The number of foreign-born owners of New York City-area small businesses grew by 66 percent between 1990 and 2010, but the city still placed behind Miami and Los Angeles, according to a report released Thursday.

Lead author David Dyssegaard Kallick attributed the growth to increases in the overseas-born population during the same period.

“Immigrants are playing a bigger role, in step with their increase in the population,” according to Kallick, a senior fellow at the Fiscal Policy Institute and director of its immigration research initiative.

The report showed that there were about 78,000 overseas-born small-business owners in 1990 — 26 percent of the 300,000 small business owners in the region, which encompasses New York City and more than a dozen nearby counties.

In 2010, the number of immigrants owning small businesses increased to 130,000, meaning they represented 36 percent of the 364,000 small-business owners in the area.

That means New York has the third-highest number of overseas-born small-business owners of 25 large US  metropolitan areas.

Miami — where immigrants represent 45 percent of small-businesses owners — tops the list, followed by Los Angeles, with 44 percent.

To read more, go to The Wall Street Journal