If you stop and think about what the immigrant and refugee populations have done for the West Side of Buffalo, then you can probably imagine that there are other areas of the city that could benefit from the same sort of immigration policies. In Detroit, a Rust Belt city that has been decimated partially due to population loss (through job loss), Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has proposed opening the immigration doors to the city, asking the Federal government to issue 50,000 visas to talented immigrants who would then resettle in Detroit over the course of the next five years. That’s a heck of a lot of people coming into a city that is scrambling to figure out how to repopulate its neighborhoods.
With the influx of immigrants comes a cultural shift, that would help to reestablish both commercial and residential neighborhoods. “Immigration policy is established at the federal level,” says Rick T. Su, an expert on immigration law and associate professor of law at the University at Buffalo Law School. “But the impact of those policies, and immigration more generally, vary from state to state, locality to locality. The current uniform national immigration policy simply does not account for this reality. Countries like Canada are already starting to decentralize immigration policy-making by allowing for a greater provincial role. Instead of continuing to exclude states and localities from the political negotiation over immigration, federal policymakers would do well to formally include them in the process.”
If given the proper tools to formulate its own strategy, bankrupt Detroit could utilize a growing immigrant population to reinvent itself in similar ways that we are seeing on the West Side of Buffalo. Essentially, the message that Snyder is sending out is, “Detroit is open to the world.”
In order to show that he is serious about this undertaking, Snyder has already opened an Office for New Americans where immigrants are not only helped to adjust to life in the US, the office also helps to expedite visas for immigrants that have access to investment funds that could establish new companies in Detroit (requiring at least $500,000 and 10 employees). Apparently, this sort of thinking is not so far-fetched, and could help to position Detroit in ways that the city desperately needs.
Buffalo should be taking note from some of these new policies, so that we can continue to take advantage of the changing demographics that have already helped to change the face of the West Side. Could Buffalo/NYS take a chapter from this aggressive immigration policy to establish a number of new communities on the East Side, surrounding anchors such as the Central Terminal and the Broadway Market? Of course we would have to put our own spin on the policies (number of immigrants, resettling locations), but nothing ventured, nothing gained. In a city that grew up on the shoulders of immigrants, this is nothing new and would reap benefits for all parties in question.
See Repopulating Buffalo Part 1