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Sanctuary Zone Ohio - Joe Frolik
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Joe Frolik
Plain Dealer Columnist
Here's something you don't hear very often: "People in Cleveland are
thinking more creatively than people in other regions are."
That assessment comes from Vivek Wadhwa, a software entrepreneur who's
also an executive in residence at Duke University's Pratt School of
Engineering and the Wertheim Fellow at Harvard Law School's Labor and
Worklife Program. A regular contributor to Business Week, he's a leading
authority on the nexus of immigration and entrepreneurism.
And what a busy intersection it is. Wadhwa studied high-tech and
engineering start-ups for the decade ending in 2005. He found that in
California's Silicon Valley, a magnet for smart, ambitious people from
around the globe and for the venture capital that follows them, 52 percent

of new firms had an immigrant as either chief executive officer or chief
technological officer. Nationally, the figure was roughly half that. In
Ohio, which has struggled to attract immigrants, the figure was lower yet
- and so, according to a new study from the Kauffman Foundation, is the
overall level of entrepreneurial activity here.
Since January, Wadhwa has been helping an informal group of Northeast Ohio

civic, academic and business leaders brainstorm ways to jump-start this
region's economy - and broaden its global vision. The group includes Raj
Aggarwahl, dean of the business school at the University of Akron;
Cleveland immigration attorney Richard Herman; Mark Santo, president of
the Cleveland Council on World Affairs; and Baiju Shah, president of
BioEnterprise, the incubator and accelerator for bioscience start-ups.
They're refining an action plan that would marry Wadhwa's insights on
immigrant entrepreneurs to this region's growing array of high-tech
assets. It would tap an obscure provision of American immigration law to
give Greater Cleveland a powerful infusion of brain power, capital and new

blood. Best of all, it promises to do so in a way that should offer
political cover on one of the nation's most emotional and divisive issues.

Here's the idea in a nutshell:
Wadhwa's research indicates that upwards of 1 million highly educated and
skilled immigrants are in the United States legally on visas that they
hope will lead to green cards and permanent resident status. But because
the federal government issues so few green cards each year, many of these
people face a decade or more in legal limbo; they can't even change jobs
lest they go to the back of the line.
As a result, a lot of these immigrants are becoming frustrated and talking

of returning home to places like India or China, where opportunities are
exponentially greater than when they left. If they do, many will take back

top-shelf educations, business know-how and high-tech patents developed
while here. Not to mention a substantial amount of money.
"The U.S. is headed for a massive, reverse brain drain," Wadhwa warns.
But there is a legal way to jump the green card line. The EB-5, or
investor visa, program offers foreign nationals a chance to get
provisional green cards for themselves and their immediate family members
if they invest $500,000 in a high-unemployment area. If those investments
create at least 10 jobs for American workers, the green cards become
permanent. Under the law, 10,000 green cards a year are available through
this program - yet in Fiscal 2007, the agency that administers the program

awarded only 803 conditional green cards.
Beginning with a meeting Aggarwahl hosted in Akron during the winter,
Wadhwa and the local network have been considering a marketing pitch to
immigrants in techheavy areas such as Californias Silicon Valley and
metro Boston that would go something like this: Invest in Northeast Ohio.
Join a tech scene thats beginning to attract serious money from venture
capitalists and offers access to major universities and first-tier
research centers. Tap an array of services, including BioEnterprise and
JumpStart, designed to help startups grow to scale. Enjoy an enviable
quality of life at a fraction of what youd pay on either coast. Put your
family on the priceless road to American citizenship.
There are tens of thousands of skilled immigrants ready to become
entrepreneurs, Wadhwa says. If Cleveland could declare itself a
sanctuary zone for skilled immigrants, you might get a few hundred
immigrant entrepreneurs there. Just think what several hundred tech
start-ups would do for Cleveland. You could put a rocket ship on the
economy.
The plan still needs to be fleshed out. And then its not clear who would
be in charge of carrying it forward or where the money would come from for

even a modest marketing campaign. Aggarwahl thinks the effort needs a
champion, someone whose sole job is to drive recruitment and line up
existing resources, including incubator space and support services. Early
discussions with local business groups have produced interest, but no
commitments as yet.
Some participants in the ongoing discussion think the early focus should
be on Akron, in part because its a more manageable size than Cleveland
and because its City Hall has a reputation for getting things done
quickly. But location hardly matters in terms of regional benefit in
most parts of America, and certainly elsewhere around the globe, Cleveland

and Akron might as well be the same place.
Even having such a coherent discussion is progress attracting the
enthusiastic attention of someone like Wadhwa is gravy. For several years
now, disparate groups and individuals around Greater Cleveland have talked

about the need to internationalize the region. There have been
initiatives to help local companies compete in the global marketplace, and

some mildly successful efforts at persuading foreign companies to locate
here as they try to crack the American market.
But talk of systematically wooing immigrants has not gone anywhere, a
victim of national policies and politics especially post-9/11 and of
local fears that newcomers would somehow get help at the expense of
natives who have long struggled to get ahead.
Meanwhile, cities and regions that have left Greater Cleveland in the dust

have learned or, in the case of a place like Chicago, relearned that
immigrants are engines of innovation and rebirth.
When Cleveland was the industrial eras Silicon Valley a century ago, this
place teemed with immigrants both laborers and innovators. As our
economy has declined, so has the influx of new people with their energy
and ideas. We need to start letting them know were open for business and
theyre more than welcome to join in the renaissance of a great place.
Immigration made us No. 1 100 years ago, and thats whatll do it again,
says Tom Sudow, who aggressively recruited foreign firms while at the
Beachwood Chamber of Commerce. He now is director of corporate attraction
for the Cleveland Clinics Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center.
The concept Aggarwahl and Co. are brewing up should be less controversial
than more aggressive repopulation schemes that also ought to be on the
regions agenda. Its hard to imagine anyone being too upset about wooing
people who are in America legally and would come here as job creators, not

job competitors.
Shah counts 17 firms with immigrant entrepreneurs or other foreign roots
among the companies BioEnterprise supports. To him, the need to tap this
pipeline is obvious. If these people are not here creating jobs, then
those jobs arent going to exist here, Shah says. If you want jobs, then
get every person who is a job creator to come here.
Sounds like a plan.
Frolik is an associate editor of The Plain Dealers editorial pages.
To reach Joe Frolik: jfrolik@plaind.com, 216-999-4548
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