Last week several news organizations including the Washington Post and Politico reported that many Washington insiders feel any hope for immigration reform in the near future is “dead,” following the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in his primary race. But those outside the Beltway aren’t so pessimistic. In a recent speech at the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, Greg Brown, the CEO and Chairman of Motorola Solutions, said, “Why is the timing not right for this? I find that unacceptable.”
According to Anna Marie Kukec of the Daily Herald, Brown plans to continue to advocate for immigration reform and rally other business leaders to do so, until it’s revived. According to Brown, it just makes good business sense at a time when the economy remains “fragile.”
Brown said that American businesses cannot find workers with the skills they need, due to limited visas available for high-skilled workers. He believes that hiring such international workers does not take jobs from Americans—on the contrary, it creates jobs for them.
“Immigrant workers are job generators themselves,” he said. “They have a job multiplier effect. So if our goal is to grow a dynamic environment for businesses to be created, grow and thrive, we ought to care about this as a state.”
Motorola Solutions runs programs to encourage American kids to become engineers, working with the Chicago Public Library Foundation, the Museum of Science and Industry, school districts and other organizations. “It’s about preparing the workforce for the jobs that will keep America competitive and enable kids to succeed in the 21st century,” Brown said. “But, unfortunately, it takes 18 years to make an engineer, and the crisis for talent is now.”
MORE: Can An Influx of Immigrants Bolster Michigan’s Economy?
Tag: Visas
Meet the CEO Who Wants to Bring 50,000 Immigrants to Detroit
Tim Bryan, the CEO of Detroit software company GalaxE Solutions, is passionate about the good he thinks new immigrants bring to America. After all, his own dad is a Czech immigrant. He’s so keen to reinvigorate Detroit that he thought up the slogan “Outsource to Detroit,” and hung a huge billboard with these words on his company’s downtown office building, hoping to encourage companies to hire workers in Detroit to do jobs they might consider outsourcing overseas. Bryan gives his whole-hearted support to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s plan to ask the federal government to grant the state 50,000 visas for skilled immigrants who are willing to move to Detroit over the next five years.
Bryan told Khalil AlHajal of MLive Detroit, “I believe that this country prospers when people come from other countries to work here. Our immigration rules need to be revised both on the practical level, based on the fact that we need certain skill sets for our economy to remain competitive, but also the fact that our country was built on the backs of immigrants.” And if those visas come through, Bryan just might put up a billboard to welcome his new workers.
MORE: Meet The Undocumented Immigrants Who Created An App To Press for Immigration Reform