Any taxi-riding, bodega-shopping, laundromat-using New Yorker knows that immigrants own many of the businesses that make New York tick. Now a new study shows that while immigrants constitute just over a third of the city's population, they make up nearly half of the city's small-business owners.

The study, published Monday by the Fiscal Policy Institute and based on census data, found that more than 69,000 New York City business owners - about 48 percent of the total - are foreign born. These immigrant entrepreneurs hail from around the world and run companies in every sector of the economy. But in certain lines of business, including dry cleaning, taxi services and grocery stores, the study shows that immigrant owners dominate.

"When you think of New York neighborhoods, you think about the stores and restaurants and groceries," said David Dyssegaard Kallick, a senior fellow at the institute - a union-supported, nonpartisan research and advocacy group. "Those are the kinds of small businesses where immigrants are playing a particularly strong role."

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