.”
So, in 1996, he packed up his bags in steamy Chennai and moved to Illinois to pursue a PhD degree in computer science at the University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign. “The first winter I spent there it got to negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit,” Siva recalls. But he says he never had doubts. “I was just thrilled to be at a school that had been involved in producing some of the world’s first computers,” he says. While there, Siva made the most of the opportunity—penning published research and working with DARPA, the advanced research agency for the U.S. Department of Defense. He earned his PhD in just four years. Almost immediately afterwards, Siva joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as a faculty member in electrical and computer engineering department, with a research focus on wireless networks and mobile computing.
Siva says he was drawn to Georgia Tech by Atlanta’s research climate and the top students and postdocs that train at the school. Soon, with the help of such students, Siva’s lab was making breakthroughs. In his early years at Georgia Tech, Siva and his team developed Asankya, a cloud storage network that made it dramatically faster to transfer large data files over the Internet. The data giant EMC bought the company in 2011. Siva says the experience helped him realize the value of entrepreneurship. “It is an amazing moment when you see someone using a product that you built,” he says. The Asankya work also created jobs: Fifteen engineers are still working on the product at an office in Atlanta, half of them U.S.-born. Siva has also participated in the creation of two other start-ups – EGT and StarMobile, both venture-funded as well just like Asankya.
One of the students who founded Asankya with me, he has not gotten his green card, and he is easily one of the best computer engineers I know.
Siva left his experience with Asankya eager to share his start-up knowledge more widely with the students at Georgia Tech. So, he went to the faculty of the school and got their support to start CREATE-X, a campus-wide initiative for student entrepreneurship that formally launched last year. Since CREATE-X’s inception, Siva has already worked with over 40 student start-ups. This year alone, CREATE-X is working with 21. CREATE-X’s ultimate goal is to nurture 100 student start-ups a year.
Siva says through CREATE-X he hopes to make start-ups—and the skills of entrepreneurship more broadly—part of the fabric of undergraduate life. CREATE-X ushers undergraduates through the entrepreneurial process. First students learn the basic tenets of building start-ups. Then they identify a technology barrier and apply for research grants. Finally, they launch a product and chart a path to market.
Siva singles out a couple of breakout start-ups that are on promising expansion paths. Replantable, which he fondly calls a “kitchen-to-table” company, makes an appliance that that grows vegetables in an indoor microclimate. Grubbly Farm, another one of the CREATE-X start-ups, has developed a way to collect organic waste and use it to feed livestock. The company is already working with organic farms in the Atlanta area. And Gimme Vending, one of CREATE-X’s first start-ups, has devised a way to reduce fraud in vending machine collection by using a dongle to collect data on sales, a process once done mostly with pen and paper. After starting with just two founders, Gimme Vending now has over six employees and continues to grow.
But, despite the success of CREATE-X’s work, Siva continues to see one barrier that falls in the way of some of his students’ success: The complications of the U.S. immigration system, especially as it concerns entrepreneurs. “One of the students who founded Asankya with me, he has not gotten his green card,” Siva explains, “And he is easily one of the best computer engineers I know.” That engineer, an Indian native, had his application significantly delayed because of rules that limit the number of green cards that can go to individuals from any one country each year. He’s already waited seven years to get a status that would allow him to remain in the country long-term. “He has a family,” Siva says, “And that uncertainty impacts all of them.”
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