PITTSBURGH -- The following is the fifth part of a special series called "Local Economy And Your Money" on WTAE Channel 4 Action News in Pittsburgh.

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With its shrinking local population, the Pittsburgh area's best hope for a bright future may rest on the shoulders of people who haven't even made it to the United States yet.

There are thousands of foreign-born people living and working in the Pittsburgh region, but not as many as in other parts of the country.

Channel 4 Action News reporter Bob Mayo met people from all over the world who call our city home and found out what brought them here.

Watch Bob Mayo's Report

When immigration makes national headlines, the spotlight is often on illegal immigration, or whether controversial visas are costing American workers their jobs. But Mayo looked at something different: the potential for new, naturalized citizens to help get Pittsburgh's economy growing.

Metro Pittsburgh's population is shrinking, and deaths outnumber births. Barry Balmat, the Pittsburgh director of the Rand Corp. think tank, believes immigrants can bring Pittsburgh new life.

"Return to growth in the population, instead of a decline in population," Balmat said.

The faces of immigrant Pittsburgh a century ago can be seen at Heinz Regional History Center, where curator Nicholas Ciotola said our region's economy is built on waves of immigrants.

"In 1907, the city of Pittsburgh had more immigrants than at any other period in its history," Ciotola said. "If you walked down a street of the city of Pittsburgh, one of four people that you encountered would have been born somewhere else."

Pittsburgh's 250 newest naturalized U.S. citizens have settled here from 64 countries, swearing allegiance to America and making our city home.

"It is the freedom and the choices," said Mohamed Sulaiman, who moved from Malaysia to Penn Hills. "You can be anything you want to be here if you put your heart and mind into it."

Today, just 3 percent of people in metro Pittsburgh -- a little more than 71,000 -- are foreign-born, compared to 12.5 percent nationally.

Martha Benson came to Pittsburgh from Bogota, Colombia, in 2002. She's a business consultant at the Duquesne University Small Business Development Center, assisting fellow immigrant entrepreneurs.

"They have a lot of skills, and they see Pittsburgh as an opportunity to start their company," Benson said.

"They're kind of the natural strivers," Balmat said. "They do make up a large percentage of entrepreneurs -- people who are kind of willing to take chances. They've packed up and left someplace to come here."

Entrepreneur and investment manager Ganesh Mani, a Pittsburgher who was born in India, is on the local board of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs).

"Pittsburgh has wonderful infrastructure -- the universities, the airport -- but it's also underutilized infrastructures. So, from an entrepreneurial standpoint, that's where the opportunities are," Mani said.

The top five birthplaces for today's foreign-born Pittsburgh-area residents are India, with 7,800 people relocated here, followed by Latin American countries (7,000), China (6,500), Italy (5,600) and African countries (4,400).

Experts see a link between the immigrants of Pittsburgh's industrial past and their 21st-century counterparts.

"They were looking for jobs in industrial Pittsburgh -- in the coal mines, in the steel mills," Ciotola said. "Today, immigrants coming to Pittsburgh are in search of the same opportunities, the same hopes and dreams of immigrants of yesteryear."

The team at Google's office in the Collaborative Innovation Center on Carnegie Mellon University's campus includes software engineers John Wong, of Hong Kong; Haakan Younes, of Sweden; and Alona Fyshe, of Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada.

"I think Pittsburgh has a lot of young people going to school and a lot of older people with families, and I'm sort of in between there, so it was hard to find my niche at first," Fyshe said.

"It's a very convenient city to live in because you can live very centrally, and you know it's affordable," Younes said.

"It's growing on me," Wong said. "I like Pittsburgh because the people are very kind."

Six out of 10 immigrants to Pittsburgh now arrive here with college degrees. That's the largest proportion in the U.S.

"You start to meet people. This is the magic of Pittsburgh and networking," Benson said.

"Typically, entrepreneurs tend to be a little bit more creative," Mani said. "They think out of the box. They tend to utilize the underutilized infrastructure."

Organizations that help new arrivals include the Pittsburgh Refugee and Immigrant Assistance Center and the Welcome Center for Immigrants and Internationals.

"And in time, they will make the same contributions to this region that immigrants of 100 years ago made," Ciotola said.

The Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh and other groups are planning a "Global Pittsburgh Celebration" in September. It's going to spotlight members of Pittsburgh's international community who are playing a role in enhancing the life and economy of our area.

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