Columns

Washington / Michigan

Needing Help from Congress
to Welcome Immigrants

by Sarah Kellogg
December 19, 2011

As states around the country enact policies increasingly hostile to immigrants, Gov. Rick Snyder wants to throw open Michigan’s doors. The governor wisely sees the critical connection between economic productivity and a thoughtful immigration policy that welcomes rather than shuns immigrants.

When Snyder unveiled his Global Michigan Initiative in late November as part of a special message on talent development, he announced he would actively lobby Congress to adopt legislation to earmark more visas for highly educated foreign students, as well as for moneyed foreign entrepreneurs.

The Republican governor called it the right thing to do, despite the stance of many in his party.

“We’re setting a different course than most of the rest of the United States,” Snyder said. “I’m proactive on immigration — legal immigration for advanced-degree people. They come and get a fabulous Michigan education, and we have a federal environment that basically says, ‘now that we’ve educated you, you’ve got to leave.’”

For a country that was built by immigrants, the antipathy toward both legal and illegal immigration over the last century and a half has always seemed self-serving, narrow and prejudiced. Immigrants are the villains whenever Americans feel threatened, yet the great majority of them have a long history of being good and productive citizens. They learn English, buy homes, find progressively better jobs and seek citizenship. Closing the door after “your people” have come through Ellis Island was shortsighted in the 20th century and still is today.

And now more than ever, the U.S. has an economic imperative to finding a middle ground on immigration and keeping its doors open. More than 70 of the 300-plus Americans who have won Nobel prizes since 1901 were immigrants. And about 40 percent of U.S. doctorates in science and engineering go to immigrants. Snyder is not wrong when he calls immigrants “job creators,” something both Michigan and the U.S. need to jumpstart the economy.

Michigan has another reason to want legal immigrants to come to its shores — population. Michigan’s shrinking head count is so obvious that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested last May that Michigan leaders should recruit immigrants from states where they feel under attack and encourage them to be urban homesteaders to repopulate Detroit.

“I’d go as fast as I could to recruit immigrants who are already here,” Bloomberg said. At first the idea sounded like a joke, but what’s wrong with drawing talented immigrants who have been spurned in other states to fill critical jobs in Michigan?

Snyder’s approach to immigration isn’t a blank check for illegal immigrants. He’s not interested in attracting illegal, low-skilled immigrants to the state, although Michigan could use any and all help, unfortunately.

Chief among Snyder’s proposals is eliminating the federal cap on H1-B visas for highly trained immigrants. In his November speech he noted that caps on H1-B visas fail “to recognize the harm done to local economies when states are forced to send away talent they have spent years developing.”

The H1-B visa is available to those living abroad who want to enter the U.S. and to those who are studying here and want to change their visa status. There are 65,000 of these visas available annually.

Once the cap is met, there are no H1-B visas available for the rest of the year unless Congress lifts the cap, which it frequently does because the cap is often reached in April. Yes, April. There also are 20,000 additional H1-B visas available under the Advanced Degree Exemption (ADE) to foreign graduates of U.S. universities with a master’s degree or higher.

To address the advanced degree issue, Snyder is asking Congress to create a track for foreign students who graduate with degrees in science, technology, engineering or math to earn an “education green card,” which would open the door to permanent U.S. residency.

Snyder also called on federal officials to revamp the EB-5 program, which grants visas to foreign nationals who invest $1 million or more to start a business and create 10 U.S. jobs. He’d like Congress to set the threshold at $500,000 and five jobs.

It’s a balanced and business-oriented approach. Snyder’s plan recognizes the problems Michigan faces and plots a course toward solving some of them with immigrants who are willing to settle in a state that has been abandoned by hundreds of thousands of former residents.

Snyder’s advocacy on immigration echoes the work of another Michigander, former U.S. Sen. Spencer Abraham, who championed visa reforms during his six years in the Senate in the 1990s. Abraham was a frequent advocate for lifting H1-B visa caps to ensure that talented foreign students and skilled foreign workers were able to stay in this country.

Like Abraham, Snyder is tapping into the business community’s deep discontent with a U.S. visa system that severely limits their access to skilled workers.

Not everyone agrees with this approach. A November report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Jobs Americans Can’t Do?: The Myth of a Skilled Labor Shortage, concludes that the United States has an ample supply of workers skilled in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and doesn’t need to recruit overseas workers or foreign students.

“Visa programs that were originally designed to complement the American labor force are being used as a wedge to displace large numbers of American workers, or to artificially depress their wages,” said Dan Stein, FAIR’s president, in a written statement.

Snyder’s best chance to influence the national immigration debate is through a bill pending in the U.S. Senate introduced by Sens. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and John Kerry (D-MA). The StartUp Visa Act of 2011 would give immigrant entrepreneurs three options for entry or to stay in the United States, all built around raising money to start new companies.

It also would give foreign students a route to a visa if they could raise capital to fund a U.S. business.

Focusing on business creation is a smart move because immigrants have a long history of entrepreneurship. A Duke University study shows that more than 25 percent of technology and engineering firms started in the U.S. since the mid-1990s had at least one immigrant founder. Some of these household names include Google, Intel, Yahoo and eBay.

Snyder’s advocacy doesn’t start and end in Washington. He has been critical of anti-immigration proposals introduced in the state legislature, most prominently two controversial proposals that ape bills enacted in other states. He opposes legislation that would allow police to ask the immigration status of individuals if they suspect someone might be here illegally, and a bill that would require businesses to use a federal database to verify an employment candidate’s immigration status.

Most Michiganders need look no further back than a generation or two to find a family member who came to the U.S. from a distant shore to build a new life and raise a family. Their contributions made Michigan what it is today, and they could be at the heart of its economic revival.

Snyder has brought the spirit of moderation to the volatile immigration debate. Now, we can only hope that Congress will listen and act.

Sarah Kellogg covered the Michigan congressional delegation and the federal government as the chief Washington correspondent for Booth Newspapers for 14 years. Before joining the Washington Bureau, Sarah covered state politics and government in the Booth Newspapers Lansing Bureau and directed Lansing coverage for United Press International. She helped launch MIRS’ Capitol Capsule, and served as its first writer and editor. A regular Dome columnist, she currently works as a freelance writer and editor for regional and national publications.