Immigrants can inspire innovation
"Could Silicon Valley become another Detroit?" asks an essay in the Feb. 2 edition of Newsweek magazine.
This was not meant as a compliment. Detroit's name was invoked, as it so often is, to conjure an image of bleak, post-apocalyptic desolation.
"One Detroit is enough," echoed Thomas Friedman in his New York Times column Wednesday.
Astute historians, of course, know that Silicon Valley is already another Detroit -- a bustling hub of innovation and wealth creation just as Detroit was in the 1910s and '20s.
In 1914, Henry Ford lured workers from all over the world to Detroit by promising a wage of $5 a day, as he pioneered the automobile industry alongside Ransom Olds, the Dodge brothers, Billy Durant and other legendary entrepreneurs.
That same year, Detroit-based Kelvinator Co. made the world's first refrigerator. A competitor sprang up nearby called Guardian Frigerator which General Motors bought in 1919 and moved to Dayton, Ohio.
Elijah McCoy, a son of escaped slaves who had a machine shop in nearby Ypsilanti, was an inventor with 57 patents for products ranging from lubricants to a folding ironing board and a lawn sprinkler. His products were of such high quality that he is reputed to be the inspiration for the phrase "the real McCoy," although that's a matter of historical debate.
What's not debated is that Detroit was the engine of American innovation and industrial might in the first half of the 20th Century.
That Detroit had some important things in common with Silicon Valley of today. It was a hotbed of talent and a magnet for immigrants.
By the end of the 1920s, 25% of all Michigan residents were foreign-born, but by 1990 the state's foreign-born population was only 3.8%, the lowest level since 1850.
Both Friedman and Newsweek writer Daniel Lyons, in their recent articles dissing Detroit, argued that the United States must resist the impulse to keep out foreigners and foreign-made products in the vain hope that isolationism will protect American jobs and prosperity.
Many innovative Silicon Valley companies, they noted, are driven by highly educated immigrants from Asia. This is not a trend unique to California. In fact, studies show 33% of recent high-technology companies formed in Michigan were started by immigrants, said John Austin, director of the $100-million New Economy Initiative for Southeast Michigan, an effort by 10 big foundations to help diversify the region's economy and spark innovation.
Steve Tobocman, a 6-year state legislator from southwest Detroit who left office in December, is talking to Austin's group and the Detroit Regional Chamber about a research project to study the impact of local immigrants on job creation.
That may not be the most popular idea among longtime Michigan residents who find themselves jobless today, but it's a clear-eyed way to look at our place in the world.
We in Detroit can moan and complain about being disrespected by the national media and unfairly slammed as an economic wasteland.
What really matters, however, is that cities and states have the best-educated, most-talented, hardest-working people. And if that ain't us, how do we get them here?
Contact TOM WALSH at 313-223-4430 or twalsh@freepress.com.
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