For Release Sunday, December 27, 2009
© 2009 Washington Post Writers Group
Are skilled and entrepreneurial immigrants the economic stimulus that America needs? Could lowered barriers help regions like the country’s Rustbelt prosper again?
That’s the audacious case that Cleveland immigration attorney Richard T. Herman and his journalist co-author, Robert L. Smith, make in their new book– “Immigrant Inc.”
The mere thought that immigrants are an American asset, not a liability, puts a whole new face on the Lou Dobbs-style attacks on America’s 12 million undocumented immigrants that CNN so long tolerated, and right-wing media still promote.
The rancor over illegals, Herman and Smith argue, obscures the fact that legal immigrants make up the bulk of America’s foreign-born population. Rather than agonize over youth scaling Mexican border walls, they’d have us focus on the thousands of would-be immigrants standing in consulate lines around the world–and often forced to wait years if not decades to enter the U.S. legally.
That queue of would-be legal migrants, they argue, encompasses “brilliant engineers, high-technology specialists, investors and merchants almost certain to become entrepreneurs.” If our antiquated immigration laws didn’t so often and needlessly exclude them, many more would be arriving to stoke economic activity “in whatever part of America they land.”
The story’s not new. Immigrants were founders of such corporations as Dow Chemical, DuPont, Pfizer, Proctor & Gamble and Carnegie (later U.S.) Steel. And not just yesteryear: immigrants founded Google, Yahoo, Intel, PayPal and YouTube. Since 1995 they’ve formed more than half of new Silicon Valley firms, driving one of the world’s hottest economies.
The problem is we have a dinosaur of an immigration system–one that discriminates against talented scientists and engineers who want to come here. Only nine percent of the coveted “green cards” –immigrant visas for permanent U.S. residency–go to people coming to practice a profession, pursue science or start a company.
It’s as if we weren’t in a fiercely competitive century in which the globe’s most talented mathematicians, engineers and chemists, if they’re excluded here, can as easily choose to form their world-class companies in Banglalore, Beijing, Tel Aviv, Seoul or Singapore.
And the gain’s not just in super-scientists and high-flying corporate successes. Our cities benefit. Immigrant storefronts, University of Massachusetts researchers report, pack the power to spark commercial revivals on poor and lonely streets, their sales of fresh foods, flowers and phone cards generating foot traffic and enhancing safety.
A case in point: the West Philadelphia neighborhood around 52nd and Market Streets, an African-American community fallen on hard times with job losses and violent crime. But Liberian immigrants have been flooding in so that even on weekdays sidewalk tables laden with merchandise stretch on for blocks, selling everything from clothing to watches and sunglasses. Immigrant-run shops, stores and restaurants are proliferating.
There a downside. At least for a time, immigrants may depress wages, especially in the lower-income range. But studies show high-immigrant cities enjoy more robust economies than those with few newcomers–that immigrants and the businesses they create provide rundown neighborhoods with a powerful jolt of new investment and spinoff job opportunities.
New York, Miami, Seattle, Boston all provide evidence that the formula works. But Herman argues such older and lagging cities as Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo and Detroit need a shot of the same adrenaline. He praises a turnaround in Philadelphia, which managed to gain 113,000 immigrants from 2000 to 2006 despite City Hall indifference. By contrast, the new mayor, Michael Nutter, enthusiastically calls Philadelphia “an immigrant-friendly city.” A Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, formed by a citizen activist in 2003, has helped 6,000 immigrants from 86 countries with “English for Entrepreneurs” classes, employment, business and accounting courses.
It’s high time, Herman says, for the businesses and allied forces of the Midwest to press Congress to create a Great Lakes “High Skill Immigration Zone” to let the frostbelt cities more easily recruit skilled immigrants. The thicket of federal regulations restricting entry by skilled foreigners would be thinned for the region, with a goal of fresh start-ups and easier job recruitment to help its cities and metros start excelling in such emerging areas as biotechnology and clean and renewable energy technology.
Thirty chambers of commerce of the Great Lakes Region–Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and Youngstown among them, last year, at Herman’s urging, endorsed high skill immigration zones as critical to their growth. A new organization, Global Detroit, has been formed to research and then press for ways to make America’s hardest-hit major metro region more attractive to a range of migrants from many countries.
Smarter immigration policies–national, regional, city–don’t mean throwing the doors wide open to any and all comers any time. But it’s also true: we’ve never more acutely needed a steady flow of the world’s skilled and strivers–newest believers in the American Dream, a virtually guaranteed stimulus to our economy and to our creative capacity for this century.
Neal Peirce’s e-mail is npeirce@citistates.com.
For reprints of Neal Peirce’s column, please contact Washington Post Permissions, c/o PARS International Corp., WPPermissions@parsintl.com, fax 212-221-9195. For newspaper syndication sales, Washington Post Writers Group, 202-334-5375, wpwgsales@washpost.com.
5 Comments
This is a great book to have publicized through this column. I am sure there would be many a worthy PhD dissertation that could explore different aspects of immigrant-led city revitalization.
It reminded me of the stories I have read, the anecdotes I have been told and the experiences I have had in America’s checkerboard cities of good and bad neighbourhoods. Many years ago I was introduced to Greektown in Detroit, a small area, an island in a sea of decay, made safe and brought to life at night by a conglomeration of Greek restaurants. Later on in the 1980s I spent a whole afternoon in MacArthur Park in LA, just talking to the Mexican families crowded into that space having Sunday family picnics and how welcome they made me feel and how it so changed my perception of what LA symbolizes.
And there were the stories of the Puerto Ricans moving in to areas of NYC and sitting out on their stoops bringing life and friendliness to previously not so friendly streets (not that this was always understood or welcomed by existing residents). And then there were the stories of the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the waves of immigrants that passed through that area, Jewish, Irish, Italian, and how when the social fabric of those immigrant communities remained strong and intact, the crime rate was very low, something not missed by the US Bureau of the Census in its musings on how such high density areas could possibly have such positive social features (coming as they were from an anti-density tradition).
Your column also brings a welcome reminder of what immigration has done for the cities of my own country, Australia. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s all Australian kids ate “meat and three veg” as it later became known. The one or two Chinese restaurants that existed in Perth at the time were places of enormous mystery and even fear for children, brought up as we were on outlandish stories of the dangers posed to Australia’s security by that part of the world.
Half my friends in this era were kids from Italian immigrant families who made wonderful home made tomato sauce in their garages and graced our neighbourhoods with the scent of previously unknown pasta dishes and who grew vegetables in their front and backyards, a welcome break from the rows of neat and tidy and unsustainable expanses of European lawns.
I shudder to think where Australian cities would be today without the southern European, Asian and other waves of immigration that have so diversified the streetscapes of Australian inner cities with their lively shopfronts and wonderful cuisine, not to mention enlarging our understanding and appreciation of the rest of the world outside of its British colonial origins.
When one wanders around places like the bazaars in Cairo, the streets of Istanbul, and what is left of the old parts of Shanghai, to name just three of countless other places in the world, one realizes the incredible vitality, colour, diversity, work ethic and gregarious character of so many urban cultures worldwide with their very public and interactive, street-oriented traditions… and of course their capacity to diversify and revitalize local economies.
It brings home how much the poorer we become when we are not embracing more creatively and enthusiastically such potential in our own cities of perhaps less “exotic” origins. And it also raises the issue of how to constructively acknowledge, harness and honour the incredible potential and contribution of our own indigenous population, the original custodians of the land, something Australia has so poorly done for much too long.
Thanks again for the column and the alert about the book. I hope it wakes up some positive policy responses.
Sincerely
Jeff Kenworthy
Comment received from Tom Ryugo
One need only look at Silicon Valley to see the value of immigrants. Starting in the late 70s, it was Vietnamese immigrants fleeing oppression who formed the backbone of Silicon Valley. They took many of the manual labor jobs in the new high-tech firms. Those companies needed people to do assembly work as well as packaging. The Vietnamese were the hardest working and most dependable – they showed up on time, worked hard, and didn’t complain. By contrast, many native-born Americans thought the work was beneath them or weren’t dependable. In time, the Vietnamese also became technicians, engineers, and scientists at the same kinds of high tech firms or ran businesses.
In more recent years, immigrants from India, Taiwan, and China have also contributed heavily to Silicon Valley success. Many electronics, software, and biotechnology firms employ not only Chinese and Indian scientists, technicians, and engineers but product managers and sales reps. Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs would squawk but the fact is that without immigrants, Silicon Valley would grind to a halt.
The less pretty side of immigration is also on display. Immigrants from Latin America often take the menial jobs that require little education: food service, landscaping, and janitorial services. There is less of an emphasis on education among the Latino communities too so there’s a higher drop-out rate and fewer Latino faces seen among the professional classes in Silicon Valley firms.
In any case, the idiocy of our immigration laws is all too evident. Unfortunately, too many people believe in the Limbaugh/Beck/Buchanan/Dobbs view of immigrants to be especially optimistic about immigration reform.
I couldn’t agree more. The H-1B and Green Card process are ridiculous and do so much more to turn highly educated immigrants away from the U.S., instead of encouraging them to stay in the U.S.
I agree that our next generation of craftsmen will come from immigrant labor, however, we need something for them to build and/or repair and it is not ipods and blackberries. In a speech by then Secretary of Energy Bodman in 2008, http://www.energy.gov/print/6646.htm, describes the jobs and raw materials needed to construct “one” nuclear power plant. The article states that more than 1,400 jobs are needed during construction with peak employment ranging as high as 2,400. The operation generates 400-700 permanent jobs, from nuclear scientists and engineers to skilled craftspeople, construction managers, plant operators and maintenance persinnel. These jobs will pay 40% more than average salaries. In addition it takes the same amount of steel and concrete to build a nuclear power plant as it does to build “the Empire State Building.” These are the direct jobs and materials for a nuclear plant and thousands of jobs to provide the raw materials and the goods and services necessary to support this work force. This is so clear to me and my scientific and engineering friends that I can’t understand why President Obama doesn’t force the release of permits for the 26 Nuclear Power plants current under processing.
Robert Justice
Kingwood, Texas
Message from Donald J. DeSalvo, A General Partner, The Cafaro Northwest Partnership, Puyallup, WA 98373
As a grandson of immigrants from Russia and Italy, I totally agree that the value in mining the immigrant asset is prudent and necessary if not imperative. I have maintained for years from the R side of the isle that the issue is not the people who came and continue to live and work here (with wet backs or dusty pre-curser’s to Birkenstocks). The vast majority came to find work and, in my opinion are to be commended for wanting to take care of family and make a better life for themselves. The intent and the good they bring as workers is not the issue. The issue is how they got here and how they stay and the consequences of being “illegal.” Making money and a good living is the US way. Cheating is not (although Bernie M. would disagree) whether it be at the hands of the middle class that have not cut a lawn for the 25 years we have been living in the Wall Street Fantasy Bubble that was created by Wall Street cheaters (another story but part of the big picture) or the good folks at Tyson’s and other such venues that hire these folk at wages far below market. So, I say, give all illegal’s one year to register, as my grandparents did at Ellis Island–they can go to any US Post Office–have photo’s and fingerprints taken. For doing this they get a special visa which would entitle them to stay in the US for three years during which they must find a legal tax paying job. Then they have two additional years (five years total) before they are required to take a test to become a US Citizen–in English. If during this time period they commit a felony or a background check finds them to be felons, either here or in the Country of Origin, then, back to where you came from–here’s your ticket. This way, we will keep in tact the families that are here that have children and grandchildren that are citizens at birth in the US. Hell, just in the SS, FICA, Hospitalization that will now have to be paid by employers and the new employees, not to mention the Workman’s Compensation and other issues that will now be resolved, we can save billions of dollars while we receive billions of dollars in taxes paid by new “legal residents.” We keep the best and the bums get tossed out. No appeal, no argument of law. If there is an appeal, it would be filed from by them from their homeland and not from an address in the US. So yes, I agree that there is a tremendous value in the folks who are here illegally. Make them legal and lets profit from their zeal and desire to get ahead. God knows our kids are going to have a hard time making a living with their skills in baseball, soccer, basketball, swimming, bowling, lacrosse, golf, volleyball, skiing, surfing, all extreme sports, video games, Facebook, My Space, texting and all the other skills they have honed to a fine edge. We will need these folk to be our salvation, we will and do need all the help these folks can give us. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa.