Updated, Thursday 1:40 p.m. -- Gov. Rick Snyder announced that he'll ask the Obama administration to set aside 50,000 work visas to entice immigrants to work in Detroit, the Detroit News reports.
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In May of 2011, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared on NBC's Meet the Press and recommended a way to deal with new immigrants.
"If I were the federal government," Bloomberg told David Gregory. "Assuming you could wave a magic wand and pull everybody together, 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."
Gov. Rick Snyder is offering up a more refined alternative to that suggestion.
Kathleen Gray of the Detroit Free Press reports that Snyder says he wants to atttact at least 50,000 new immigrants to live and work in Detroit over the next five years.
Gray writes:
The proposal, scheduled for announcement this morning in Detroit, dovetails with two other immigration plans offered by Snyder in his State of the State speech last week: opening an Office for New Americans to attract and help immigrants better adjust to life in Michigan, and designating the state as an Employer Based or EB-5 center to expedite visas and permits for immigrants who want to open business in the state with investments of at least $500,000 and 10 employees.
“Let’s ask the federal government to change regulations to bring in highly skilled immigrants to the state,” Snyder said in an interview with the Free Press Wednesday. “We’d like to see 50,000 immigrants over five years coming to live and work in Detroit.” -- A.L.
