Immigrants add luster to Metro Detroit
Steve Tobocman
There is nothing like the national press bashing Detroit to get a conversation started.
Whether it's NBC's "Dateline" portrayal of Detroit's abandoned ruins or last month's controversy started by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's "Meet the Press" proposal on immigration, Detroiters take notice when our name hits national news.
In case you missed it, Bloomberg argued that, "if I were the federal government, assuming you could wave a magic wand and pull everybody together, you pass a law letting immigrants come in as long as they agreed to go to Detroit and live there for five or 10 years. Start businesses, take jobs, whatever."
And cue the local debate.
Two years ago, I was commissioned by the New Economy Initiative [[a coalition of 10 of the region's largest foundations), the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, and the Skillman Foundation to study the impacts that immigrants have on our regional economy and job prospects for Detroiters and working families across the region. The Global Detroit study [[available at www.globaldetroit.com) provided some dramatic results and confirmed that immigrants actually create significant economic growth and job opportunities for all of us.
Metro Detroit's immigrant population is among the most talented in the nation and already has made significant and important contributions to our regional economy. Michigan's immigrants are 1 1/2 times as likely to possess a college degree and have started businesses at three times the rate of nonimmigrant Michiganians. They are more than seven times as likely to invent something and apply for an international patent. And Michigan actually ranks third in the country in the share — 32.8 percent — of its high-tech firms created in the last decade that were founded by immigrants. Only California and New Jersey outrank Michigan, yet we are a low-immigration state with roughly 6 percent of our residents being immigrants.
When Detroit was the Silicon Valley of its time at the beginning of the last century, more than one-third of its population was foreign born. The Global Detroit report details immigrants as being uniquely powerful agents of economic development and transformation in Metro Detroit and across the nation.
In fact, much like the European immigrants that invented the patents, developed the products, refined the manufacturing techniques, and worked in the factories that made America the 20th century's industrial leader, modern-day immigrants from every corner of the globe are powering America's success. One-quarter of the National Academy of Sciences is foreign born. Twenty-six percent of all U.S. recipients of the Nobel Prize from 1990-2000 were foreign born. In 2009, eight of the nine Nobel Prize winners in science were Americans, and five of those eight Americans were foreign born. In fact, foreign born Americans won more Nobel Prizes in 2009 than all the other nations of the world combined.
The Global Detroit report has served as the launching point to change the regional conversation and embrace this historic opportunity. To start, a Welcoming Michigan campaign has been launched with generous support of the Ford Foundation. The New Economy Initiative has invested funding in ethnic media to tell the story of immigrant entrepreneurship. In addition, a new partnership is being launched with the University Research Corridor to convince the international students studying at our colleges and universities to join the most talented of their in-state colleagues to look at the economic opportunities that Michigan's information technology, advanced manufacturing, alternative energy and other growing sectors offer.
Continued at: http://detnews.com/article/20110623/...#ixzz1Q7JJ5FPm
