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Straight Talk

By James Hettinger
Senior Advisor, Battle Creek Unlimited
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A couple of months ago, I wrote about immigration issues and the opportunity to be strategic in the shaping of immigration policy to help our nation attract the world’s best and brightest. We know that immigrant entrepreneurs are involved in approximately 25 percent of the new technology venture formations in the U.S. This, alone, constitutes justification for the creation of a new policy.

In that column, I suggested that the federal government provide some inkling of leadership in order to diminish the alarm being felt by border states such as Arizona where folks believed they had little choice but to take matters into their own hands.

In the meantime, boycotts of Arizona have been announced and implemented. Under the leadership of such intellectual luminaries as Lady Gaga, the boycott effort is designed to hurt Arizona economically until they knuckle under. And do what?

I had deliberately separated Arizona out of that column, because an enlightened immigration policy concerns all Americans, not just those living in border states.  But two weeks of travel in Arizona in September has caused me to rethink the role of border states and the relationship to their federal government. Admittedly, my evidence will be anecdotal, but I did talk with as many bartenders as possible (naturally), and as many shopkeepers as possible (my spouse was with me). What I found was astonishing.

Virtually every person with whom I had a conversation supported Arizona’s immigration effort. While that may not be surprising, the intensity with which people discussed this subject was.

In the first place, they were resolute. It did not seem like anybody was in favor of backing away from what they deem as a law compatible with existing federal statutes and law enforcement practices.

A merchant in Sedona said business was up as much as 20 percent over 2009. He attributed it to the surge of Americans taking vacations in Arizona to spite the boycotts. Any downward trend in business was blamed on the recession, not the boycott. Some said the reactions of ordinary Americans against the boycott may actually have mitigated the negative impacts of the recession.

Secondly, the people to whom I talked believed outsiders, particularly, the outsiders inside Washington, D.C., do not have a clue as to costs and burdens shouldered by Arizonians as a result of the unwillingness and inability of the federal government to do the job it is constitutionally mandated to do. The costs and burdens are associated with security, environmental despoliation and strains on public services. As the specter of encroaching drug cartels increases, and human rights organizations cannot be found anywhere, people are rightly concerned about human trafficking and drug smuggling. Given the porous borders, it is not impossible to conceive of human traffickers smuggling in a few jihadists with suitcase bombs to light up a few American cities.

Third, the anecdotal evidence also shows some internal divisions among Arizonians. Since I did not travel in the Tucson area, I was not privy to the thoughts of people living in Tucson who evidently are less happy about the state’s efforts. The Tucson region is perceived as siding against the Arizona immigration statute. Consequently, more than once, I could have closed my eyes and heard the same language a slightly inebriated Yooper might have used to describe the politics of Ann Arbor.

Obviously, the issues left on the table by federal inaction are too important to be ignored much longer or the entire nation is in peril. I am not prepared to contend my anecdotal evidence reflects the total reality of the situation in Arizona. I did, however, go out of my way to engage people in conversation and to sample their thinking. This column reflects accurately what I heard people saying.

So aside from the benefits our nation has enjoyed through the years with an enlightened immigration policy, we have nothing now. The Arizona situation and the many states that support Arizona is a clear case of the Washington, D.C. crowd being out of touch as they have been, up to and including the administration of Ronald Reagan. Now, the social and economic costs of inaction are mounting and other countries are attempting to capitalize on our stalemate by doing their own thing to attract the world’s best and brightest.

Our universities, particularly our Michigan universities, graduate thousands of foreign students each year. They are well equipped to return to their countries with job and wealth creating skills. We used to keep those educated entrepreneurs here where their impact has been positive and substantial. Our retarded immigration policy must be modernized, the sooner the better.

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