Why are people so resistant to immigrants? After all, studies have shown that immigrants stabilize neighborhoods, and their presence correlates with a reduction of crime. Additionally, they are more than twice as likely to start their own business as people born in the United States, according to a study by the University of North Carolina. And a study in Michigan by the Immigration Policy Center suggested immigrants are six times more likely to start high-tech companies than native-born people are.
All of this is why Michigan’s governor Rick Snyder believes that an influx of talented immigrants could help reinvigorate his state. So he asked the federal government if Michigan could create its own visa program for immigrants who have the means to invest $500,000 to $1 million in starting job-creating businesses.
In April, the federal government approved the plan. Snyder told of Gary Heinlein of the Detroit News that the move is “an important step in helping harness top talent and international direct investment into the state to continue and accelerate Michigan’s comeback. Our state needs outstanding talent to help drive the new economy. Immigrants are net job creators.”
Michigan will open a regional center for EB-5 visas, an “immigrant investor” program that was implemented with the 1990 immigration act. Those who have a plan for a business that will employ 10 or more people in Michigan can apply for permanent residence. (Their family can also apply.) Projects that target areas with high unemployment will be have priority, and given that there 433 neighborhoods in the state with an unemployment rate one-and-a-half times greater than the national average, there are plenty of communities to choose from.
Snyder is putting a lot of energy behind his plan to welcome immigrants to Michigan to help his state economically. He’s also created a Michigan Office for New Americans, plus he delivered two other immigrant-related proposals during his State of the State speech in January. He’s hoping these new Americans will bring renewed energy and ideas that can return Michigan’s economy to its former powerhouse status.
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Tag: Helping Immigrants
No Longer Afraid: A Young Immigrant Victim of the Aurora Theater Shootings Steps Out of the Shadows
The violence onscreen became real life for those victims of the horrific mass shooting at the Century 16 multiplex in Aurora, Colorado back in July 2012. And for one of the wounded, the terror of the event extended beyond being injured.
As 18-year-old Alejandra Lamas lay bleeding from a gunshot wound, she worried that if she accepted medical attention, someone would discover her immigration status and if so, if she and her family would be deported. For weeks as Lamas recovered, she was afraid that the media attention to the shooting — in which 12 people died, including Alejandra’s friend, A.J. Boik — would reveal that she had been brought to this country illegally as a child.
Lamas knew that just a month before the shootings, President Obama had issued a memo authorizing deferred action on immigration charges for people like her who had been in the country since they were kids. So she continued her physical therapy and decided to head to Colorado State University as planned, despite not knowing if she’d be able to work in this country after she graduated. “I knew that my options were really limited,” she told Laura Bond of Westword, “but I had a determination to go to school, regardless of what that would mean for me financially in the future.” She was, after all, going to be the first member of her family to attend college.
Lamas contacted immigration rights groups and lawyers she felt she could trust, and learned that she could qualify for a U Visa “for victims of crimes who have suffered substantial mental or physical abuse and are willing to assist law enforcement and government officials in the investigation or prosecution of the criminal activity,” according to the Homeland Security website. Because of the trauma her family suffered, her parents and younger sister qualified for visas too, which all of them received last year.
Denver playwright and director Antonio Mercado asked Lamas if he could include her story as the opening of his new production, “Dreaming Sin Fronteras” (“Dreaming Without Borders”), which features dramatic monologues about people like Lamas who are waiting in the shadows for the long-deferred DREAM Act (which would allow for citizenship for people brought to this country as children) to be passed. Mercado told John Wenzel of the Denver Post that he found Lamas’s story striking because “she was trying to convince the paramedics not to take her to the hospital, despite the fact that she had been shot.” Lamas, who finally feels free to share her story, agreed to participate in the show.
Lamas, 20, is in her second year in college studying social work. She now pays lower tuition since last year, Colorado passed a law allowing for in-state tuition for non-citizens. “Before all this happened, I was so caught up in being ashamed of being an immigrant,” she told Bond. But now, “When I go out now, people ask me, ‘Can I see your ID?’ I’m like, ‘Why, yes, you can!” Hopefully when people learn of stories like Lamas’s, more will be convinced that the time for immigration reform is now.
MORE: Tired of Waiting for Immigration Reform, One Man is Giving Undocumented Students a Shot at the American Dream
Paperwork Stood Between Immigrants and Their Dream, So This Group Stepped In
In 2012, President Obama issued a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals memo that instructed the departments responsible for enforcing immigration laws to refrain from deporting immigrants who were brought to this country as children. The benefits from this policy don’t happen automatically, however. Immigrants must get legal help to prove their continuous residency in the United States, pay a $465 filing fee, and fulfill other requirements to qualify, and many people in this situation can’t afford to pay a lawyer. That’s where the Center for Legal and Social Justice at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio steps in.
About a year ago the center began offering free legal help to people who qualify for deferred action, and so far they’ve helped 200 low-income teens and young adults wade through the necessary paperwork. The center has succeeded with every single case it’s taken on during this mission. Once achieved, the deferral must be renewed every two years, and allows the immigrant to receive work authorization.
For 19-year-old Luis Garcia who arrived in the U.S. at age 2, help from St. Mary’s University “gave me the boost I needed to continue on forward,” he told Jennifer R. Lloyd of My San Antonio. Garcia is now a freshman at San Antonio College.
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