More Immigration? Detroit Says No, Thank You!

by Joe Guzzardi
May 20, 2011

Advocates are always quick to recommend more immigration as the solution for whatever the mainstream media is advancing as America’s most pressing problem. Whether it’s to fill a perceived worker shortage, shore up the social security fund or reverse population declines in major cities, immigration is always the answer.

So it was a relief earlier this week when Detroit Mayor Dave Bing challenged his fellow mayor from New York Michael Bloomberg, on his recommendation that Detroit take in thousands of immigrants to boost it out of the doldrums. Multibillionaire Bloomberg is a long standing proponent of increased levels of legal immigration and, despite persistently high unemployment, importing more foreign-born workers.

The dust up between the two mayors started during a Meet the Press interview when Bloomberg incoherently proposed that “…you pass a law letting immigrants come in as long as they agree to go to Detroit and live there for five or ten years.” As Bloomberg sees it, Detroit would soon be prospering because the immigrants would “start businesses, take jobs, whatever.”Bloomberg speculated that his plan would populate Detroit “overnight” because “half the world wants to come here” and that his immigration policy would “at no cost to the federal government fix a lot of the problems that we have.”

Detroit has been in the headlines during recent weeks because, according to Census 2010, the city has lost 25 percent of its population base during the last t decade, falling from more than 1.8 million residents to about 700,000. Based on its high unemployment and foreclosure rates, Forbes Magazine ranks Detroit as the fifteenth most miserable United States city to live in.

Bloomberg’s crazy plan is wrong on every level. Allowing unlimited immigration into the United States and directing them to Detroit would not be “free”. Processing millions of people from around the world would take a huge staff that would probably require forming a new federal agency.

More importantly, Bloomberg’s basic premise is insane. More immigration creates many more challenges than it solves, something that Bing thankfully recognized. After all, the newcomers would need jobs (which Detroit obviously doesn’t have), social services (Detroit is too broke to provide them), and other entitlements like education and housing that would put more pressure on the city’s already bankrupt budget.

Detroit’s problems are acute. According to an exhaustive study by Stanley Tobacman titled Global Detroit and published in April 2010, here’s what the city is coping with: an official unemployment rate of 30 percent but, according to Bing’s calculations, unofficially 50 percent, the nation’s highest foreclosure rate, a public school system that’s under the control of an emergency financial manager and from which only one in four ninth graders will graduate from high school.

To this mix, Bloomberg incredulously recommends adding more immigrants, most of whom would be low skilled and non-English speaking.

When advised of Bloomberg’s suggestion, Bing quickly replied: “I don’t know what he was on.”

Noting that Detroit can’t provide jobs or the opportunities for the people already living there, Bing concluded that getting “a boatload of people who aren’t going to find a job” doesn’t make any sense.

Bing concluded that his task is to “take care of the people who are here.”

If only President Obama shared Bing’s common sense. Instead of continuously calling for more immigration and higher levels of foreign-born workers as he did in his State of the Union address and in El Paso two weeks ago, Obama should spend more time worrying about “people already here.”

Specifically, Obama’s concern should be directed toward unemployed and under employed Americans who deserve better than to be cast aside in favor of a misguided globalist perspective on the economy.