Snyder's talent search aims for immigrants

freep.com
by Brian Dickerson
1:25 AM, Dec. 11, 2011

On the last day of November, just a few hours before everything else he did that month was eclipsed by the disclosure that he was one step closer to appointing an emergency manager in Detroit, Rick Snyder delivered the fifth in a series of wonkish special messages that have become the signature of his gubernatorial tenure.

Like his previous tutorials -- he has held forth on government reform, education, health care and transportation -- Snyder's "Special Message on Talent Development" was a curious mixture of vague optimism and granular policy prescription -- the love child of advisers who think in news cycles and sound bites and an accountant-in-chief who thinks in dog years and dashboards.

It ran 14 pages, single-spaced, but if you mainlined enough caffeine to remain attentive throughout, you were rewarded with glimpses of the unpredictability that makes Snyder so interesting and his impact on Michigan so difficult to forecast.

Extending an invitation

Snyder is one of a dozen Republican governors who took office in the floodtide that began in 2009 with New Jersey's Chris Christie and Virginia's Bob McDonnell and swelled the following November to propel Ohio's John Kasich, Wisconsin's Scott Walker, Florida's Rick Scott and others to statehouse victories.

All pledged to trim the size and scope of state government, resist tax increases, and take public employee unions down a peg. Snyder has arguably had more success than most while maintaining a lower, far less confrontational profile than lightning rods like Walker and Scott.

It is possible to describe most of Snyder's major initiatives -- his budget cuts, his reduction in business taxes, his campaign to limit the state's liabilities for health care and pensions, and his myriad efforts to circumscribe the collective bargaining rights of teachers and government employees -- as pro-business and hostile to workers in general and organized labor in particular. Snyder's abysmal voter approval ratings as he concludes his first year in office bespeak the Democrats' success in doing precisely that.

But Snyder's message on talent development, while placing the same high premium on employers' needs, diverges in several respects from the standard GOP catechism, especially in the realm of immigration policy.

At a time when Republican presidential hopefuls are arguing about who would deport the most undocumented workers in the shortest time (recent GOP debates have included skirmishes over the ideal specifications of a border fence, and whether it should be electrified), Snyder insisted that bringing more immigrants to Michigan and making it easier for them to stay here indefinitely "will fuel faster growth and help secure and create jobs" for native-born Michiganders.

During a visit to the Free Press last week, Snyder went even farther, calling himself "probably the country's most pro-immigration governor."

Lower entry fees?

Suggest that his cheerleading for increased immigration goes against his party's xenophobic grain and Snyder is quick to point out that he wishes only to encourage legal immigration, not to extend blanket amnesty to workers who have entered the U.S. illegally.

But his talent message included specific proposals to make it easier for students and other highly educated immigrants who have only temporary permission to be here to stay indefinitely, essentially broadening the definition of who's legal to include thousands or tens of thousands currently ineligible for extended residency.

There is plenty of data to support Snyder's contention that such highly skilled immigrants generate many times more job openings than they fill. He just wants to reduce the initiation fee a little, so that foreign entrepreneurs who invest as little as $500,000 and hire as few as five workers can qualify for legal residency. (The current requirement is a $1-million investment and 10 workers.)

Many of the changes Snyder seeks to help Michigan attract and retain highly skilled immigrants would require amendments to federal immigration law. Snyder says he has had encouraging discussions about such legislation with members of Congress from Michigan and other states, but it will be interesting to see which Michigan Republicans, if any, enlist in his campaign to make his state a magnet for talent from abroad.

Contact Brian Dickerson: 313-222-6584 or bdickerson@freepress.com

http://www.freep.com/article/20111211/COL04/112110438